Good Domain Names Characteristics

Domain names are the real estate of the Internet. A good domain name will be the corner stone of your website’s success. Below you will find the 7 characteristics of good domain names.

1. Short: Good domain names are short. It is not a coincidence that all the three-letter and four-letter .com domains are already gone, and that the five-letter ones are going fast as well. There is no definite number of characters that you should aim for, just remember that the shorter the better. If you really need some guidance, try to go below 10 characters, and never exceed 20.

As for the number of words in the name, one-word domains are gold, two-word ones are good, three-word domains are average, and above that it is usually not a good idea.

2. Easy to remember: Many Internet users never use bookmarks. They just memorize the domains of their favorite websites and type them whenever they want to visit one. If your domain is complex and not easy to remember you will lose these visitors along the way.

3. Easy to spell: Avoid unusual foreign words, words that have complex pronunciation, strange combinations of letters and anything else that might cause someone to misspell your address can make them landing somewhere else but your website.

4. Dot com extension: Organizations might prefer to register a .org domain, and companies targeting very specific geographical regions might want to register a local domain (e.g. '.it', '.co.id', '.cn' and so on). Apart from these cases, however, a '.com' domain is always the best way to go. This extension is the most popular around the around, and it is already in people’s mind.

Visitors coming to your site via search engines or organic links will pay attention mostly to the name and not to the URL. The next time they want to visit your site it is very likely that they will just type its name followed by a '.com'.

5. Descriptive: Many visitors will come to your site through the search engines and via direct links on other websites. They will come if the domain that they will see is appealing. Having a descriptive domain name will give visitors an idea of what your site is about even before they enter it. If related keywords are present in the domain it might also help your search engine rankings.

6. Brandable: A brandable domain will have a nice pronunciation, an interesting combination of letters or simply an appealing visual effect. Sometimes they will not be descriptive, but they can be equally efficient. Brandable domains will make your visitors associate the name with your website and its content.

7. Without hyphens or numbers: Domain names containing hyphens and numbers are cheaper for a reason. They suffer the same problem of domains not using a .com extension or with complex spelling.