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How to Snag a Quality Domain Name

Written by Alice Mason | Jul 10, 2014 5:00:00 AM

Choosing a domain name is one of the most important decisions a business owner can make. 

Like all Internet professionals know, a website name plays an important role in how prospective users discover, remember or even navigate a website. Ideally, a domain name should be as follows:

- It should be as short as possible.

- It must be easy to spell as well as pronounce.

- It should be memorable and catchy and be easily adaptable.

- It should not violate someone else's trademark.

- Also, it should not be too similar to a competitor's domain name as it will lessen up the identities of both the brands and companies.

Since domain names are important for launching any website in any industry, one should follow these tips when choosing a domain name:

Think about the brand

The most successful websites are those who usually focus on the long-term branding strategy. The domain name is considered as the foundation of the brand and they will always be used as the site's identifier. The domain needs to be creative as well as easily instanstly recognizable.

Go for original 

Before choosing any domain name, decision-makers should take some time to ensure that they are not conflicting with other brands. For starters, it can be as simple as a Google search, Copyright search as well as Trademark search, which will give them a pretty good idea if anyone uses the same name or not. An original domain name (even if it wasn't their first choice) is always better than trying to piggyback one someone else's idea. 

Rethink keyword-rich domains

One of the most common misconceptions is brands have to include keywords in the domain name to describing the service or the product. This is not always necessary, as user experience, content and other factors are more important than a keyword-rich domain name when it comes to visibility on the Web. 

Keep the domain name short

It's important to keep domain names short and sweet so that people can remember it easily, but today's Web is crowded, making it difficult to find a unique short domain name. Since this is the new reality, business owners should take their time when trying to find a short domain name, ask friends, brainstorm, etc. 

"Fight" for it

It's getting harder and harder to obtain a quality, memorable domain name. If one is not able to find any of the available domain names then it is better to invest in a quality name.

Consider a New gTLD

Although snagging a quality domain name takes equal parts creativity, know-how and patience, some business owners are turning to the new gTLDs to help their companies stand out on the Web. These new gTLDs include domain identifiers like .guru, .photography, .tips, etc.

There are many online tools that are really helpful in finding, registering as well as managing the domain names. Some of the tools that help in these things are listed below:

Domainr- Domain search engine

The Domainr service is available easily as it gets it. It searches for a domain name very intuitively as well as very fast.

Domaintyper- for searching and generating names

This is another simple search tool that is used for checking the domain availability as well as generating domain hacks. It also allows the search and recommendation feature to the iPhone for checking the domain names on the go.

iWantMyName- Domain management

iWantMyName lets users search as well as register domains.

Of course popular domain registrars are also a terrific first step to snagging a quality domain name.

Alice is a professional expert for the Web hosting company VPSGuy. She enjoys sharing as much information possible about Web hosting services and the benefits offered by it.