Top 10 domain name tips

Choosing the right domain name can make or break your site or blog. I'm still amazed how even well funded companies pay little attention to this. Here are 10 tips that should help you off to a good start or a "better late than never" correction.

1. Consider only .com domains. If you select any other TLD (.net, .info,...), you are working for the person who owns the corresponding .com. The more successful you become, the more misspelled traffic they'll get from your lost visitors.

2. If you have a non .com TLD, switch to a suitable .com and forward all traffic from your old domain to that new .com. Trust me, newworldbooks.com is better than books.net.

3. Did I mention make sure you have "your" .com domain? I will not event dignify bigtimeblogger.blogspot.com with a comment.

4. Use nameboy to identify available .com domains. Some sites also allow you to lookup the availability of multiple domains in batch.

5. But once you find one or more that you like, register from Godaddy. They have the best price and you get an amazing domain control panel free of charge. This control panel allows you among other things to automatically redirect anyone typing your domain to the url of your choice.

6. Register common misspellings of your domain. There are so many options out there, It is difficult and expensive to get someone to type your url in their browser, so don't risk losing them before they get to your site.

7. If you previously registered domains with other providers, transfer them to Godaddy and manage all your domains from one control panel. Your domain registrar doesn't have to be the company where your site is hosted. This is basically free because for the price you pay, they extend your registration for 1 year.

8. Consider buying a domain from brokers like Afternic or Sedo. I recently purchased aaadebt.com on Afternic for $30 from a company that trades in domain names by tens of thousands. I bid much lower than the asking price and when the domain was close to expiry, instead of renewing for 1 year they accepted my bid. I think it's worth much more.

9. Obviously the shorter the better for domains. Force yourself to look for something with no more than 8 characters. Avoid hyphens and numbers. Nobody said it was going to be easy. Learn from the pros on the Discuss Names forum.

10. Enjoy this creative exercise which usually comes early in your quest for web greatness. At that stage anything is still possible, we are all (potentially) Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey.