Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Internet Marketing Choices: How to Choose a Domain Name

By Steve Shaw

Choosing a domain name for your Internet marketing business is one of the most important decisions you'll make. Whether you're creating a flagship blog for your business or registering a domain for your niche site, you need to take some time to find the right domain. Look at these following guidelines to help you find an ideal domain name for your site.

1. Know your main reason

First you'll need to figure out the purpose of your website. Is it to establish yourself in a niche? If so, you'll need to do some keyword research to figure out which phrases would naturally attract traffic. Are you buying a domain to sell a product? If so, your product name or a variation of the product name should be your domain name. Ideally, your website's domain should either describe what the website is about (Membernaire.com is about building membership sites) or it should include keywords related to your domain (FatLossHelp.com is about losing weight, and it includes a popular keyword phrase). Determining the purpose of you website will help you decide what phrases to use.

2. Presence.

For some website owners, having an exact phrase in their domain is very important. There are some who use another keyword phrase which is similar to their product name. You can also try to add hyphens, prefixes, of suffixes to your domain name if the exact phrase you want is already taken. In that manner, you can still use the phrase. As a rule, you shouldn't use three or more hyphens in a domain name.

3. Identify your Potential

When choosing your own domain name, you must be able to determine your expectation for your website. How it will develop and grow in the near future? You're buying a domain name for the purpose of making a niche mini site that will act as a feeder site to your sales page or maybe you want to build an authority site in your niche. Those are the questions that you need to answer for you're to choose the right domain. A niche mini site domain is more precise than an authority site. Like, beginnersheirloomtomatotips.com is a very precise domain while heirloomgrowing.com has enough flexibility for you to create an authority site.

4. Price.

As long as you're willing to spend money, you can get any domain name you want. In some cases, you'll want to register an unused domain name. These can cost from $7 to $12 depending on the company you're registering with. But if you have a precise business name and want to stick in a domain that has been registered but not used, try to contact the domain owner. Search the contact information of the domain owner at Who ls directory and deal with them.

The above mentioned are factors that you'll need to consider in choosing the right domain name for your website. Keep in mind that you need to carefully determine how your domain name will be used before you purchase one.

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