Deciding on the name

A website name (also known as website address or the domain name) often speaks a lot on the internet. It is not uncommon to choose a long name with more than 15 characters to describe the content or speciality of your website. For example, a domain name consisting of initials only, such as f1r.com, may not create a lasting impression compared to a domain name FormulaOneRacing.com. Visitor's will be able to remember the name easily rather than searching on the internet for finding your website for a second visit.

When selecting a domain name, here are the tips to consider:

• Do you already have a company name? If yes, try to find a domain which includes your company name.

• What are your website topic keywords? Can you include at least one in your domain name.

• Does the domain name describe your website content?

• Can your website content be categorized in a web directory such as DMOZ.org based upon the domain name only?

• Does the domain name include words that are spelled differently in different parts of the world (such as color and colour, humor and humour). If you choose such a name, you might have to register both versions of the domain name.

Domain Names

With the ever growing population of new websites every day, and record new domain name registrations every month, it might be hard to find a domain name of your choice. Therefore, keep a few domain names in mind, or a combination of words while searching for a domain name. Buying your choicest domain from a broker company may be expensive in case you do not find one that is available.

COM, ORG, NET, COM.SG, SG etc?

One common question I encounter is from people who can't get the ".com" domain of their choice, but find the ".net", ".org" or other country-specific top level domains (TLDs) available (like .de, .nu, .sg, etc). Should they try for these?

The answer is not as straightforward as you might think. If your website or business caters to the local community, such as a pizza delivery business or recruitment agency or the like, then it makes sense to get a country-specific domain. You actually benefit from having such a local domain because the people in your country know that they're dealing with a local entity, which is what they want. After all, if they stay in (say) the United Kingdom, they're not likely to want to try to order pizza from pizzaparlour.com, which suggests a US or an international site. You'd have better luck calling it pizzaparlour.co.uk, ie, with a UK domain.

What if yours is a site or business that can benefit from an international audience? There are actually many schools of thought on this. I'll just mention a few common ones.

The first school of thought goes on the premise that it is better to have a domain name of your choice "myperfectdomain" even if it has a TLD of ".net", ".org" or some other country specific extension, than to wind up choosing an obscure domain name for the simple reason you can't get your first choice. Thus they would settle for domain names like "myperfectdomain.de" or "myperfectdomain.net" or whatever. Against this is the argument that if you get a country specific domain, people might think that your business only caters to that country.

Another school of thought finds that ".net" and ".org" extensions are actually quite acceptable domain names. For some, the ".org" extension actually describes the non-profit nature of their organisation. So, for example, the famous Apache web server can be found at "apache.org".

Others would settle for the ".com" extension and no less. As grounds for their arguments, they cite the browser algorithms used to locate a website when a user simply types a name like "acme" into the browser. Apparently, the browser searches for a domain name "acme.com" before attempting "acme.net", etc. As such, people who do that will be delivered to your competitor's site if you do not also own the ".com" extension. Indeed, even if people do not rely on their browser to complete their typing, many simply assume a ".com" extension when they type a domain name, so if your business is "Acme", they'll just assume your domain name is "acme.com" rather than "acme.net" or some other such name.

As you can see, there are actually good grounds for accepting any of the above views. My personal footnote to the above arguments is that if you get a domain name with an extension other than ".com", make sure that you promote your business or website with the full domain name. For example, if your domain name is "dogandcatfood.net", make sure that when you advertise your site or business, call it "dogandcatfood.net" not "dogandcatfood". Otherwise people will assume a ".com" extension and travel to the wrong place.

Tips & Tricks

It is wise to choose a domain name that is not used by any other company with another extension. There might be legal issues later where you might have to give up your domain due to trademark or other violations. Domain registration is very cheap nowadays. Therefore, if you have the budget, registering as many extensions as you can will save some grief later. No one will be able to register the other extensions with your site name when your site becomes popular.