Determining your domain name is a very important step in developing your online presence. The domain name you select will brand your website as well as your business so take your time and choose carefully.
What Characters Are Allowed in a Domain Name
The quick and easy answer to what characters are allowed when determining your domain name is that letters, numbers and hyphens (“-”) are allowed. All other characters are not.
Domain names are not case sensitive, all letters used in domain names are in lower case. Therefore when creating your domain name you cannot use capital letters to differentiate your domain name from another with the same characters. For example if ‘atnetters.com’ is already taken you will not be able to simply change a couple of letters to upper case, ie. ‘AtNetters.com’, to get the name you want.
About hyphens…a domain name cannot begin or end with a hyphen. Sometimes when a desired domain name is already taken hyphens are used between the words to achieve the same effect (ie. i-like-this-name). Caution should be used if you decide to use hyphens when creating a domain name as viewers may later remember the words in the domain name but forget the hyphens and end up at a competitor’s website.
Lastly the maximum number of characters you can use when you determine a domain name is 63 not counting the dot and extension (ie “.com”). It is recommended that you keep your domain names to less than 23 characters as some applications do not support domains longer than 22 characters (excluding the dot and extension).
Which Extension Should You Select?
There is a host of extensions to choose from when determining a domain name. To effectively select an extension you should consider what type of audience you are trying to reach and what the nature of your business is.
The three most recognized domain name extensions are .com, .net and .org. Websites that use the .com extension are businesses targeting international traffic. Network providers usually use the .net extension. Non-profit organizations are users of the .org extensions.
If you are targeting an audience specific to your country you can select a country specific extension, for example if you want to reach a Canadian market you could select .ca. Sometimes there are criteria you must meet when choosing a country specific domain name extension, such as being a resident or having an affiliation.
General Guidelines
Some tips to follow when determining a domain name…
Relative – one of the most important things to remember is that your domain name should be relevant to the content of your website.
Keep it short – the shorter it is the easier it is to remember and type, if you can create a domain name that is one or two words it will be easier for people to remember
Make it catchy and easy to say – people will tend to remember your website if the domain name is catchy and rolls off the tongue easily.
Avoid intentional misspellings – replacing a word with a number (ie. ’2′ instead of ‘to’) can lead to users typing the domain name incorrectly and end up driving your traffic to a competitor. It is also wise to avoid using words that are spelled differently in other countries, like the word colour (color) or the word value (valu).
Easy to read – certain letters when placed beside each other can be difficult to read in the address area of the toolbar, this is affected by the font settings in an individual’s browser. Examples of this would be i/l or the number/letter combination 1/l, or the letters r, m and n. So it might be a good idea to type your intended domain name in your browser bar to see how it looks before you make your final decision.
Add a word – if the domain name you want is unavailable you could add a word to the beginning or end of it. For example if you want ‘gooddog.com’ you could add ‘the’ or ‘my’ in front so your domain name could be ‘mygooddog.com’ or ‘thegooddog.com’
If you are having difficulty determining a domain name often domain name registration service providers have a suggestion tool if the name you want is not available.
Find a Domain Name Registrar – [http://www.atnetters.com/Domain-Names.html]
Annette Beasley writing for The Affiliate’s Directory at [http://www.atnetters.com]
Author: Annette Beasley
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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