Choosing A Domain Name
Choosing a quality domain name depends on the purpose and nature of your website. Is your site for a professional business, personal blog or hobbyist community?
Whichever it is, the main objective for your domain is to allow visitors easy access to your website. Therefore, the general rules in choosing a domain name are as follows: (1) Memorable and unique and (2) Convenient to type.
Memorable Domain Name
A memorable domain is a reflection of your website branding. Visitors will remember your website through a unique brand. This keeps the visitors coming.
Choose any top level domain name that reflects your site. For example, a personal blog might benefit with a .me domain name. Short and unique are the key guidelines here!
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Convenient-to-type Domain Name
A convenient-to-type domain refers to the length of your domain name and the proximity of the keys on the keyboard when your visitor types your domain name. Keep the domain name below 13 letters or characters. And avoid awkward names like 1-halqf-207d.com. Such a domain name is forgettable, inconvenient to type (try it to see what I mean) and is boring.
Business Domain Names
If you own a business that provides professional services, I would recommend that you stick to .com domain names. This is mainly because the dot com is still considered professional above other TLDs.
However, if you own a business in the creative, retail or entertainment industry, feel free to get domain names ending with: .me, .tv and others. Imagine if you have a fashion website. Fashion.me would sound more intimate to your visitors rather than Fashion.com.
Search For Multiple Domain Names
As a business, you should consider registering multiple domain names (e.g. myname.com, myname.info, myname.net) and link them to the same website. This protects your branding of your business site since no one else can use similar domain names with different suffixes.
Furthermore, as a traffic tactic, you might want to register domain names with commercially valuable relevant keywords. Comercially-valuable keywords are keywords that can target a specifc group of visitors (e.g. Gaming.com targets gamers).
Let’s say you own iDeadly.com, a strategy gaming website. To bank on organic search traffic from Google and Yahoo, you can also register strategygames.com (relevant keywords) and point it to the same website.
Registering multiple domain names is not a must. But it can protect your interests and help you by gaining more traffic.