- seoteam | February 6th, 2007 New!
Cool post rand. I am sure this info will go over well for my web hosting clients!!!
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Oatmeal | February 6th, 2007 New!
One of our kind readers should submit this to digg 
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identity | February 6th, 2007 New!
I didn't start it, but I gave it the 12th digg on a topic of 12 Rules... does that win anything? a vacation package? a new car? a lifetime premium membership to SEOmoz
...okay, maybe next time... but you can't blame a guy for trying!
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rebecca | February 6th, 2007 New!
SEOmoz itself is a good example - "SEO" does a good job of explaining the industry we're in and creating expectations, while "moz" gives a web association, and an association with being free, open, and community-driven.
I don't necessarily agree here. SEOmoz is a good example to people in the SEO industry, but anyone outside this relatively small niche stares at me with a blank face when I try to explain what the company's name is, how to say it, what it means, and what I do. Businesses like Search Engine Land and Marketing Pilgrim are easier to understand by non-SEO folks.
Edited by rebecca on February 6th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
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KT99 | January 16th, 2009 New!
I think you misunderstand! The reason they stare is because you look so nice.
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rebecca | January 16th, 2009 New!
Haha, you brown noser. :D
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KT99 | April 24th, 2009 New!
Excuse me! My whole face is brown from working hard in the sun.
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ciaran | February 7th, 2007 New!
3. Only Choose Dot-Com Available Domains
... except for the billions of us who aren't based in the US. As a British company we are actually now thinking about having the .co.uk as the primary domain, although we would of course want to own the .com as well.....
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ciaran | February 7th, 2007 New!
I should also add that I think this is a great post - and one that gets ignored even by the biggest companies.
One of the big UK banks launched an online arm called More Th
Except that you can't have a URL with the character <, so the URL of this online bank is actually morethan.com - and no one thought of this?!
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Sorvoja | February 7th, 2007 New!
Great post, I must add that it is important to own the domain across all international TLD's. Unless you have a copyright it would be bad to have someone start a competing site at a .info or .biz domain, you should also registrer important country domains. Like .us or .ca if you are a North American company only trading mainly in the US and Canada.
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solro | February 7th, 2007 New!
Getting the jump on the market can be really important and I wouldn't always take your hyphen advice. I'd rather have a better domain with hyphens that exactly applies to what I want, then to have to pick something more obscure because the non-hyphen versions aren't available. For this one I'll provide an example.
I relatively recently bought the dns social-media-optimization.org along with a collection of relates dns social-media-(keywordhere).org to be developed later on. I think the hyphenated names are more valuable then choosing a nonhyphen alternative to make it easier to "say over the phone or give a link and have them visit the right spot."
In my particular example the hyphenated domain will be easier to succufully develope a site that create self reinforcing link authority. Especially if I title the Site the SAME thing as the domain name. All the link anchor text will include the EXact keywords I want to come up on and so does the url. So if I throw up a good source of information on the topic, take out all commercial aspects temporarily I'll pick a bunch of good links with perfect anchor text.
Edited by solro on February 7th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
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Ross Hill | February 25th, 2007 New!
In my experience when I say Flickr most people ask how it is spelt, but I don't disagree with you at all.
utube.com got pushed offline when youtube.com was exploding in the media.
In an interesting twist the Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation seem to have been talked into pimpin their site because there is now a search bar which goes to spammy pages, and the links at the top of their site link to casinos and free mp3s!
Edited by Ross Hill on February 25th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
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ViperChill | May 6th, 2008 New!
Great post, I've been looking at getting some new domains lately and found this especially useful!
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swaro | May 22nd, 2008 New!
You don't copyright domain names, you trademark them. The correct site to search for a registered trademark is uspto.gov - however, the US recognizes "common law" trademarks, so a mark does not need to be registered to have trademark rights. Trademark law is complicated and contains many grey areas, but there is no easy way to search for prior usage of a common law trademark. A good trademark search will run several hundred dollars.
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KT99 | January 16th, 2009 New!
I don't think type-in traffic should really be considered anymore unless you have a huge budget and are willing to buy a very expensive domain. Otherwise, the difference would be negligible in all likelihood. Branding on the other hand should be tops on the list of those who want to turn the domain into a viable website.
I really like the point about hard to type letters. I'd imagine it could make a sizeable difference for some (Z being the worst one for me)
Buy or sell domains for free and no commission at Domain Offerings
Edited by KT99 on January 16th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
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andrewmoquin | April 26th, 2009 New!
Finding a decent domain name is todays marketplace can be extremely frustrating, but as said, don’t spend forever worrying about your domain name. Pick one and focus your time and efforts on the product/services/content on offer.
Although descriptive domain names may help in the short term, I think better managed content and link building is still king. That being said, webmasters and site owners have to be smart about protecting their brand. Cybersquatters will often register misspellings, plural forms, and hyphenated variants of your bread and ****er domain name.
Nice blog! Thanks for the post.
Edited by rebecca on April 27th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
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Kilian G | April 27th, 2009 New!
Nice blog! Thanks, Regarding an easy associated name, according to todays' algorithms of google it is a good idea to choice names like
1 jobs.com
2 bookstore.com
3 auctions.com
4 publish-text.com
5 share-photos.com ..
Since searching on the above in key words is easier it gives a good ranking - this combined with link building etc. But I think there is a correlation between a more hard to learn name with unassociated words - when you've once made the effort and learned the association it is solid and stuck, I think all of us have heard of these more than the above?
1 Monster.com
2 Amazon.com
3 ebay.com
4 twitter.com
5 flickr.com ..
Good blog and nice tips. Thanks for the post.//K
Edited by Kilian G on April 27th, 2009 at 3:38 am
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roonster | July 16th, 2009 New!
i disagree. the name doesn't have to be short and doesn't need a .com extension. everyone knows all the .coms are taken and you'll have a much higher success rate with a longer name. just look at boingboing.net! here's an article by a naming expert, who i believe was just featured in inc magazine, about choosing an available url: http://onthe****on.wordpress.com/200...finding-a-url/ worth a look. cheers!
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JoelJonathan | July 16th, 2009 New!
"the name doesn't have to be short and doesn't need a .com extension."
Sure, it doesn't have to be either of these things but shorter is obviously better everything else being equal because it's easier to remember, easier to brand, easier to type, etc etc.
Having a .com extension is better than any other extension (ccTLD's in foreign countries excluded) because people expect the .com to be the authority default TLD for commercial websites.
Also, there is some evidence that the search engines place a quality weighting on .com's vs. say .net or .info or .biz (as they should if their efforts are to mimic human behaviour and return quality results - i.e. which extension do you think is spammy vs. trustworthy: .com or .info? Exactly.)
"everyone knows all the .coms are taken and you'll have a much higher success rate with a longer name."
Sorry, you are wrong. There are plenty of even exact match keyword .com domain names available to hand register IF you know what you are doing. (As far as your "much higher success rate with a longer name" comment I am hoping that you mean a much higher success rate finding an available domain name to hand register and not that you mean having better SEO/marketing success with a longer domain name because that would be just silly - although pretty close to right in line with your earlier statements).
"just look at boingboing.net!"
Gotta love hearing isolated examples given as "proof" of some kind of broad theory.
"here's an article by a naming expert, who i believe was just featured in inc magazine, about choosing an available url"
Sorry, even though I hate to disparage the domaining and SEO geniuses who are masquerading as full time editors over at INC Magazine - they chose to quote a "naming expert" in their article who doesn't know what they are talking about.
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claytowne | February 5th, 2010 New!
Number 1, branstorming keywords, has some merit but is very limited. Most succesful internet brands don't have a single keyword in them:
Google, Yahoo, Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, Craigslist, and YouTube all lack keywords.
Following rule #1 they should be called:
GoodSearchEngine, BigPortalSite, SendLittleNotes, CollegeStudentCentral, MakeOnlineDiary, FreeClassifieds and ShareYourVideos.
I wrote about it more on my post Avoiding the Keyword Domain Name Trap
But overall, a good list of rules to follow.
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JoelJonathan | February 5th, 2010 New!
Haha and they also are all technology related sites with large budgets that they can spend on branding.
Let me ask you a question:
If you were going to start a free classifieds site right now would you rather have the domain name ClaysList.com or FreeClassifieds.com?
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claytowne | February 7th, 2010 New!
Niether. Clayslist would be a wannabe also-ran name and FreeClassifieds is doomed for being unbrandable (I mean doomed in the sense of being a market leader)
I would pick somehting unique and brandable. Have no idea what that would be but hat's the whole point. You can't predict the future but there's a good bet that a company with a genric keyword domain name won't be a market leader. So it's best to pick some else if that's your goal. If you just want to take a tiny slice of a over saturated market with slim margins (selling celectronics for example) then yes, pick a keyword domain because it will give a slight adavantage in search matches. If you have no brand and don't care about building one then get the keyword domain.
On a side note: At one time the sites mentioned above didn't have big budgets and name recognition. They were all struggling startups (except for maybe YouTube which had huge backing right out the gate) But I bet if they went with the generic keyword domain they would have changed their name eventualy or faded away. Even CocaCola and Nike were nobodies at one point. Start small, but think big.
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JoelJonathan | February 7th, 2010 New!
Ehh, I would disagree with "doomed" since there are many market leaders who use the category ****er generic keyword domain (i.e. Hotels.com, Cars.com, etc. etc.).
I am a big fan of unique and brandable as well but I am an even bigger fan of owning the category ****er generic keyword domain for your market if you can get it or at the very least trying for a keyword rich domain which would be your main keyword + something brandable (i.e. SEO + moz = seomoz.org instead of just FishkinsMozzers.org or whatever that makes the general purpose of the site unintelligible at first glance like many pure brandable domains).
You do make a good point that many of those companies you mentioned did not have the big budgets when they first started out. That being said, this comment of yours: "But I bet if they went with the generic keyword domain they would have changed their name eventualy or faded away." is at best an odd off the cuff prediction that you wrote without thinking through first and at worst one of the most ridiculous predictions that I have ever heard - you have to admit
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claytowne | February 13th, 2010 New!
True, a sweeping generalzation, and perhaps not the most elequant statement, but I stand by it's essence. Generic domain/company names are a big problem for branding and make it very difficult to be a category leader. Most generics aren't category ****ers, the ones that achieve it are the excpetion, and I believe the name is the main thing holding them back. I wouldn't mind owning one (a really good genric) but I don't think I would ever use it except for SEO purposes. Or maybe just sell it to someone for a pretty penny. Marketing a generic is not a good strategy for the future.
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SmellyChris | March 30th, 2010 New!
This is my first post... short-time reader, long-winded poster.
Having a generic domain's good for SEO but mostly bad for branding unless you can get that one or two keywords that specifically relate to what you're offering i.e. the Hotels.com example offering hotel bookings.
Having a nonsense domain name such as google.com is good for branding now, but is it future-proof?
Google; Amazon; Yahoo and Monster.
The internet is now full of websites named like this, and, because of this, the market place is somewhat saturated This has meant domain names have evolved.
The new and successful ones: Twitter; Digg; Facebook and Reddit have certain connotations which allows the user to envisage what they might be used for:
- Face - Faces - People - Communicating
book - stored information
- Twitter = "to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds”
- Digg... journalists dig up dirt and
- reddit (read it) - people to feel they like others have read something and then encourages them to share it with their peers. Humans are, after all, social animals.
Don't quote me on the above; I'm just talking more or less...
Now the internet is now an inherent part of our popular culture; you can even use internet brands to create new internet domain names...
I suggest the next social networking webiste to be: WikiPeople, unless that's some kind of trademark infringement or does that make the people you think of being on there looking like a certain hairy Star Wars character... hmm.
... I digress...
The best domain name would obviously be if you could incorporate what your brand's about with some sort of description within it. Of course, a lot of these are now taken. But, if you could figure out one AND have it a .com, you'd dramatically increase your chances of success in whatever you're trying to achieve...
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, in my opinion, you're both correct, Joel and claytown. You just need to try (if possible) to combine both approaches.
If the branding doesn't work, you can stick to the SEO and you'd, at least, still have something to work with.
If I may, I'd like to point out one example of a company that, according to wikipedia, has been around for since 1975: their website is: autotrader.co.uk.
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Online Casinos | June 7th, 2010 New!
You need to have an exciting domain name that users want to click on as people do not often remember your website anyway. If you choose to make your domain brandable you need to be aware of the investment to establish this.
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partcomputer_parthum | October 23rd, 2010 New!
I stumbled upon a service called Domometer which seems to check most of the points listed in this article, uniqueness, memorability etc. It's located at www.domometer.com, hope someone finds it useful.
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TechieGeek | October 26th, 2010 New!
I want to get myself a new domain soon because my site's current name sucks. I read your other post about an exact match so I'll be doing that. Thanks Rand.
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Himasha | March 18th, 2011 New!
Even I already have chosen my domain now I am in a little worry about it because it seems I’m missing my attention from the people in the first line.
My domain is www.trizb.com and it is an Educational Resource Website. Specially designed to meet my country (Sri Lanka) needs.
I have chosen my name to be stand unique. But not for SEO I feel now.
So even I have gone some far I feel to change the name to something related.
Is it good doing that at this stage? If so what type of name can you suggest will work for me with that site structure..
Since I am a beginner I appreciate your support.
Thanks a lot.
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