They ended up having to pay BIG BUCKS
to buy earthlink.com because they were losing out on so many
customers and potential customers who typed in earthlink.com
to reach them.
What about 'exotic' domain extensions like
.biz or .info? While they aren't bad to use for
offshoots of your website (like a blog or faqs section) I
don't recommend them for your main website. If you do
go with them for that just know that you will be losing type
in traffic that you would ordinarily receive because people
are just programmed to type in .com when typing in a website
name.
2. Keep it short. The
shorter the better. People have a tendency to misspell
words so the shorter the domain name the better chance that
users will type it in correctly and reach your website.
3. Don't get cutesy with the
spelling of your website name. Don't use the
alternate spelling of any words in your domain. Try to
use the most common spelling of a word as that is what
people will remember when they try to reach you again.
For example, TruBlu.com is harder for
people to remember correctly than TrueBlue.com. Don't
get fancy or cute with the spelling of your domain name.
If you want to get creative, that's fine just spell it the
most common way.
4. Keep it simple. Choose a domain
name that accurately reflects your business or website.
Don't just make up a word to use to be clever unless the
word you make up actually has to do with your website topic.
5. Don't use dashes.
People don't remember to type in dashes and will usually
just type in the domain name without dashes so if you use
dashes in your domain name you will lose customers and
visitors to the site that has the same name without the
dashes. For example, don't use True-Blue.com if
TrueBlue.com is available.
6. If there are alternate
spellings for your domain name then get the domain names
with those alternatives IF you can afford it.
For example, when I started this domain name I was clueless
and thought 2makeawebsite.com sounded cool. I should
have also gotten ToMakeaWebsite.com because some people
remember the '2' as 'To.'
Basically, just be smart when you choose
your website name and don't do anything too wacky or with
crazy spelling and you will be fine.
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