You’ve probably spent considerable time creating your website and now it’s time to get it up and running. The first thing that you need to do is get a good domain name for it. You may think that this is an easy task, but that isn’t necessarily the case. The first thing that you need to do is to come up with a list of potential names for your website, preferable one that will also be the address of the website or it’s URL. For instance if you are selling shoes, a perfect domain name would be shoes.com or affordableshoes.com. You get the idea; make sure the name is directly related to what your business is all about. If you are selling shoes you wouldn’t chose something like mybusiness.com.

Selecting the right domain name is one of the most important decisions you can make. When you have a business online, you are competing in a global economy with millions of other websites. A domain name must stay in the mind of potential customers. If you choose one that is directly, there are many different ways to research domain names and to find inspiration for new domain names to register. The way you research domain names will be coloured to a large extent by the intended use for the domain name, i.e. is it being registered for a new or existing site, for investment purposes or to “protect” an established brand or trademark.

Here are some tips to follow in choosing a domain name that makes it easy to find your business on the Internet:

1. Choose an easy to spell domain name which is easy to remember and easy to type. Keep the name as short as possible. YourName.com is a great place to start. It does no good to have a website, if no one can find you because your domain name is too difficult to spell. Don’t get cute with your website name or for that matter, the name of your business. You may think it’s clever to spell fenikz instead of Phoenix, but don’t expect anyone to find your website.

2. Choose the right extension for your domain name. When you go to register a domain name you have a choice of .com, .net, .org, .biz, and some other rarely used extensions. Unless you are a non-profit, only choose a .com extension for your domain name. The reasons for this are very simple. When people go to search for a website, they assume it is a .com. If you have any other extension, they will end up at the wrong website. The other reason to have a .com extension is that search engines will search first for a .com website. For example, a browser will look for quiltingtips.com before, it looks for quiltingtips.net. Let me talk a moment about strategy when it comes to choosing a domain name extension. If you don’t want a competitor to have your domain name, then purchase all the extensions of your domain name. In other words, if my domain name was going to be quiltingtips.com, I might also purchase quiltingtips.net, quiltingtips.org, and quiltingtips.biz. This way, I insure that my business domain name will not have competition from a nearly identical domain name.

3. Choose misspelled domain names. If you have a business name that you know is easy to misspell, consider purchasing the domain name with the common misspelling. Both names can be set up to point to your website, so it doesn’t matter if your domain name is misspelled, people will still find you. An example of a well-known business that is using this technique is VeriSign. If you type in verasign.com or verisign.com you will get to the correct website.

Your domain name is your Internet identity. Make sure your domain name selection is not an afterthought. Take the time to thoroughly analyze your options and choose a domain name that promotes you or your business online. You want something that you would click on if you saw the domain name in an advertisement. You want it to bounce around your head a few times and have a catchy little ring to it that people will remember.