What's in a name? Plenty! Your online directory domain name is the foundation of your site. Therefore, your ideal domain name will be short, unique, easy to spell and remember, and will include your top keyword(s). But what if it's already taken?
What's in a name?
Plenty! Your online directory domain name (or URL) is the foundation of your site. A person hearing your domain name should immediately understand what the site is about and ideally would be able to guess your URL when searching for that type of information. Official movie websites rely on this principle--think of 'avatarmovie.com' and so on.
Great names for your directory site will include your subject (Chicago lawyers,
Dallas restaurants, used baby clothes, etc.) plus a word or two meaning 'list of'. 'Directory' would be perfect. Words like 'guide', 'hotlist', 'hotsheet', 'top ten' or whatever works for your topic would also be good choices.
Your ideal domain name will be short, unique, easy to spell and remember, and will include your top keyword(s). Avoid substituting numbers for words (4-for, 2-to, etc.)
NEVER add a trademark, product or brand name to your URL: you won't be allowed to keep it.
Juice the caboose
For an online directory, especially in a competitive niche such as a big city business directory, a '.com' domain is your best bet. These sound more authoritative than '.net', '.info' or '.biz' and are likely to be in a searcher's first guess.
If the perfect domain name isn't available, try inserting a word like 'my', 'your', 'expert', 'Mikes' (if your name is Mike), 'best', 'top', or any other common descriptive word at the beginning of your URL. So if the dot-com for 'usedbabyclothes' is already taken, 'bestusedbabyclothes' dot-com may be available.
Adding dashes between words may solve the problem ('best-Dallas-restaurants'.) Or, if your niche has a nickname (such as Windy City for Chicago) that might work--but don't get too exotic: the less 'plain language' your domain name is, the more promotion it'll take to drive traffic to your directory.
Fries with that?
Should you buy the .net, .org, and .info versions of your domain? There are varying schools of thought about this. The main reason to buy up these extra domains is so that once your directory is up and running and generating lots of traffic, no one will be able to 'poach' on your hard work by registering a very similar domain and putting up a competing directory to steal your visitors. So if you're in a highly competitive niche, such as a directory of night spots in a big, busy city, it makes good business sense to take this small precaution.
But if you're launching a directory of albino armadillo breeders, it's unlikely to attract many competitors. In this case, it might make more sense to forego those extra domains and spend that money on advertising instead.
Once you've found a good name, get it registered as soon as possible.
