Choosing a Name for Your Website

There are a few simple rules to consider when choosing a name for your site.  It should be:

• short
• easy to remember
• easy to spell
• easy to pronounce

If you meet all of these requirements, the viewers will be able to find you easier.  If it is a word that's often misspelled, consider getting that domain name as well, and put a forward on it to the real domain name.

Keywords in the domain name are good, but not essential.  My site name is "patvb.com", but I rank in the search engines for a lot of other key words.  While the search engines give more weight to a ".com" site, it is not essential. 

I used to go to networksolutions.com to check to see if a domain name was available, but not anymore.  They started putting a lock on the domain name so I was forced to get the domain from them or wait several weeks until they released the domain name.  This meant I was paying almost $35 a name, compared to $10 from another resource.  So I found an extension to add to my website which did not disable obtaining a certain domain name, and I wasn't locked into purchasing the domain name from a particular supplier.

You can even choose hosting accounts where the domain name registration is included in the price of the hosting fee.