Page 1 of 2 Domain Names 1 | 2 Free Tutorial On How to Register Domain Names
Now that you're ready to start your website, you need to choose a domain name, and register it. You probably know what a domain name is: it's your website address. Called the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) by techies. Examples: www.amazon.com, www.ebay.com.
Which means it has to be unique. By now, most of the better .com names are taken, but it is possible to find one, with a bit of creativity. I saw a recently registered one, aptly named www.CreativeJuicesBooks.com, on creative story writing.
Side note: Over twenty thousand new domain registrations take place daily. More than 33 million domain names are registered worldwide, but only a fraction of them represent actual websites. The rest are dormant. Many of these are not renewed when their ownership expires after one year, and become available.
Any individual can register domain names. Below are pointers for good names, but some actually pull in different directions – it's as much an art as a science to balance them.
If you already know all this, or just want to go straight to learn how to register a website name, see Domain Registration
Tips for Choosing a Domain Name
Easy to remember so that people can memorize and tell others. Names like google.com, landsend.com and coke.com are simple and memorable.
Reflects your website or business. If you have a known brand name, use that so your customers can find you easily. Example: coke.com, hertz.com. If not, use a generic name that reflects the theme of your site, but make it specific, such as “www.debtrelief.com” rather than “www.debts.com”. People are more likely to search on specific terms. This is linked to the next point.
If your traffic is to come from search engines, use your site concept keyword(s) in your domain name. People mostly search by subject, so have a name that contains keywords your target market would search for. Such as HerbalRemedies.com rather than JillandCo.com. You can still list your company name in the website's pages.
The exception to the above is if you're creating a website for local business, servicing only local clients, and are not interested in getting traffic from all over the web. In this case, you may want to register your company name as your domain name, to build brand awareness locally.
Domain names end in extensions like .com, .net, .org, .info, .us, .biz, .cc, and so on. Get .com if you can; browsers automatically search for this first if the extension is unknown. People too. If you can't get the .com of your choice, the country specific version (like .com.uk) works well if your market is local. If not, .net or others can work if your traffic is mainly through links from search engines and other sites.
Be careful with words which are hard to spell or which are spelled differently in different countries. For example, some places are more familiar with “colourcentre.com” than “colorcenter.com”.
Register domain names using only letters, numbers, and dashes. Domain names cannot have spaces and symbols, and are not case sensitive.
Long or short? You're allowed up to 67 characters, but generally, the shorter, the better – easier to remember and type, and less prone to error. However it's becoming so difficult to get good short names that you might be better off with a meaningful longer name. It's harder, for instance, to remember “www.gqp.com” than to remember “www.goodquiltpattern.com”.
Should you hyphenate? There are pros and cons. Pro: easier to read. Consider expertsexchange.com vs experts-exchange.com. Con: it's harder for people to tell others and harder for them to type; your would-be visitor might end up at your competitor's instead. One solution is to find a name that's easy to read without needing hyphens. Or register domain names in both versions so that you win, whichever way. Buying both also prevents a competitor taking the version you didn't buy and getting part of your traffic. (Just don't point both names to the same page of your website.)
For the same reason, you might want to register domain names with the popular extensions such as .net, to prevent someone imitating your site with a different extension.
Domain Names 
