WebspaceWorks Articles/News

Choosing a domain name: rules & guidelines

What’s in a domain name?

The domain name is the bit after the “www.” when you type a website address into your browser. It consists essentially of two parts; a name, and a “top-level domain” or TLD, separated by a “dot”. So, for this website:

webspaceworks.com

webspaceworks is the name, and the “(dot) com” would be the TLD.

Valid Domain Names

To be valid a Domain Name, including the “dot TLD”, must be no longer than 64 characters, must be unique, and can use only the 37 characters in the set a to z, 0 (zero) to 9, and the “-” (hyphen). That’s it.

No underscores, no other punctuation, no currency or other symbols, just those 37 characters. Furthermore, there is no distinction between upper and lower case, so:

webspaceworks.com and WEBSPACEWORKS.COM and WebspaceWorks.com

are all the same domain. This can be helpful, especially with longer names, since they can be presented in “Camel Case” to be more easily readable, while remaining valid. For example:

WebSpaceWorks is more easily read than webspaceworks.com

Choosing a good domain name

Finding good domain names, especially for the “.com” TLD, is difficult, but not impossible. It will be difficult though to find short “.com” domain names still available, so try names that use a longer word, or that are combinations of two or more (within reason of course).

A good domain name should be (the order of importance may vary, depending upon the nature of the site):

Relevant

Related to the subject matter presented, who and/or where you are, and what you do. For a business this would frequently mean a name that reinforces company branding and products. For a private individual it becomes less tightly confined, but should still convey some idea of what the site is about.

Keyworded

Including keywords in your domain name can provide a boost to search engine ranking for those keywords, but it’s not going to be possible to include all keywords in your domain name, so choose carefully.

Distinct and Memorable

This will also be affected by relevance, since if the name is relevant it is more easily associated with the content of the site, and so more easily recalled when looking for such material

Short

OK, a domain name can be up to 64 characters in length, but that doesn’t mean to say they all have to be used. Shorter names are generally easier to remember, and certainly less of a chore to type.

Unambiguously spelt

When spoken aloud, could your chosen domain name be mistaken for a word of different spelling? This not only affects perfectly correct dictionary spellings, but also the use of “creative” or invented words (trees vs treez, for example). Do you really want to be spelling out a domain name, especially a long one, over a bad telephone line?

Free of hyphens

It is often tempting to get around the shortage of good short domain names by inserting a hyphen to get close to the one that is really wanted. This is rarely a good idea. Hyphenated domain names are often very close to other hyphen-free domain names, and so easily confused, with the result that some of the traffic for your site ends up going elsewhere.

Dictating hyphenated domain-names over the phone is also prone to confusion and mistakes. It can be surprisingly difficult to explain what you mean by “dash”, so is best avoided altogether.

The PCNames Domain Search tool (below) can cut research time dramatically by providing realtime feedback regarding domain name availability for major top level domains.

There’s good advantage in having a name that is short, distinctly associated with you, your company and or your products, and that can only be spelt one way, without hyphens. All things considered, it’s a bit of a balancing act!