3 Ways to Give Your Web Site a Good Name

It's a nightmare scenario prospective Web site owners face.

You've prepared a list of good, short domain names ending in .com that describe your business. But when you try to register one, you find out every last name has been taken.

What can you do?

Most people do the obvious and settle for registering another name. For instance, instead of registering businessname.com, they register businessnameonline.com, businessname-inc.com or another derivative.

This is a reasonable strategy, especially if your budget is tight and time is short. But you need to be aware of a few things first:

Short is sweet. Short names are easy to remember, easy to type, and take less space in marketing material and in URLs and e-mail addresses. Companies that can afford it pay big bucks to own two- and three-letter domain names ending in .com. For example, American Airlines is aa.com and Intelligent Finance is if.com.

Competition is fierce. If you don't own businessname.com, it's possible a competitor does. Customers often guess at company domain names, typing them directly into the browser. When they try to find your site, they aren't likely to guess businessname-inc.com. Instead they'll type businessname.com.

And when they do, your potential customers might be whisked into the arms of a rival organization.

The prestige factor. When confronted with a number of similar sites, search engine visitors often click on the one with the most appealing URL. That's one reason businesses have invested major money in names such as business.com and internet.com.

Faced with a choice between bobsmortgage-online.com and mortgage.com, which would you click on?

Seek Other Options

If registering derivative .com domain names is a less than optimal strategy for maximizing site visitors, are there alternatives? Fortunately, yes.

One alternative is to look around at other domain name suffixes. Your first port of call should be the other veteran global domain name suffixes, .net and .org. These have been around as long as .com, and most Web surfers are familiar with them.

If your business is in any way network-centered, .net is a good choice. If your site represents a nonprofit or health-related enterprise, .org is entirely suitable.

And don't forget the newcomers - .biz and .info. Both are now available for anyone to register, and they are so new that many great names are still available.

If your chosen name is not available as a gTLD, you could consider one of the alternative gTLDS - domain names that have "upgraded" themselves from country code domains to global domains. The best publicized of these is .tv, but others include .ws, .fm, and .mu -- for Web site, FM radio and music, respectively.

If your business fits any of the niches these names purport to fill, consider them. But be careful. Most of these names lack branding and your average customer might never have heard of them, let alone have any idea what they're supposed to represent.

Keep Your Wallet Handy

If you're not wild about this alternative route, what choices are left?

Fortunately, there are two other options that will suit many businesses, large and small. Both will likely cost more money than registering a new name but both give you a great chance of owning that first-choice .com you were after all along.

Option 1 - Purchase a Domain Name in the Aftermarket

Now that two major domain name U.S. aftermarket sites, Afternic and GreatDomains, have been bought by the heavyweight domain registrars, Register.com and Verisign (formerly Network Solutions), respectively, buying and selling domain names has found a place in the mainstream market.

Option 2 - Grab An Expiring Domain

This option is really the "new kid on the domain block" but is really an amazing way to secure your domain name of choice. The vast majority of domain names are not in use, and many of these idle domains are not renewed at the end of their registration period. There are millions of domains expiring annually. The trick is to know which names are expiring when, and just how to grab them.