Choosing a good domain name requires some thought, because picking a good name may be an important factor in getting return visitors to your site. You will want to keep it short and to the point, no more than 14 letters. This can help reduce the chance of a visitor mistyping your site and ending up on another site.

It is a good idea to choose a domain name that reflects the type of business you plan to do. You will use the name often in your website and if done right it can help you with promote your site with the search engines. What are some tips for choosing a domain name?

Tip 1 - Buy it early. Take a day or two to decide on your name. Think it through, but, don't procrastinate. Over 30,000 domain names are sold a day. Don't let someone else beat you to a good domain name.

Tip 2 - Buy your name in .com and .net. Let's say you buy domain name KCBBQ.com. Your competitor, who also sells Kansas City BBQ sauce, knowingly buys KCBBQ.net and maybe even KCBBQ.biz. Why would he do that? Isn't he limiting his own business by getting a name similar to yours and won't he confuse his customers? Don't think your competitor is innocent. He has just engaged in a domain name trick! He is not planning on conducting his primary business under these names. He bought those names to TAP into your business! Avoid this common newbie mistake and buy all the necessary domain names to protect your interests.

Tip 3 - Buy alternate domain names. Domain names are so cheap that it is affordable to practice this tip. Let's say you decide that you want to also buy KCBBQ.com and .net why not purchase KC-BBQ.com and .net. These other sites won't go to waste. You can point these sites to your main domain name KCBBQ.com and increase the traffic to your site.

Tip 4 - What if all good domain names are taken? You should consider buying a previously owned domain name. As we mentioned before domain names can be purchased for multiple years. Sometimes the lifecycle of a website comes to an end and the domain name already has a good page ranking with search engines. You can effectively buy yourself traffic without any work.

Tip 5 - If at all possible don't choose a domain name that is close to competitors, just because you like the name. For example, if there is a web hosting company called domainexpress.com, it is not recommended that you pick domain-express.com. Take some time think it out, but, don't wait too long picking your internet identity. It is a necessary exercise in defining your buisness and it can be fun. If you don't like it, the worst thing that can happen is that you -sell it; There are profits to be made in doing that too!

Tariq Giaziri
Head Developer
http://www.iamtq.com