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January 2007- Hints for choosing a domain name
by Hazem Osman

The domain name is much like your name. What if someone asked you to choose a name for your self instead of your current name, would this be easy? Of course not and the same applies to your domain name. You may change your hosting many times and users may or may not notice that but it's really hard to change your domain name specially after some time of working because surely, you'll lose a lot of what you have gained over time, traffic, links, PageRank...etc.

- The first thing to consider is that: a domain name should be related to your content. As this will not just give you a higher PageRank and better places in the search results pages, but will also make it easier for your visitors to remember your url. Therefore, if your site is about tutorials, then including the word tutorials in your domain name is a good idea and so on.

- As a general rule, shorter domains are generally better, that is why it is much more difficult to find a free one-word domain than two words or three but keep in mind that the domain should be descriptive too. It is easier for you to remember tutorialsroom.com than ttrm.com, isn't it? So as a rule: The shorter descriptive domain is the best.

- Always, ask yourself "How easy is it for me to say my URL in the phone?" It may sound funny, but it is true. If your domain name is 4u2, it's easy and short but for every one you tell about your domain, you have to explain that it's two and four in digits not numbers and you as a letter not the complete word. For me, this is not nice.

- Now you have a domain name in mind, do you choose a .com, .org, .info, or what? Personally, I prefer a .com. Why? Because it's the first one people try when they cannot remember your exact domain name. Ask yourself: if you can't remember the exact domain name which one will you try first: tutorialsroom.com or tutorialsroom.info ? In addition, many browsers append a .com automatically when do not type a TLD, so for me a .com is still the king.

- So you have made your mind about the domain name to choose but oops it's not free - and this is the case most of the time - Now what? Thank god, there are many web sites to help you find alternatives, even registrars could help you, like godaddy.com as it gives you other ideas to choose from but for me, I like this one: nameboy.com . It is easy and gives you very good ideas. Just enter two of your keywords and you will get so many ideas that you can use to figure out your new domain.

The author is working in the computer field since 1998 mainly as a developer using many programming languages like Delphi, Oracle, C++Builder, Visual Basic and others, also database administration and building websites. Online free tutorials

Note: These articles do not represent the advice or opinions of Apollo Hosting. They represent the thoughts, advice and opinions of the individual authors.