12/ 07/ 2004
by Doug Addison
According to statistics compiled by Name Intelligence, Inc. and listed at www.whois.sc, there are more than 30 million active "dot com" domain names. Tens of thousands of new ones are registered every day. And those numbers do not even include less popular -- but still actively traded -- top-level domains like .org and .biz whose numbers collectively total in the millions.
Will the domain you want to register for your business be available? Maybe, or maybe not, depending on how common your business name is. Most Web-hosting providers will check the availability of your domain name choice and may even offer to register it for you for free when you sign up for a hosting plan.
If you're undecided about which domain name to use or have to settle for something less than your first choice, your main concern should be choosing a domain name that is memorable, easy to say and easy to spell. If yourname.com is taken, then yourname.net, yourname.biz, yourname.info or yourname.us are worthy alternatives to consider. Here are some other tips to keep in mind when choosing a domain name for your site:
• Leave out hyphens, especially if you hope to send a lot of traffic to your site from phone calls or via your outgoing voice mail message. Web surfers have long since gotten used to the Web's peculiar grammar, so don't feel compelled to replace spaces in your business name with a hyphen. That little horizontal bar looks small and innocuous, but it takes almost twice as long to say a domain with one as it does to say a domain name without one. Try it: Say acmewelding.com and acme-welding.com.
• Avoid long acronyms. Four letters is about as many as I can remember when a company has reduced its Web site address to an unfamiliar acronym -- and I may not remember them in the correct order. A physicians practice in Las Vegas called the Center for Diseases and Surgery of the Spine has a Web site at www.cdsslv.com. A better choice would have been lasvegasspinecenter.com.
• Leave out extraneous filler terms like "inc," "co," "llc" and "andassoc." The ".com" is short for commercial, so the extra corporate affirmation is redundant.
In addition to your main Web site address, you might also consider registering alternate addresses. At five to 10 dollars a year, domains aren't particularly expensive, but the fees can add up especially for a small business with a limited marketing budget that might be better spent on something else. Here are some ideas and guidelines to follow if you're thinking about stocking up on domain names.
• Register specialty domains that fit your profession. Thanks to international agreements, doctors (and others) now have the option of registering ".md" domains (thanks, Moldova!). A TV repair shop can claim acmerepair.tv (thanks, Tuvalu!). A good Web hosting company should keep you apprised of new top-level domains like these that can be hosted on your account.
• Protect your trademark or business name from cyber squatters. But keep in mind that your business is not a multi-national bull's-eye like McDonald's Corp., which has a real need to register all the permutations of its name that it can and the deep pockets to do it.
• Juice up your online presence with a catchy domain name to make your Web site more noticeable. A psychologist friend of mine in Los Angeles has a site at lashrink.com.
Excerpted from Small Websites, Great Results, Copyright 2005 Paraglyph Press. Used with permission. Doug Addison is a freelance journalist and Web producer in Austin, Texas. You can contact him at doug@daddison.com.
