Before you purchase your domain name you need to do some domain homework.

Get your domain name first before you start your new business or website.

Many times people start a brand new business by picking out and establishing the business name, then they attempt to buy a domain name. The new business owners soon find out that every variation of the business name is taken and they are not sure what domain name to use.

Microsoft made a huge mistake when they spent millions marketing their new Zune MP3 Player. They didn’t secure the domain name zune.com and as of this writing the domain zune.com is still under someone else’s name with an under construction sign. Microsoft had purchased the zune.net domain name after the Zune name had been released. This was a huge blunder for the Microsoft marketing team not to secure the zune.com domain name before marketing their brand name.

Naming a website after its domain name can also be very important; when people think of your website, they'll think of it by the name. A good example of this is amazon.com; so if your business name is also your URL, the customer will automatically know where to go.

If you have already spent a lot time and money to establish your business name and you didn’t purchase a domain name. You can play around with some variations to try to get an easy name. If you find that your business name is taken in every way thinkable, you can:

• Check the "whois" information for the domain name you are interested in and contact the current owner listed to see if they're willing to sell it.
• Another option is to search the Internet for a company that specialized in deleted domains. Each day thousands of domains are deleted and are made available for purchase. Many times people may forget to renew the domain or they simply go out of business; the domains are then deleted from the current owner and allowed to be purchased again. This can be a very good way to get the right domain name by using the deleted domains data base to search for certain keywords important for your business. A domain name you didn’t even think of may show up as deleted and be the one name that will work.

Your domain name should be short, easy to say and spell.

Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters. Someone actually bought the domain name shown below and let it go back. I wonder why???

wehavealargeofficespacethatisavailabletorentitislocatedinavibra.com

Shorter domain names are much better, especially for people who have to type them in. There is less chance for a typo when they are shorter. Premium domains with less than 8 characters are more desirable and very hard to find. You may have to put together some word combinations to come up with a good domain name. I would try to keep the name under 16 characters if at all possible.

Type out the domain name you are interested in buying – take a good look at it and say it out loud. Get friends to look at it and give their advice at what they first see.

Prefixes

Many websites use prefixes in their main domain name such as i and e. The i is most commonly for "Internet," e for "electronic". Many other prefixes such as all, my, best, pro, go, buy, best, and many more can be used.

These prefixes mentioned above should only be used when there is absolutely no hope for finding a good domain name.

Hyphenated or Numbered Domain Names?

Many people forget to type in the hyphen when typing in a domain name. It can be hard to say when giving the domain name out. It would be easier to say littleredschoolhouse.com instead of little hyphen/dash red hyphen/dash school hyphen/dash house .com.

Most of the good domains are taken and you may have to take a domain that has a hyphen in it to get the domain name you want. I would try to avoid the hyphenated names if possible.

Domains which contain numbers have some problems in that you will have to explain that it is a number 4 instead of the word for or four. 4salesonline.com is a good example of the confusion in telling the domain name to someone.

Of course if you owned 500.com or 5555.com these would be great names that are worth a lot of money and easy to remember. All of these good domains are already taken and very hard to find even on the secondary market.

A domain name like 94529875.com would be hard for someone to remember.

COM, ORG, NET, etc?

Typically most businesses use .com domain names. Most .net domain names have been used by Internet organizations and .org is frequently used by non-profit organizations.

Most people have .com on the brain, and when typing a domain name in, they will almost always assume it's a .com domain. Dot com’s are the most sought after. That’s all I own.

Shaun Clark
www.QuestMatrix.com