Domain/ web address is the most important thing of a website. Choosing the right domain will make you one step ahead of others. You must own your paid domain for your blog. The rankings you’ll achieve will be yours and in the long term, you’ll be allowed to sell it.
Domains are the base of the future business, so you have to be careful about choosing the right one. Once you setup one and started to market it, it’d be harder to change to another one. Here are some domain examples,
Meaningful domains
There could be two types of domains, meaningful and non-meaningful. Meaningful domains are dictionary word domains like business.com, news.com etc. These are highly brandable and most of them are already taken. Non-meaningful domains could be any thing which are not real words but could be made into a brand like, twitter.com, digg.com, sphinn.com etc. Non-meaningful domains are tougher to brand.
Your name as the domain
For an example, ritathakkar.co.in is my name as a domain. It’s my personal asset and it’s valuable for me only. A personal name is harder to brand unless your name becomes something bigger like being a celebrity, business person etc. To start a blog/ website, avoid your name as the domain because it’s harder to brand and much harder to sell.
Keyword-rich-domains
These are the new trends of the web. A domain with keywords in it: CheapAutoParts.com, EarnWithForex.net, Build-Your-House.com etc. Keywords separated with hyphens (-) works much for getting SEO benefits. Most of the times a funnel site is being created to capture the top places of the search term and then the lead is being sent to the main site.
Sma.rt domains
It’s the hot trend of today. People are having smart domains to find their favorite words. It all started when Del.icio.us jump into the web. More and more people started to create smart domains such as ma.gnolia, sta.rtup.biz, identi.ca etc. After the twitter trend, it became even shorter like, tr.im, ow.ly, bit.ly, is.gd, cli.gs etc. Getting a smart domain now is easy but you have to spends some money for this because an average smart domain costs around $100-$500/year (till now)
Domain with a commitment :0
Adding a special word in your domain will turn your blog definite. For an example if you put the word, “Daily” such as dailyblogtips.com -then your readers will think that you’re publishing daily articles. But as a blogger, you can’t write daily, so avoid this word. Adding a keyword in your blog such as, “Nokia” will limit your blog into writing about nokia cell phones. Instead of being definite, try indefinite like “Mobile” rather than using “Nokia.” Adding the word “blog” will make it a blog. There’s a word “blog” in the doamin blogexpert.com -meaning that this domain is only brandable for blogs.
So what type of domain is ideal for me?
Meaningful dictionary word domains are better for your blog. When choosing a domain, ignore hyphens (-) and numbers. Try to get a .com domain. Creating a non-meaningful domain will make it sound like a social website and will be harder to market. Avoid smart domains also because it’s harder to remember the combination and it’ll sound like another URL shortening service. If you want to set a target to sell your blog in the future, then avoid your name as a domain.
What you prefer, choosing your domain?
What are the things that you put focus when choosing a domain? How many domains you have now? Do you believe one of your domains will earn you a fortune in the future?
