Major factors in choosing your domain name;

1. Your company name
2. First choice is always a .com. Second choice is the ccTLD. In the US that would be .us. In Britain, .co.uk
3. Keep it short. You will only find a three character domain name in the after-market for a premium price, so start looking for domain names with four or more characters
4. Best if it is memorable
5. Can most people spell it correctly?
6. If you tell me the domain name over the phone, how many times will you have to repeat? Will I have it right?
7. Does the domain name tell people what you do? Or are you going to create a brand, as Yahoo and Google did?
8. Key Words. It is a great idea to have a word in the domain name that relates to the site content. This shows relevancy.
9. Does it sound legitimate? xyy-lz.com does not sound trustworthy.
10. Don’t use hyphens.
11. Try not to be swayed too far a field by what “people” say the search engines like in a domain name. What they like changes over time as they improve. Make your selection from a marketing, branding, sales point of view instead of what folks say the search engines “like”.

Hopefully you can find the domain name that you want and purchase it directly from a domain name registrar. If you can’t, you can purchase a domain name in the after-market where domains cost hundreds, thousands and even millions of dollars. But that is story for another post on another day.

What do you look for in a domain name?