Characteristics of a Good Domain Name

If you have tried to searched for domain name lately you should know how frustrating the task can be. It looks like all the good ones are already gone, and it is a matter of fact  the success of your online business, website or a blog is directly connected to the quality of its domain.
Below are Characteristics of a Good Domain Name that may help you choose your next domain.

1. Shorter is Better
   Most people make typos especially if they have to type in a long URL (your web adress), so keep it short if you can. There is no definite number of characters that you should aim for, just remember that the shorter the better. If you really need some guidance, try to go below 10 characters, and never exceed 20.As for the number of words, one-word domains are gold, two-word ones are good, three-word domains are average, and above that it is usually a bad idea. The last thing you want is visitors misspelling your domain and ending up somewhere else.
2. Easy to Spell and Easy to Remember
   Many Internet users do not use bookmarks. They just memorize the domains of their favorite websites and type them whenever they wan to visit one. So if your domain is complex and hard to remember you will lose these visitors along the way.

   Avoid unusual foreign words, words that have complex pronunciation, strange combinations of letters and anything else that might cause someone to misspell your address.

3. .com.au VS .net.au
   Good com.au domain are harder and harder to find,  instead you might find a net.au is available.

   It doen’t matter if it is .net.au does it? Yes, it does. a .com.au domain is always the best way to go. This extension is the most popular and it is already stuck in people’s mind. Visitors coming to your site via search engines will pay attention mostly to the name and page title but not to the URL. The next time they want to visit your site it is very likely that they will just type its name followed by a .com.au. Guess what, if you are not there when they hit enter they will might end up on your competitors’ website.

4. Descriptive
   Having a descriptive domain name will give visitors an idea of what your site is about even before they enter it. If related keywords are present in the domain it helps your search engine rankings. Many visitors will come to your site through the search engines or via direct links on other websites. Thus, they will more likely to vist your site if the domain that they see is appealing.
5. Brandable
   A brandable domain will have a nice pronunciation, an interesting combination of letters or simply an appealing visual effect. Sometimes they will not be descriptive, but they can be equally efficient. Brandable domains will make your visitors associate the name with your website and its content.
6. Don’t Contain Hyphens or Numbers
   Domain names containing hyphens suffer the same problem of domains not using a .com.au extension or with complex spelling. Consider oz-webs.com.au. The names that will stick in people’s mind are “oz” and “webs.” Many visitors will just forget the hyphen along the way. Eventually they will try to access the site by typing ozwebs.com.au.

   Numbers, on the other hand, will confuse people with the spelling. Suppose you registered web3.com.au. Visitors might mix it with webthree.com.au, if they manage to remember the number in the first place!

Remarks

These are just factors that you should consider when chooosing your domain names, but do not get discouraged if your current domain doesn’t have all these characteristics; or if you can’t find one that does. There are plenty examples of popular websites with domain names that lack in one or two points covered on the list. Just make sure that your domain has as many characteristics and you can have and you should be fine.