What's Good For A Domain Name?

I have purchased a lot of domain names for many different
reasons. Sometimes the domain name is for a business purchase,
such as an ecommerce site. I have purchased many domain names
for simple personal reasons, and occasionally the purchase was
just to keep someone else from obtaining the name and abusing
it.

Personal Domain Names

There are many reasons to get a personal domain name. Sometimes
it's vanity, sometimes it's a hobby and occasionally the
purpose is more serious and purposeful. No matter what the
reason, it's important to get just the right domain name to
portray exactly the desired image. Remember, the domain name is
one of the first things seen by your visitors, and it tells a
lot about you.

Many people like to purchase their name as a .COM address. My
friend James Huggins (http://www.jameshuggins.com) has done
this, as have my wife (http://www.claudialowe.com) and myself
(http://www.richard-lowe.com). This is a a fantastic way to get
people who know you (or know of you) to your site. They simply
know your name.

If the .COM version is not available, you can check for the
other domains: .NET, .INFO, .BIZ, .ORG, .US (for US citizens)
or .WS. There are also many country codes available (.TO for
Tonga, for example), and occasionally these are available to
anyone without restriction. Other times, they are only to
citizens of those countries.

In my case, I tried to get the .COM version of my name, but
some scum domain name scavenger had purchased it. He would
happily sell it to me, he said, for the small sum of $350.
Yeah, right. I went ahead and purchased the hyphenated version
instead.

A new option which is pretty cool is the .NAME domain name.
These are intended for names only, in the format
first.last.name or last.first.name. I went ahead and purchased
the names of myself (http://richard.lowe.name) and my wife
(http://claudia.lowe.name). This makes it very easy to find our
personal web sites.

You can also purchase domain names which describe your
interests or hobbies. For example, we purchased
http://www.lowefamilychristmas.com to describe our Christmas
experiences, and http://www.claudiasrecipes.com to show off
Claudia's recipe collection.

I had an idea last year to get something special for my wife
on our anniversary (in addition to jewelry, of course - I am not
stupid). I decided to purchase some domain names for her -
http://www.iloveclaudia.com and the .NET, and .ORG versions as
well. I loaded the site with other pages and things that had
been made for her over the years. A very unique present.

Business Names

So you've been working hard on your web site making it perfect.
You've surveyed your market, analyzed their requirements,
designed and coded a killer site, and now it's time to cut it
loose on the world. It's time to do some promotion. After all,
it does not matter how good a site is if no one visits.

An important part of your promotional plan should be the
purchase of domain names. You will need at least one, as it's
considered extremely unprofessional for a business to have a
presence on the internet without one. And with domain names
available for $8.95 a year, the lack of one cannot be justified
financially.

What kind of domain name should a business acquire?

The business name (of course) - The simplest thing to do is to
simply get the name of your business as a domain name. If you
cannot get the .COM version, check for the .NET, .ORG, .BIZ or
.INFO versions. This is the domain name that would typically be
used for marketing and branding purposes.

Hyphenated business name - You can also get the hyphenated
business name, if the name is two or more words long. You
should only get this if (a) the name is not available in it's
unhyphenated version or (b) you bought the non-hyphenated
version as well. It's not a good idea to get only the
hyphenated version, as this is not something customers
normally type in URLs. It is, however, a good idea to purchase
the hyphenated version in addition to the non-hyphenated
version as sometimes people do type in the hyphens.

Keyword domain names - Another option is to purchase domain
names which are keywords which match search engine keywords.
For example, if your site sells candy, you could get the domain
name candy-chocolate-lollipops.com, candychocolatelollipops.com
or something like that. Some search engines do use keywords
within domain names to boost the ratings of a site. Some
companies like these types of domain names - personally, I
feel they are a little tacky and unprofessional.

Product Names - One possible strategy is to purchase domain
names for each different product or product classification
that you want. You could then set up separate, distinct sites
for each of these.

Product Lines - If you company sells distinctly difference
product lines, you might want to create different sites for
each of them. In this case, you will want different domain
names for each one.

Business Units - I've seen some companies which purchase a
domain name for each of their different business units.

Other Reasons

There are other reasons to purchase a domain name.

Keeping others from getting the name - Sometimes it's important
to purchase a domain name just so someone else will not get it.
In this case you might want to purchase "yourcompanysucks.com"
and variations of the same (AOL found out the hard way about
the importance of this some years ago).

Search Engine Optimization - I've heard that some people
purchase a lot of different keyword-style domain names with
the objective of linking them all together. This serves to
convince search engines link Google that the keywords in the
domain names should appear higher in the listings. This is a
gray area, as it may be considered search engine spamming.