Picking the right name for your website can be a challege especially if the one you had your heart set on is already taken. But even if the name you wanted is available there are somethings to think about before you make the final decision on the name.

First lets get some of the jargon out of the way. What is the name? Is it the website name, the URL, the domain name what do all these mean?

  • Website Name: in lay terms most people call their website URL their web name. Technically it is your websites URL.
  • URL: Uniform Resource Locators. In simple terms this is your site’s address, the name or numbers that appear in the address window of your browser. For example, the URL for the home page of this site is: http://www.seewd.net.
  • http:// stands for: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) is a system for transmitting and receiving information across the Internet. In the domain name http is always followed by a semicolon (:) and two foward slashes (//) example- http:// before any of the remaining part of your websites name.
  • www. is an acronym which stands for World Wide Web. So far we have the first part of your website name as http://www. notice the www is followed by a period. Just a short while back the www. was always required as part of a domain name but it is becomming less of a requirement now days. For example you can get to the home page of this web site with http://www.seewd.net or http://seewd.net .
  • .edu .com .net .org .us .info etc. In the Domain Name System (DNS) naming of computers there is a hierarchy of names. The root of system is unnamed. There are a set of what are called “top-level domain names” (TLDs). These are the generic TLDs (EDU, COM, NET, ORG, GOV, MIL, and INT), to some extent you can choose this part of your websites name but you can only pick from the estabilished TLDs. There are many more TLD’s availabe but they vary by your country and the domain registare.

Well that sort of explains the parts of your domain name that you have little or no control of. Next we will look at the parts that you do have control of and some of the important things to think about.

The first thing to think about is…if somebody was trying to find your website but didn’t know your websites name (web address, URL) what might they type into a search engine in hopes that your web address would appear?

Oh no more new terms. I know that most of you know what a search engine is but I said we would start from the simple and build from there so… to be complete I should included a short explanation.

This explanation will be short and after you know what a “search engine” is you can use one to get a much more detailed and accurate explanation if you need. There are hundreds if not thousands of “Search Engines” available on the web. Two of the biggest and well known are “Google” and “Yahoo Search“. One reason people go to a search engine is when they have an idea of what they are looking for but don’t know the exact web address they are looking for. The words (terms) that they type into the little box are called keywords.

Keywords are one of the most important of the things to think about when building a website and the keyword subject is big, there are courses and books written about the subject so again another short description just to get us by. Since we are at this point, concerned about naming your website we have to decide what type of keyword or phrase would have the highest likelihood of leading people to your site. Just a little warning is due here: there are many areas that come-up when starting a website that require decisions to be made and you could analyze things forever, I have heard this called “analysis paralysis” which simply means that when you get to one of these points you have to make the best decision and go with-it. I have been delayed so many by this problem it isn’t funny.

We will narrow our thinking to just three keyword classes: (1) business name (2) product or service name or type (3) start from scratch.

  • Business Name: you may want to have your business name reflected in your website address. If you have a brick and mortar business that a lot of people know and trust, it would make sense to use that branding in your website name. You will have to consider your overall marketing plan, do you want to focus your business locally, nationally or world wide? For instance if your company’s name is “The Raymond Group Inc.” and you secure the web address “http://RaymondGroup.com” people that are in your area my be inclined to search for your website, but people outside your area of influence my not ever find you because your business name and website address do not describe what your business does. Eventually the effect of this problem will be lessened by the content on your web pages. But we are just focusing on the web address at this point.
  • Product or Service Name: as mentioned in the grey box above, people are searching for things all the time. If you include a keyword that describes your product or service in your domain name, the chance of your domain name being included in the search results increases, which in turn could funnel more visitors to your website. You should be cautious to make sure that the term you intend to use is not a Trademarked or Copyrighted product or service name.
  • Start from Scratch: there are many websites that have completely ignored using the two methods above. They went for the unique and/or witty. You know the sites; before they became popular, who would have known what Ebay or Amazon.com is about, or what is a Google or a Twitter or a Facebook. It is possible to have an extremely popular website with a name that at first glance makes no sense, but it will take a site that offers something of extreme value to the end users, along with excellent marketing.

The methods above are certainly not the only strategies for deciding on a domain name, there are many more. The first two methods are using what is called “Search Engine Optimization” or “SEO” for short. SEO is a big topic that we will dive into at a later date. Basically SEO involves using methods on your site both in the domain name and the content of your site that causes favorable results in the search engines. In this case using words or phrases that people are already searching for (in your domain-name) increases the chances that your site will be displayed to people making the searches. Using the right keywords can result in constant free traffic to your website.

The third method can happen almost by accident, but more likely to get the results that the mega sites now have will require large investments of time, capital and development usually beyond the means of most of us.

A short Video

Here is a short video I found on “YouTube” that gives a short summary of finding the right domain name.


I have to run, will continue later