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The evils of .com- Myths and truths about choosing a domain name
By- Kenneth L. Cluck III
How many tutorials have you found giving tips for domain names? They're everywhere! But how many of them tell the same exact thing? They always say never chose anything but .com, never use dashes, and make sure it's easily remembered. There is nothing different about these tutorials. But there are many more things to take into account when choosing a domain name that they don't cover. That untold information is what this paper is going to tell you.
1. Myth- Always pick .com domain names
Domain names that end in .com may be slightly easier to remember (simply because the fact that it's the most common) but not necessarily the best. For one thing, there are many domain names ending in .com so it's realy hard to find a domain name ending with one. Picking a .com is good depending on how you're gaining traffic. If you're targeting people that are looking in search engines it can be pointless to just pick a .com domain. Though if you're advertising in Newspapers, Television, or the Radio it might help somewhat.
2. Myth- Never use dashes
Once again, this all depends on what you're doing. Remember, search engines translate dashes as spaces, so if you're targeting a popular keyword and use dashes as spaces, than you're page will be easier to get onto the top ten search results of that keyword. Some search engines put more emphasis on this that others. What I do is own multiple domain names for separate pages that go together. One domain name that's realy easy to remember with another used to gain traffic from a search engine, I don't use duplicate pages all I do is make one site that sort of advertises the other site as what they're looking for. So, it's not that you should never use dashes, it's that you should use them when needed.
3. Choosing a Domain Name
Okay choosing a domain name may be a pain. That's why I'm going to help you out in this tutorial. Remember, many may prefer domain names that are short but they are not necessarily better. It's true you don't want a domain name that's extremely long but you don't want it to be so short that nobody can remember it (unless you own a url forwarding service). There are many combinations of words you can use. I highly suggest checking a domain name generator. They can be very useful, you enter a keyword and it displays possible combinations with other words and tells you if they're available. For this I suggest DomainFellow.com I've used their service many times and I am very happy with them.
About the Author
The owner of Freeminz.com, FindMyWebHost.org, HackMyEmail.com, and HackMyForums.com
Kenneth is also a web developer at Clearwater Web Solutions.