When you choose a domain name for your business, you want to try to choose a domain name that has a keyword in it, as this will help your business online in the long-term on the Internet. An example of a domain name that has a keyword in it would be “workathomepedia.com,” whereby, the keyword is “work at home.” When you choose a domain name that has a keyword or several keywords in it, it will save you time and money on branding your domain name. Imagine if the domain name you choose and register were something like, “bekq.com,” which doesn’t immediately tell you what the website is about. “Bekq.com” could be an acronym that stands for “Best Entrepreneur Key Questions,” or it could be the nickname for the Former Manchester United Soccer Star, David Beckham, or it could just be a short, four-character domain name that someone got lucky enough to register or buy before all four-character domain names were taken!

Whatever domain name you decide on, you don’t really want it to be an acronym if you can help it, because it won’t be immediately clear to anyone looking at your domain name, what it represents or what it is about. You don’t want to register a domain name with dashes in it, if at all possible, for example, “New-York-Housing-Loans.com,” because, what if someone forgets that your domain name has dashes in it and just types in the web address, “NewYorkHousingLoans.com?” Or, they search for “New York Housing Loans” and the search engine returns, “NewYorkHousingLoans.com and your “New-York-Housing-Loans.com” is not on the first page of the search returns, you lose the visitor and a potential sale.

You don’t want to register a domain name that is difficult to spell such as, Hackelicious.com, because the possibilities of someone mistyping your domain name and winding up somewhere else increases, even with the ability of some search engines to suggest, “Did you mean:” You want to avoid registering a domain name that has letters and numbers in it, for example “O2strategies.com,” because the Internet surfer doesn’t know if “0” is the number “0,” or if it is a capital “O” in the domain name and that confusion can lead to people to go elsewhere instead of your website. You also want to avoid having a domain name that has a bunch of numbers in it, unless it makes sense, such as “247.com or “365.com. Having stated that, you probably want to stay away from domain names with both letters and numbers in it, unless it is relevant to what your site is about, such as, “4easysteps.com”

What if someone types in the domain name, “foureasysteps.com and your actual website address is”4easysteps.com”?” You’re practically forced to register both domain names, if both are available. You don’t want to register a domain name where the usage of the word or phrase is not popular, or just down right awkward, such as “onlineforeigncurriencies.com.” You should also avoid registering domain names that have possible trademark or copyright infringement issues, such as “globalficoscore.com”, whereby the “fico,” word portion of the domain stands for Fair, Isaac and Company, the creator of the “Fico Score,” which is a credit scoring system.

When you choose a domain name, you want to stay away from the exotic and unproven, or “new-to-the market” domain extensions, such as, .me, unless the domain name makes since and you are going to spend some time and money to develop it. Take for example, “safelist.me,” which uses the domain extension, .me (for the Country of Montenegro), unless you are a long-term player such as a domain investor or domainer.

The domain name that you choose may not be available when you search for it online. Someone may have already registered it online. Don’t worry, you may have to get a bit creative and think of another domain name similar to the one you wish by adding word to your domain name and see if that is available to register. For example, because there are a lot of smart people using the Internet, when I wanted to register “affiliates.com,” it had already been registered to someone. I still wanted the keyword, “affiliates” in the domain name I wanted to register so I used the term, “-ster,” which means, pertaining to something. So, now I had the keyword that I wanted to use and the term, “-ster,” giving me the word, “affiliatester.” “Affiliatester” which means pertaining to an affiliate, was available and I registered it with the domain extension, .com.

The domain extension is that part of your domain name that is to the right of your domain name. The more common domain extensions are .com for commercial, .org for organization, .net for network, .us for the United States, .biz for business, .ca for Canada, .au for Australia, .uk for the United Kingdom, .es for Spain, .de for Germany, .in for India, .cn for China, .it for Italy, .ru for Russia, .vn for Vietnam, .hk for Hong Kong, .sg for Singapore, .kr for South Korea and .jp for Japan, just to name a few. The .gov domain extension is reserved for governments and the .edu is reserved for educational institutions.

Due to the enormous amount of money and time that has been spent on branding the .com, domain extension over the last decade, it would be best if the domain name you choose has a .com domain extension. Imagine having a domain name such as “universalbluetoothheadset.biz,” and you spend a considerable amount of time and money branding your new domain name, only to see some of your domain traffic, and sales go to the person who owns, “universalbluetoothheadset.com.” How would that make you feel knowing that no matter how much marketing you do for your website, blog or forum, that some of your domain traffic is going to the person who owns the .com domain extension of the domain name you chose?

Your domain name can be a keyword that is recognizable, such as “usdamortgages.com” or something unique to you and the theme of your website or blog. For example, the domain name “voqz.com,” while a short domain name with only four characters, it really doesn’t give you any idea what the website is about. You can use more than one keyword in your domain name if you feel it would be more relevant to the content of your website or blog. For example, “Haridwarhotel.com,” means “Gateway to God” in the Hindi language and is one of seven holiest places in Hinduism and one of the four sites “where the elixirs of immortality were dropped.” “Haridwarhotel.com” contains the keyword for a highly-regarded place in Hindi Culture, “Haridwar” and the more generic keyword, hotel.

So, far we have been covering what is known as short-tail domain names, which are generally domain names with one or two keywords in them, with the exception of “universalbluetoothheadset.com,” which is a long-tail domain name. A long-tail domain name is a domain name containing two or more keywords, such as “medicalcareersacademy.com.” In the “medicalcareersacademy.com” example we have the keywords: medical, careers and academy. Another example of a long-tail domain would be “InternetMediaTablet.com.” Long-tail domain names tend to get less traffic without some marketing, but they tend to convert better than the extremely competitive, short-tail domains. It is a considerable challenge to come up with a short-tail domain name that is still available. If, you’re lucky enough to follow the trends online and register a one or two word keyword (short-tail) domain before someone else does and hang on to it, you just might be one of those “early-adopters.”

One of many examples of “early-adoption,” which is essentially arriving at someplace or some event and utilizing it to your advantage before the “masses” on the Internet popularizes it. Another example of “early-adoption,” is the foresight to register a domain name that is generic and describes a product or service. “InternetMediaTablet.com” is but one example of a generic, long-tail domain name that represents a product that features wi-fi, music, video & entertainment capabilities in one convenient package. Generic domain names that represent a product or service generally do very well in converting visitors to buyers.

Whatever name you finally decide on, be aware that if you’re domain name that you choose is worthwhile, you better be prepared to purchase it the moment you know that it is available. It’s alleged that some domain registrars sell their domain search records and if you don’t purchase your favorite domain at the time you’re searching at a registrar, when you come back to that registrar later or the next day, your favorite domain name may not be available.

It doesn’t matter too much as to which domain registrar you use, because all are accredited by their respective agencies, such as ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. There are many affordable domain registrars on this page and for a .com domain name, you should be able to purchase your favorite domain name for less than $10.00 a year. Many domain registrars accept discount domain registration codes and two good places to get those are NamePros and Fat Wallet.

Remember it doesn’t matter so much as which name you finally register as long as you’re willing to do the necessary marketing and branding for it. You should make every effort to own your name, whatever it is. By registering your own personal name, you have the potential to brand your personal name in the future. Ultimately, people tend to like doing business with people they like, so if, you don’t know what domain name to register, purchase your own name and brand that. Who knows you better than you? So, do you and let’s hope lots of people like you! For the benefit of keyword recognition and top-level domain purposes, you want to register a domain name that will express what your business online or offline is about and you want to use the .com domain extension if it is available. It will save you considerable time and money in the long-term when it comes to branding your domain name on the Internet. Your domain name will be easily recognizable and express what your business is about without you having to go to any great lengths to explain to someone what your business is about. Until the fingers meet the keyboard, Take Care!