Posted on April 6th, 2010
1. It can be confusing for visitors if you replace number with alphabet or the other way around, for example “7″ with “seven”. If possible avoid using them both in numbers and letters.
2. Although dashes are allowed in URLs, it’s a good idea to avoid them. The word “hyphen” or “dash” may be confusing when spoken; besides, some people may have a hard time locating the dash key on their keyboard.
3. Domain name that include the eff and ess sounds are frequently confused when spoken, as are some consonant pairs like b/p, d/t, or c/z. If you’re targeting visitors from other countries, confusion may occur when spelling r/l in Japanese or b/v in Spanish.
4. Using homonyms on your domain name might be a cunning way to get around a rival who already owns a term you’d like to have; even so, you’re just as apt to divert your own visitors to your competitor’s site. Also, don’t use foreign words or words that are purposely misspelled just because they’re available (for example, hi instead of high), or other words that are often misspelled.
5. The longer the domain name, the more likely a typo happens. A URL can be nearly 60 characters and inexperienced typists average an error every ten keystrokes.
6. Make sure your domain name is easy to read in online ads and print. You may need to use a different color or insert capital letters for your domain name to make it easier to read. Of course, you can’t use colors to distinguish parts of your domain name in search engine result or address bar of a browser.
7. Depending on the font used, the letters l/i next to each other (lilili) can be hard to read, as are m, n and r (mnrmnrmnr), and the letter/digit combination of 1/i. Avoid these if possible.
8. Phrases or words are usually easier to remember than a random stream of letters that are often used in an acronym, unless your visitors already know the acronym (for example, IBM.com or IEEE.com). Your domain name should be, but doesn’t have to be, your company’s acronym, unless you want to build your company image around that acronym.
With hi-n-dry.com, you may want to distinguish yourself from highanddry.com, which is owned by a competitor. The name may be memorable enough, but in radio ads, you must be clear enough to prevent your target market to go to highanddry.com, that costly airtime would be spent on spelling the domain rather than on the message!
Stick to the common top-level domains (TLDs): .com for commercial purposes, .org for nonprofits/organization, and .net for IT-related sites/network providers. If possible avoid TLDs like .info, .biz, country-specific TLDs (like .ru or .ca). People will not remember less popular TLDs and using them may divert your potential visitors to more popular TLDs. If you use an easily misspelled word in your domain name, you might need to register likely misspellings under the same TLD and redirect the visitors to your first site.
You shouldn’t bother registering the same name with other TLDs unless you use less popular TLDs.net, .org, .biz, etc for your primary site, it may be useful to register .com.
With more than 170 million URLs registered, finding a good name might seem difficult. Take comfort in knowing that only 75 million or so .coms and many URLs are now abandoned or expiring. If the best choice of domain name is no longer available, try the domain name suggestion tool offered by many registration sites. Use the suggestions to brainstorm more domain names. Get advices from experts, friends, clients, customers, and strangers about your choices. If you’re really determined to get a particular domain name, use WHOIS to find who owns the URL and make an offer buy it. It is a good idea to reserve a domain name in case the current domain owner chooses not to renew it.