Get the Right Domain Name for WordPress Blogging Profit

Posted on August 9, 2007
Filed Under WordPress Blogging, WordPress Hosting |

For the sake of SEO, a good domain name is one with embedded keyword(s). But all of the keyword names are long gone, people have to make a long domain name to include a keyword. When the long domain name registration became available, the internet marketing community was so excited. Then we started to see domain names like a sentence with multiple keywords and key phrases connected by hyphen.

Hyphens are commonly used in domain names to make the keywords more readable by human and search engines, although I don’t like it. Walmart doesn’t like it too. When the retail giant realized that it needed a web, the walmart.com had been taken, so that it started as wal-mart.com. Eventually it spent big bucks to acquire walmart.com. The same story for Fidelity Investments. Its first web was fid-inv.com, but the Fidelity folks have fat wallets and can get what they want even though they came late.

But now the game changed. We hear that, keywords in domain names lost favour. because of so many spams involved, today’s search engines care less about what does the domain say, they care more of the contents. In fact, long domain names get punished if there are more than 3 hyphens inside.

So, what is a good domain name? what kind of good domains I can still get today?

With the questions in mind, I turned to Sedo, which is the leading marketplace for buying and selling domain names. There must be the answer. So that I created my Sedo account, checked around, and get the answer:

A high-quality, premium domain should be:

The domain is short, a real word and is easy to remember.
It is a generic domain, e.g. like car.com, creditcard.com or books.com.
The domain is easy to spell and not prone to typographical errors.
The domain is product-related and therefore has a high commercial value.
The domain doesn’t violate any third party rights (e.g. trademark rights).
The TLD geographically matches the language of the domain name.

Too bad you can no longer get the #2 domains, neither #5. The #6 type of domains may not be what you want. But you may still get some #1, #3, and maybe #4 domains.

Therefore a good domain name, - short, real word, easy to remember, easy to spell, related to a product, is what you want to look for.

Sedo also mentioned that a high-quality should have branding value, - means it’s brandable, thus it got to be short, if it is not a real word but one you invented, it must be easy to remember.

I like short, sleek domain names, best lest than 10 characters. One of mine, richbase.com, is my favorite.

Many people said short, real-word domains are all gone. That’s not true. With a little creativity, you can still make a good one.

A few days ago, when I look for a domain name related to resell rights business, I checked “ResellAndGrowRich.com”, which is mirrored from Nepoolean Hill’s famous book “Think And Grow Rich”. But it was taken. Instead of trying the hypened “resell-and-grow-rich.com, I simply got “ResellRich.com”, - short (12 char), real words, and easy to remember.

Another one I registered recently, “FlexRich.com”, is also short, easy to remember and easy to brand. Originally I planned to useFlexRich.com for Adobe Flex Rich Internet Application related topics. But this domain itself could be easily branded to other topics such as internet business or physical exercise.

Also, according Sedo, short, brandable, non-hyphen domains have better resell value.

Here are my rules for a good domain name: