How to Choose a Perfect Domain

by Stefan on June 30, 2009

I would without doubt place the domain on a top 10 of important things when it comes to creating a new site. You may have a bunch of good keywords, but the question you may ask yourself is, what is a good domain?

It’s actually more difficult to answer than you first think. Here I will list some of the rules I try to follow when ordering a new domain, but every rule has exceptions.

Your domain should be simple

What is simple?  Well, in lack of better words you can almost make this as a thumb rule. Your domain should be simple to spell, simple to remember, simple to pronounce, simple to share with your friends, etc.

You should simple make your domain simple!

Use keywords

Another important rule is to use good keywords for terms you would like to rank good at. For an example, if you would like to rank good at the term “free meat” it would be a good idea to buy the domain freemeat.com.

At the same time, you should not stack to many keywords. For the term, “travel to Los Angeles with train” you should not use traveltolosangeleswithtrain.com instead try using LAtravel.com.

Keep your domain short

This is actually a rule I skipped with googleadsensegenerator.com because it’s very easy to see what it consists of. If you have heard about making money online, I’m sure you’ve heard about Google AdSense. And who have not heard about a generator?

Anyhow, try to avoid long names like makemoneywithstefannilsson.com.

Invent new names

It may be difficult to find a domain with your specific keyword. Therefore it’s more and more common to invent a new name when it’s time to register your domain.

Here we have examples as Flickr and Pixlr.

Just remember to choose a simple domain which everyone can spell. It’s not such a good idea to loose half your visitors because they didn’t catch the spelling when their friends told them about the site.

Check if a domain is occupied

Since it will take some tries before you succeed to find a free domain, I suggest that you use my free tool to see if a domain is free.

The tool is free to use and I can’t see any search results.

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  5. Quality Content is not that Important

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Tech-Freak Stuff October 11, 2009 at 09:56

Domain should contain relevant keywords and also it should be short! Long names are a trouble to remember.

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2 Stefan October 11, 2009 at 10:20

I agree with you, but unfortunately it gets more and more difficult to get the best out of both worlds.

Reply

3 tech money March 2, 2010 at 03:02

Hi Stefan,
i have came across a posts which wrote by an online money making guru, that suggest using stop words such as “of” “the” on domain. However, other people don’t think so.
How do you think, Stefan?
Can you please drop a suggestion?

Thanks in advance.

Reply

4 Stefan March 5, 2010 at 17:43

If I recall correctly Google will strip searches using “the” so if a specific domain is occupied or it simply sounds better with “the”, I would use it. To my knowledge there’s no disadvantage of using it.

Reply

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