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You may be asking yourself “How do I start my own website?”.  Well, for starters:  One of the best things you can help yourself with in your domain name choice is to develop a strategy and plan of attack.  A well chosen domain is a key component to your website’s success. Hopefully at this stage of the game you already know that Search Engine placement is critical to getting visitors to your website.  Among other factors, the domain name you choose will help you in getting to the “top of the charts”.

OK, so now you’ve found the domain name you want, but someone else owns it.  Can you still get it?  Could be.  It’s possible, but there are some things to consider.  With some research and hard work you can still possibly register that coveted domain name even if someone has beaten you to the punch.  But for now, lets look at some alternatives to getting that domain name you want:

Hyphenated Names One strategy to consider if the domain name you want is already taken would be to hyphenate it, as in turning ricksantiqueshop.com into ricks-antique-shop.com.  Is it always the best strategy?  Yes and no.  If you are dealing with an already well known name, generally the answer would be no, as most web surfers would usually just enter the non-hyphenated version in, and end up at your competitors’ website instead.  Not what you were after!  Word to the wise: keep the domain name as short as possible.  The longer the name, especially with dashes in between words, the more likely that potential visitors to your site will enter it incorrectly into their browsers, thus foiling the chances of them visiting your website and costing you customers!  Definitely shorter is better.  Another school of thought: IF the web domain you want is already taken, IF the owner of the domain name won’t give it up, and IF the website associated with it is non-existent or poorly designed with low traffic, hyphenating the name might make sense after all.  But be careful:  the last thing you want is to cause internet domain name confusion because you have decided on a domain name registration that is so close to a major competitor’s name that you end up losing business to them.

Longer or Shorter?  Domain names can be up to 67 characters long.  You could purchase a domain name like thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com which is 63 characters long, but why would you want to do that?  Who would want to type it into a browser?  My website is www.StartYourWebsiteToday.com  and has a domain name that tells what kind of website you will be surfing to.  Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking.  You will want to definitely keep the name as short and sweet as possible, but at the same time let the visitor know what to expect when he surfs to your website.  Shorter is better here.

Brand Name or Generic  The answer here is it depends.  Definitely if your business is known by a fairly well known brand name, then you would want to try and secure that as your domain name.  Budweiser.com is a site that is well known and gets a lot of traffic, even though there is nothing specifically in the domain name that says anything about beer.  But because Budweiser is known all over the world as a beer brand, people know what they are getting when they surf to the website.  If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name.  But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well.  People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names.  A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike.  Research your domain name as thoroughly as you can, including looking for generic keywords which could be a good fit as a potential domain name.  You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better.   A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one.  To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine.  Bottom line, the beginning phase of how to start your own website is choosing the right domain name.