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Domain names are the real estate of the Internet. Just like a good location is crucial for doing business and opening a store, a good domain name is also the cornerstone of your website's success. But how do you identify which ones are good domain names? I focused on translating the article DailyBlogTips.com and supplemented it. Here are the top 10 characteristics of a good domain name, for reference only:
(1) A good domain name should be short and concise
It's no coincidence that almost all 3- and 4-letter .com domain names have been registered. Even 5-letter word domain names are disappearing fast.
There’s no set requirement for how many letter words you should aim for when registering a domain name, just remember: shorter is better. If you really need guidance on this, keep them to 10 letters or less, but never more than 20 letters.
We believe that single-word domain names are best, two-word domain names are also good, and three-word domain names are average. It's definitely a bad idea to register a domain name with 4 or more words.
For example: Quotes.com is a cool domain name that could be worth millions of dollars. PRoQuotes.com is not bad as a 2 word domain name and can be worth thousands of dollars. But if you use the domain name ProQuotesNow.com to build a website, it will be very ordinary. The domain name YourProQuotesNow.com is so daunting that it’s worthless.
(2) A good domain name should be easy to remember
You know, quite a few Internet users don’t use bookmarks at all. They just memorize the domain names of their favorite websites and type them out while surfing the Internet. As you can imagine, if your domain name is very complex and difficult to remember, you will lose many such visitors. On this alone, you lose.
For example: Brcwr.com is a short domain name, but it is difficult to remember, so it is not advisable to use it to build a website. Unless it represents the name of the website, or can convey some special easy-to-remember information, such as Google.
(3) A good domain name should be easy to spell.
If a visitor misspells your domain name and ends up on someone else's website. Therefore, it is necessary to avoid using some weird foreign words, because they have complicated pronunciation, weird letter combinations, etc., which will make people misspell them.
For example: CappuccinoBar.com may give English-speaking visitors a headache because Cappuccino is an Italian word. Not everyone realizes what the trouble is.
(4) A good domain name must have a .com suffix
Government or private organizations may prefer to use the .org domain name suffix when building websites. Companies are more willing to register national domain names (for example: .it, .co.uk, .cn, etc.) if they want to show their clear regional characteristics. But apart from that, the .com domain name is always the first choice for building a website because it is the most popular on the Internet and has long been deeply rooted in people's hearts.
When people come to your website through search engines or other links, they are likely to pay attention to your website domain name rather than the specific URL. The next time they want to visit your website, they will most likely enter a domain name with a .com suffix. As you can imagine, if you're not a .com, people go somewhere else.
For example: Darren Rowse has a popular blog using the domain name Problogger.net. Despite its strong brand, some people ended up visiting Problogger.com, which of course lost a lot of traffic. So a few years later, Darren spent $5,000 to buy that .com domain and point it to his website so he wouldn't lose visitors.
(5) A good domain name must be descriptive
Many visitors come to your website through search engines or direct links from other websites. This means that they are visiting because they find your domain name attractive.
If your domain name is descriptive, visitors will know what your website is about before they even visit. If relevant keywords appear in your domain name, this will also help your ranking in search engines.
For example: Before visiting TelevisionGuides.com, could you guess what this website is about? Also, suppose you want to search for a movie review. Through Google search, the first information is from MikesLair.com and the second information is from MoviesCentral.com, so which one would you rather click?
(6) A good domain name must have a brand effect
A brandable domain name often has good pronunciation, an interesting combination of letters, or attractive visuals. Sometimes such domain names are less descriptive but can be effective all the same.
A trademarked domain name allows visitors to naturally associate your website and content with a name. Note that such domain names are also descriptive, but this is not always the case.
For example: Kotaku.com is the most famous game blog website on the Internet. In fact, its domain name is not descriptive at all, but because of its huge branding effect, gamers can immediately recognize it from the Internet.
(7) A good domain name should not contain hyphens.
In a sense, domain names with hyphens or numbers are cheaper, but they also suffer similarly to domain names that don't have a .com suffix or domain names with complex spellings.
Consider the domain name Tech-World.com. What makes it impressive are the words tech and world. Many visitors often forget this hyphen and try to access your site but can't because they type TechWorld.com.
For example: Coolest-Gadgets.com is an extremely popular gadget blog with more than 70,000 subscribers. Despite this large readership, visitors often type CoolestGadgets.com directly into the address bar. Needless to say, a lot of people just forget about that hyphen in the middle. So, the site owner ended up paying for the domain name CoolestGadgets.com, which solved the problem.
(8) A good domain name should not contain numbers.
One advantage of domain names containing numbers is that they are simple and clear, making the domain name look shorter and easier to identify. In addition, they also have pronunciation equivalence. For example, use 4 to replace for, use 2 to replace two, etc. This can indeed make the domain name more precise. Simple and clear. Nonetheless, the biggest problem with having numbers in a domain name is that it creates spelling confusion and loses uniqueness.
For example: Suppose you registered Tech5.com. If visitors first try to remember this number, they may confuse it with TechFive.com. And Domain4Me.com is not unique, because it is easy to think of another domain name DomainForMe.com.
(9) For a good domain name, do not use word deformations.
Theoretically, any English word, whether it is a positive word or a neutral word, can be used as a domain name. However, in order to make it more clear and easy to recognize, try to use the original form of the word and avoid distortions in verb tenses, plural nouns, etc.
For example: The domain name 365Hope.com of my blog seems to be the plural form 365Hopes.com, but this is actually a bad move because it is not as easy to identify as the singular form. Another example is MyStories.com. This domain name is far less valuable than the singular form MyStory.com, and it can be called a good domain name.
(10) A good domain name should not contain articles.
Articles (a, an, the) in English are used to modify nouns. Maybe the articles a and an can be used to refer to the subsequent nouns as domain names (if used properly, it is still very desirable), Then the definite article the is generally not suitable to be used before a noun as a domain name. Although it seems to comply with the grammatical rules, it is a bit annoying in domain names that pay attention to short, concise and concise words.
For example: The Beijing News official website used to use the domain name theBeijingNews.com. Obviously, it wanted to express the specific concept of Beijing News and also wanted to be different from other people’s BeijingNews.com domain name, so it did not hesitate to use the domain name the word. Don't you know that this not only caused the domain name to be bloated, but also worked voluntarily for others, so the newspaper later launched the short abbreviated domain name bjnews.com.cn.
last words
(1) If the domain name you are currently using does not have the above 10 characteristics, or you cannot find a domain name with these characteristics, don't be discouraged. Because these are just the factors you should consider when evaluating and registering domain names.
(2) The discussion of domain names in this article is basically based on the mainstream views in the English Internet community. In fact, when the existing domain name resources are basically exhausted, the market for non-mainstream domain names is also becoming more and more open, such as the more remote so-called personalized domain names. It is also becoming more and more popular among people.
(3) The main consideration for the above 10 characteristics of a good domain name is the English domain name, not the Chinese pinyin domain name. Because Chinese pinyin domain names have their own unique features, it can be said that there are two types of domain names: domain names and Chinese pinyin domain names. Well, Chinese characteristics are everywhere.
There is no doubt that many popular websites use domain names that lack 1 or 2 of the above 10 characteristics of a good domain name. But be sure: your domain name should have as many of these features as possible - because your domain name should be unique and it should be the best!
The main content of this article is translated from DailyBlogTips.com, and the rest is written and supplemented by this site. For reference only.
The Chinese copyright of this article belongs to the translator 365hope.com. Please indicate the source when reprinting. Violations will be prosecuted.