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Home » Other Tips » Picking a domain name

Picking a domain name

Selecting the right domain name can have a major effect on the success of your website.

1 - Go for dot-com
When most people think of a website they think dot-com.  Sure, there are other top level domains out there, but dot-com is the best.

If the dot-com you want is taken, dot-net is not quite as good but still ok.  Stay away from dot-org and any of the 2 letter country codes unless of course you're in one of those countries.  dot-us is not a good choice for American companies.

You'll notice that this site is BobSmithPhotography.net and not dot-com.  That's because the dot-com was taken by a photographer in Arizona that at the time didn't have any type of website put up.   


2 - Short is better
Generally the shorter your domain name the better.  Compare BobsSuperWebPage.com to BobsSite.com.  Which one fits on a business card better? 

3 - Keep offline marketing in mind
Along the same lines as number 2, make sure your domain fits neatly on a business card.  Take me for example.  My company name is Heavenly Images Photography, but I went with www.hi-photo.net for my primary domain because I can fit it on marketing materials better than www.HeavenlyImagesPhotography.com, which I also own and have pointed to my main site. 

But my full, long domain is much easier to say over the phone.  It's much easier to say "Heavenly Images Photography dot-com" than "H I dash Photo dot-net". 

4 - Avoid Dashes
Yup, I broke this rule on my site.  Normally you don't want dashes in your domain name.

5 - Have more than one
I did this and it's worked pretty well.  There isn't anything keeping you from having several domain names all pointing to the same website.  That way you can use on as your primary domain, one on paperwork, one on business cards, one over the phone, etc.  This can also help with misspellings.

One thing to keep in mind is to make sure that all of your secondary domain names do a 301 redirect to your primary domain because some search engines are known to penalize for duplicate content.

6 - Get dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org
If you can it is a good idea to pick up any of the top level domains you can.  Think if Bob had opened BobsPhotography.com and six months later another photographer in the same town opened BobsPhotography.net.  There'd be confusion.
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