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[H1560]How To Reserve Domain Name

by Adrian Mullan, Adr

Well, it has to be:

- Relatively short
- Simple to remember
- Easy to spell

I was speaking to a customer recently who had a business called 'Otway Valley Trading Company'.

The domain name he wanted was:

www.otwayvalleytradingcompany.com

Can you spot some of the problems with this domain name?

Here's a few:

1. It's too long:

Having to type a long domain name into your browser is annoying and also increases the chances of your customers making a spelling mistake.

2. Too many keywords:

Having 4 keywords (Otway Valley Trading Company) makes it hard for customers to remember the name of the site.

Try to stick to one or two keywords in your domain name.

3. Easy to misspell:

The word 'otway' can be easily confused for 'ottway'.

4. Makes the email address too long:

An email address for this domain name would look like this:

sales@otwayvalleytradingcompany.com

... that's a mouthful for anyone to remember.

Picking a Good Domain Name:

1) The shorter the better

Having a short and snappy domain name makes it easier for your customer to remember your website address, and easier to type into their Internet browser.

2) Go for something catchy

Keep in mind that your domain name doesn't have to be boring. In fact, if you can come up with something catchy - it's a great way to distinguish your business from the competition - just ask the people at Yahoo!.

3) Avoid using hyphens

We've found that hyphens in domain names tend to confuse people.

Sometimes you'll see websites that have a hyphen separating keywords (e.g. ace-accounting.com). This is almost always because the preferred name (aceaccounting.com) has already been registered by someone else.

If the domain you want is already being used by someone else, then you're better off coming up with an alternative name then using hyphens.

4) Avoid using numbers

If possible, try avoiding the use of numbers in your domain name, as this can also lead to confusion (e.g. was that 3phones.com or threephones.com ?).

But if you have to use a number, make sure you register both the written and numerical versions of your domain name (3phones.com and threephones.com).

5) Grab a thesaurus

If you're struggling for inspiration or finding it difficult to come up with a name that hasn't already been taken - grab a thesaurus (or visit Thesaurus.com)

Say you run an adventure tour company and you want to register excitingadventures.com - but somebody has already registered the domain name.

Lookup the word 'exciting' at Thesaurus.com and you can quickly find an alternative like 'breathtaking, sensational or fascinating'.

And don't be afraid to use a little imagination - companies like Google and Yahoo! have benefited a lot by having a unique web address.

For those of you who don't know I want to mention that buying and selling domains these days can bring good money. Of course to make decent money you must have some good money in your pocket and know what kind of domains to buy. So research is a must and here I will try to help you to point in right direction and show you how you can find good names.

To be successful on the domain market you must have right tools. These days everybody knows that only automation can help you find one good domain among millions. So you need to decide first which domain you want to buy. If you are looking for domain with page rank and maybe website on it then it will be easy, because you don't care about domain name in terms of letters, numbers, hyphens, pronunciation, or combos.

If you want to be involved in buy/sale transactions or to find good domain name for yourself then you have to do following things. First of all you need find good tools, I can say that my preferred tool is prtag dot com. It offers lots of things you will need to find good name.

So where to find a good domain name? Actually all or at least 99.99% of good names are registered. So the only way is to buy it on auction or try to snap it before it expires if current owner forgets to renew it. Believe me ? lots of good domain names are forgotten to be renewed. The only thing is you need to monitor millions domains to find a few good one.

Everybody knows that the best known places to buy domains which are about to expire are: pool.com, snapnames.com, namejet.com, prtag.com. So check all of them and see what it is all about and how to use them. And now I want to print which domains you must be interested in.

I can tell for sure that one word domains names are taken and it hard to find 2 or 3 letters domains. Also you need to know that TLD .com is still most widely used which means that good name with dot com extension will cost good money. So look for dot com first.

When you search for good domain make sure that name is pronounceable. Here is the most valuable combination CVVC, VCCV, CVCV, VCVC, CVCVC, VCVCV, where V stands for Valve and C stands for Consonant. Also domains with only letters and no hyphens like LLL, LLLL, 5L, 6L are valuable. You may find that domains with only numbers can be hard to find: NNN, NNNN, 5N.

Some combination of letters and numbers (sometimes hyphens) could be valuable too. Here is a few examples: C-C, V-V, C-V-C, V-C-V, L-L, N-N, L-L-L, N-N-N.

I want to warn you do not buy domain names which contain well known brand names and copyrighted. As long as no one use such domain even its registered those big giants wouldn't bother you. But when they note that you make money with their domain name they will come after you. I can tell they they fork fast. I had my own experience when eBay sent me email within 3 days of registration of domain with ebay in it. So don't risk your money, play smart.

I think this is pretty much I can explain in this article. If you want to know more, just visit websites in my signature. Thank you for reading.

Article Source : Pg. 364

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Both Adrian Mullan & Mark Ihot are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Adrian Mullan has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet. . Adrian Mullan's top article generates over 480 views. to your Favourites.

Mark Ihot has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet. Mark Ihot is writing for website