Domain names are the life and blood of a website. These names determine the future band your website. How to pick a domain name should be given much emphasis. In fact, you should be worried about what your website name should sound like and what king of messages it should portray.
On the other hand, names don’t always determine character. Susan is not always a good girl. Because Susan no.1 could be a serial killer.
No one could determine the content of a blog only by the name. Recent blogs with weird names, brandable names and unknown extensions such as.co.
One of the hardest parts of choosing Doman name is most of the one-word names and even the two-word coined names are taken. Unlike human names, domain names cannot be used once taken by another person or institution.
For example, there could be two Susan with their own characters. But there is only one susan.com or susan.net. There is only one facebook.com
This makes the process complicated. It is necessary to find a simple word, possibly less than 3 syllables, easy to memorize. This name should represent your business, without coming too aggressive.
1. How to Pick A Domain Name: Principles?
Here, I will show you how to find a good domain name that you will be proud to use.
Before that I will show you five principles on how to pick a domain name.
- Your name doesn’t always determine your business. Although it is necessary to care about the process of finding your domain name, it is not always a good idea to waste time on that process
For example, no one knows what google means or what Samsung means.
But these ambiguous words represent some brand.
Therefore, we are on the brand than the name.On the other hand, what if Samsung was ‘a good computer with good speed’ or some complicated brandable word, then it may lose the current branding.
Then, make sure to balance the domain you choose with the work you should do. The work determines the success of your name.
Avoid extensions other than .com. Some people advice to go with .net or even.co. I would suggest you to stick with .com especially if you are a beginner. With that you won’t confuse your readers.
- Don’t misplace words.
This is simple. Many people can’t spell. That is truth. If people cannot spell, why would you confuse them with misplaced words. We heard how domains like flickr.com used to lose a lot of traffic to a parked domain flicker.com before they bought the name.
There are known domain names with misplaced words or, words that lost a single letter or more.
- Avoid domain names similar to existing big brand
It is possible to find names similar to already existing known brands. That is a big mistake. Big brands are bullies for some people This means these are the fat kid in the class that has bigger muscle and p ick on the smaller kids. These companies are same.
Just because they need to protect their image, they usually are careful how others use names and images that could affect their own. Therefore, a confusing domain name that cause confusion between yours and the known brand should be avoided.
- Be unique.
- Don’t buy expensive names.
These days everything is a business. People are constantly looking to methods to make extra money. Therefore, they will rip you off for a domain name that doesn’t even make a sense.
Domain names such as red.com or golf.com are very expensive, even millions of dollars.
Not all names are expensive. Some are cheap based on the principles I listed above.
You really don’t have to buy domain names to have a good name. You have to be creative. I will show you how.
2. How to Pick A Domain Name: The Process?
The idea of how to pick a domain name should begin with a general idea of what to belong about.
how to pick a domain name- start with your topic.
What is it you are going to talk about? Is it in health, wealth, dating, fashion, fishing? What is it about? Any challenge on how to pick a domain name should begin with impression of you purpose of the website.
Begin to list influential words that could represent your business. For example, for a coffee blog, you can list coffee, or cup, or latte, or black, or beans.
These words should not have to be only synonyms or should not represent the coffee I self. But these could also be conceptual representations such as black, that represent a coffee.
Use the three platforms: bustaname, leandomainsearch and expireddomains.net
- Bustaname: this website has a simple process on how to pick a domain name. This application has two ways to choose your domain. The first is by finding synonyms and mixing your list of words to make pair words.
Second, it uses the word you give it and it adds prefix and suffix to make it unique.
The second is leaddomainsearch. This site is powerful as well. This site does similar job to bustaname but the process is automatic. This platform does not combine words you give it but it only uses a single word you give it at a time and add descriptive words to make a new coin.
Deleted domain search registers deleted domains. You can go to the website, register and follow dropped names.
- Bust a name
The process how to pick a domain name is simple. First begin with your topic. Let’s consider you proposed to write about women perfume. This is a general but it still works to find your domain.
Here I will list at least 5-10 words that could represent woman or perfume. These could be perfume, smell, scent, fresh… and more
Then copy and paste these words in the platform.
Then by clicking the tringles on the list of words, you can add more synonyms of the words to the list.
On the second column, you will find coined words, ready to register for cheap price. For this task we found good names such as smellwoman.com, scentwoman.com essencescent.co and more.
The second way of finding is using domain name.
Here, need to add one single word in to the box and combined names will appear.
Add your word, and adjust the setting. Make sure the maximum number of characters in the domain should not be above 8 to 10. This assist memory.
Find short names with good suffixes and prefixes.
- Lean domain search
This platform is simple. Just put your word in it. And leave the rest to time. Then sort result with length.
Here you will find names such as perfumeHD.
Find and register fast.
The third is expired domains. This is interesting site because it is a portal of deleted and or to be expired soon domains.
Here you can go through the domains based on your preference and purchase them anywhere you like. For this you can simply use the filter.
Here there are 5 filters you need to use and that I use to go through the domains.
First sign in to get more refined searches
Once signed in go directly to the domain search box on the upper right-hand side.
So, to continue the example of perfume we used above, lets put the word perfume in to the search box. You will get a keyword with unknown extensions. But as I told you before, we should focus on .com only most of the time.
Then let’s go to filter and make some tweaks.
Under common category
Select only ‘deleted domains’ unless you need to wait till, they are deleted and unless you chose to buy
Select no numbers and no hyphens. We only need whitelist domains.
Select English if your audience is English speaker
I usually avoid the SEO here because that kind of luxury could be expensive. There are people of scram domain names to sell them in higher price. So, focus on finding good domain name, and grow it in time.
Before going to the next category make the domain per page to 200 so that we can see more domains at once at the results page.
It is amazing how simple process could give us mor than 15k Doman names in few tweaks and few seconds.
Next you can list the domains using number of letters in the domain name, the fewer the letter the better, or the global search for the word, it is an estimation, may not be right, and even Alexa rank if you find any free domain. Usually the names you find here, if they have Alexa rank, that means they still have good traffic, then they may be held by some domain registrar. And you need to pay to own the domain. You can see price at the end of the column.
Or you can use time to list the domain. The older the better believable.
I listed the domain using number of characters (just click LE above the table) and I found a name heperfume.com. it seems confusing when you read it but it could be perfume for the man. That is interesting short domain.
I listed the domains by Alexa rank and amazingly I found three free. I liked perfumestoday.com
The s on perfume could be confusing if there is another domain called perfume today, without the s. But still it shows you how you can find a good domain.
The next step is to see the history of the domain name. This is important step. If you miss this step, you will not know where you will end up. For example, some good-looking domain names may have a past history of being a porn site domain, a gambling domain or other dark thing domains.
We have heard such stories.
To see the past of a domain, go to archive. It is a place that saves the screenshot of your historical past of your domain.
Let’s see the past of a domain we found, that is heperfume.com. We see it only has two snapshots in 2013. And no much was on the site.
3. Finally, How to Pick a Domain Name
There are few other domain finding sites. But most work in a similar way. Therefore, the three sites bustaname, leaddomainsearch and expireddomains are the best way to find your domain.
It is always tempting to find a perfect domain name that no one found before. But don’t reinvent the wheel. Rather focus on what is necessary to represent what you are doing.
Your domain name has a big role on the future of your blog but it is not everything. It is just a name.
Domain names such as Gizmodo, Gawker, Mashable are weird, but memorable.
Names such as apple, Samsung have nothing to do with the things they are doing. But through continuous branding and marketing, the names represented something more. Apple is not a fruit for many anymore. It is just a minimal expensive gadget.
