Domains: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly…

November 18th, 2005

Every site on the interweb needs a domain name to be functional. The question is, what constitutes a good domain name? Anyone looking to register a new domain name these days will be hard pressed to find one that satisfies the following:

Available for registration
Actually relates to the site content
Has a decent domain extension
Optional: contains company name

We've all tried to register a domain to be told its not free. Maybe my word power is low, but I can never locate the *perfect* domain name - of course, JellyandCustard.com is that exception to the rule!

Furthermore, in situations when the domain is going to be used to sell something, or gain some sort of status on the web, it certainly helps to have the domain name related to your site, product or target audience. For example, if I was to setup a site selling coffee mugs, then coffeemugs.com would be the best domain for me - even coffee-mugs.com would be a catch. Why do we want to have a related domain? As well as being more memorable to your target audience, having related keywords will aid your search engine placement.

However, what if both of those domains are unavailable. What some bright spark (no doubt a marketing type) has suggested is to forgo domains like that, and instead get something different like splodge.com - no doubt something that they describe as 'sexy' and 'urban' etc. Ignore them! Unless you have a vast sum of money to promote a brand that doesn't relate to your product, you're better off going for a domain like handmadecoffeemugs.com.

The other option that is frequently seen is to get coffeemugs.ext where 'ext' is some obscure extension that either belongs to some far flung country or is .biz or .info. Again, this is just another waste of money unless you are targetting the people of that country. Nobody is going to remember www.coffeemugs.ws - it doesn't even 'look' like a 'real' domain to the average passerby. Stick to .com, .net and .org (for organisations). In fact, if you are in the UK, grab a .co.uk - its a good one!

So what has happened to all the good domain names? Of course, it helps to define what a 'good' domain is. A good domain would satisfy all these conditions (and possibly more!):

Relates to the subject matter
Easily memorable
Not exceptionally long
Contains no more than one hyphen, if any
is a .com, .net, .org (or .co.uk if targetting people in the UK).

An great example of a top class domain name is www.diy.com. This link is for a UK based DIY company where you can buy paint, wallpaper, tools etc. Unfortunately most, if not all domains that satisfy the above have been snapped up, either by companies using them for their own purposes, or by others who deal with domain brokering and investment. In fact, the majority of domains that consist of a single word found in the english dictionary have been taken, e.g. mug.com, chuckle.com, printer.com etc.

The idea behind domain brokering is two fold. One is to buy and sell domains as one would buy shares on the stock market with little interest in developing the domains in-house. The other is to purchase the domains, set up sites related to the content, and once there is a steady flow of visitors, to sell the site & domain on for a larger price. One domain broker I know of recently sold a domain after ownership for 3 months with a return of over 1000%. This was 1000% on the initial purchase price of a 4 figure sum. A great return on investment, but a lot of time, effort and money was initially put in to get the site developed and gaining a steady flow of relevant visitors.

So what do you do if you want the 'perfect' domain name? If your domain is already registered, and in use, then there is not much you can do apart from offer the domain owner a price to purchase it. However, that's not always an option. Two options available would be:

Try to grab a domain that is nearly expired, or in the process of expiration.
If the domain owner hasn't renewed their domain, then the domain will go through an deletion process after which, it is free to registration by anyone. However, should the domain be a popular one, or one with good keywords, there's no doubt you will be racing against other domain brokers to register that domain. The common way to 'gain an edge' over others in the registration race is to use one of the many companies online that use automated systems to register the domain as soon as it becomes available. These are highly tuned systems, and give you an advantage over others who are manually waiting for the domain to become available. However, with the very popular domains, you'll find that other brokers are using similar systems, so its really a matter of which system gets in that second earlier!
Use a domain broker
Rather than fight against them, join them! The other option is to use a domain broker to rent or buy a domain name. Although not the ideal solution, it may be the best option in some situations.

And finally, once you have located the perfect domain, how do you register it? In my past experience, unless you are registering a large number of domains, its probably best to purchase your domain alongside your website hosting at a reputable hosting company. Let them deal with the registration, setting it up, and let them deal with the renewal - as no doubt you'll forget in a year or two!

Some useful links would be:

Add to del.icio.us Digg this Technorati