Category — Domain Registration

If you are stumped in your efforts to find a domain name, here are some free tools to help you find the right domain name for your web site endeavor.

When you enter a domain name into the box at GoDaddy,

the results page will show you more alternatives to your chosen name, whether or not it is available. You can continue mining this resource by entering similar names. The status of the domain names the search displays will always be “available.”

These domain name alternatives at GoDaddy are supplied by a service called DomainsBot. If you want to expand your search alternatives, use them to find the name you want. They offer direct transfers to affiliate partners to get your name registered, but avoid this for now, and just make a note of the name you want.

Here’s why. The Web Host you chose may offer a free domain with your web hosting purchase.

Some additional free resources for searching for domain names are

• Nameboy - but just use the search or you’ll pay too much!
• DotCenter - recently expired domain name search site.

When you’ve found the name you want, and made sure you don’t have a free domain name credit at your web host, return to GoDaddy.

And get the best deal on your domain name purchase.

Your domain name, your web space, and your web concept are all inter-related and it will pay you in the long run to make sure you have selected the right domain name and the right web host for your website concept at the beginning.

Take some time to figure out what the purpose of your site is, who you are trying to get to your site, and what is the most effective name for that purpose.

The selection of your domain name is one of the keys to making your site successful. Basically there are two ways to go: a brandable name or a keyword name.

A keyword name is one that contains words or phrases based on common internet search terms. So if you were planning a guitar repair site your domain name would include the phrase guitar repair in the name. Keyword names can get rather long, whether that’s good or bad will depend mostly on your marketing methods.

A brandable name is like Yahoo, Google, eBay, Amazon, etc. These are names that in the beginning did not tell the user what the site was about but through promotion have become household words . Just like Coca Cola and McDonald’s in the real world, these names come to signify the product over time. Note that these names are easy to remember and pass on by “word of mouth.”

An example of a brandable name is the domain name for this web site. BizAddy.com was chosen to allow branding over time. It is a made up word combining the “biz” abbreviation for business and the “addy” nickname for address.

The choice of name extension is also very important. The dotcom extension is the way to go still , with dotnet a distant second. Everything else is an also ran unless you are a charitable organization and then the dotorg is appropriate. But if you go with dotorg, don’t forget to register the dotcom domain name also to prevent others from profiting from your name.

Our favorite domain name registrar, GoDaddy. is well known to most everyone on the internet.