How to Choose a Great Domain Name

Did you get an idea for a great business or product recently?

Chances are that you did and now it’s time to think of a domain name that it’s catchy enough, good for SEO and also available.

Because you are going to invest some money into buying it anyway, why not get a really great domain name?

I can assure you that it will pay off later.

Now that I’ve got your attention, I would like to share with you some strategies that will help you choose a killer domain name.

It takes a little bit of time and research for the proper domain name, but if you are doing this the right way from the beginning, the later comeback will be most pleasing.

1. Do your Research

You need to do your homework and see if your idea can get a domain that it’s good for SEO.

To do that you need to use the Keyword Tool from Google to brainstorm some keyword ideas that you can use to decide which domain name is better for you.

In order to do that, just think of some words related with the product or business for which you would like to get a domain name.

Once you have those clear in mind, just head over to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and start researching those words.

They will help you find really good keywords that will offer you a great start on your search engine optimization efforts.

In SEO, that’s quite important, and starting with the right domain name will ease your work later.

While doing this research you need to look for the keywords that are balanced in terms of Global Monthly Searches, Competition and CPC.

• Global Monthly Searches – this will help you see how popular a keyword is and how many people are looking for that keyword with approximation every month. The higher the number, the more chances you have to get a large amount of traffic for your website if you rank high in search engines.
• CPC – this will tell you what is the average cost per click for that keyword in AdWords. Why is this important? Because high converting keywords are really expensive and those keywords with a high CPC will most likely give you the visitors that relate with your business and convert better.
• Competition – this metric will tell you how hard is it to rank for a specific keyword. With a high competition you will have a really hard time trying to rank higher in search engines, so look for medium and low competition.

Now that you know what each metric means, you need to find keywords that are balanced with a decent Global Monthly Searches number, a high CPC and a low competition.

Another thing to consider is the match type that you are analyzing. By default, Google will return Broad Global Monthly Searches, which means that it will include searches that contain your keyword and other words.

On the other hand, the [Exact] match will count only those searches that match exactly your keyword.

For example, an [Exact] match will count only the “seo software” queries for the “seo software” keyword, while a Broad match will also count “seo software reviews”, “seo software comparison”, “seo software free” for the same keyword.

You can select your match type from the left sidebar.

2. Follow Best Practices

Once you have an idea about what keywords are good for SEO, it’s time to move to the next item on the list and consider the best practices that experts follow.

Start by thinking about your domain name as a brand. In essence, the domain name needs to be short, easy to remember and easy to pronounce.

While looking for a domain name try to make it:

• Short – a short domain name it’s always a wise choice
• Easy to remember – if it’s a catchy name you will be able to build your brand easier and faster
• .com – if you are not a non-profit, university or governmental institution it’s always good to look for the .com especially if you plan to sell something
• Easy to type – by getting an easy to type domain name, you are sure that you will not lose visitors that mistype it

On the same note try to avoid:

• Hyphens
• Long domains stuffed with keywords
• Multi-term domain names
• Numbers in your domain name

These best practices have been followed by brands over time who have become really successful in their industries, so it makes sense to follow them.

3. Check if the Domain is Available

By now you should have at least 10 domain name ideas and it’s not always easy to check which one is free especially directly on a registrar page.

But lucky for us there are tools that make our life much more easier.

One of them is DomainsBoot, which I use every time when I am looking for a domain name because it helps me to easily see if my domain is available and it’s really fast, too.

To use it, just go to DomainsBoot.com and type in a domain name or keyword.

The next second DomainsBoot will display all the domains that match your search along with their disponibility.

Additionally, you have a handful of filters that will help you get even better results returned by DomainsBoot for your search.

4. Choose from the Best Domain Name Registrars

To make your job even easier I decided to also list here the best domain name registrars that you can find out there and their .com price per year.

However, I would recommend you to go and check their additional features that they offer for each domain name. Don’t choose one just for the price.

Personally I use NameCheap and I have moved all my domains from GoDaddy there.

NameCheap $9.98/year

I am with NameCheap for more than 6 months and so far I received outstanding customer service.

Along with a great customer service, they also offer free WhoisGuard protection, featured DNS services, full domain control, security features and much more.

Additionally they offer Comodo PositiveSSL for just $1.99/year when you purchase any product from NameCheap.

1&1 $8.99/first year

With your domain name 1and1 provides you a Private Domain Registration free of charge to protect you contact information, 1 email account with a 2GB capacity and a Starter WebsiteBuilder to get you started.

If you choose a hosting package, they will give you the domain for free.

Go Daddy $9.99/first year

Go Daddy has a good history for bundling products and cross promotion, but their control panel and all those promotions made me switch from them to NameCheap.

However, they are a good company and thousands of people use them as registrar. It was also my first choice when I started.

Name $9.99/year

What I like most about Name is their Domain Nabber, which let’s you search for domains that are expired or close to the expiration date and pay a fee for Name.com to get them if they become available.

They also offer a range of other services that will help you make the most of your domain research and registration.

Back to you

Now that you have some insights about the process, I would love to hear how this has helped you.

Also, if you have any other piece of advice that everyone should know, please add that in the comments below.