Why is choosing a good domain name important?

Choosing a good domain name starts with memory and ends with search engine optimization; somewhere in between lies branding. Take your most favored sites ““ I bet most of them have easy-to-remember names. Most of them also can be easily typed into the address bar with less chances of a typo. Good domain names are also unique and descriptive. Great domain names, of course, become brands of their own.

So, how do you choose domain names?

When picking domain names, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critically important. It is a detailed topic; let’s just say that a fitting domain name is the first green light for visitor traffic.

Let’s start by brainstorming on paper. But if your brain is not shifting gears, there are a host of domain name search websites that can help to crank it up. I am not suggesting that you rely on them, but domain name generators take your keywords and can come up with unique word combinations that you wouldn’t have thought about. A lot of them also allow you to lookup the names with the Domain Registrars to see if they are available.

A single domain name search website can give you lots of word combinations to play around with. Let me give you a few more to keep you occupied till you get the right domain name.

  1. NXdom has indexed millions of DNS records of expired and unused domain names. You can search by prefix and suffix, and sort the results by length, readability, and popularity. The advanced options help you refine the results by giving you five more criteria to filter the results.
  2. Nameboy is a popular domain name search tool that bases its results on a primary word and a secondary word. Nameboy says that its intelligent engine creates name variations from the sound and meaning of the keyword. The feature that I like is that it immediately color codes the results depending on the availability status of the domain name.
  3. Namestation comes with a slick interface. With just a few clicks you can enter your suggested keywords and combine them with prefixes and suffixes. Set a minimum and maximum word length and get your domain name results. The application also lets you combine keywords with hundreds of categorized wordlists for a search engine friendly domain name.
  4. 123finder.com gives you four variations of for domain name discovery. The applications are pretty self explanatory ““ Simple Domain Search, Advanced Domain Search, Instant Domain Search, and Keywords from URL. The Keywords from URL tool extracts registered and available domain names from a given URL.
  5. Domize has a Power Search feature which can search a large combination of terms by entering a comma-separated list of words, letters or numbers. As special functions, it can also list out synonyms or derivatives of a supplied word based on a misspelling. Other functions include listing out words that rhyme with the one you enter. In short, the Power Search feature set gives you many options to play around with a word and whatever can be derived from it.