The Anatomy of a Good DOT COM Name

Since the beginning of the internet people have attempted to land the perfect domain name, in both branding and keyword value. As time goes on it gets much more difficult to get a good domain name due to all of the squatters and campers out there gobbling them up at a rapid pace. If you don't have a domain yet, at least one, that is both short and sweet, I suggest looking for one and snagging it up before that too is gone. Even if you don't plan on using it right at this moment.

This has and probably always will be a very hot topic concerning domain names. If you don't know what keyword value is, I'll explain it quick. Let's say for example, you are searching online for cheap video games, and you go to Google and type in "cheap video games", what do you think will pop up first? If there is a site named www.cheapvideogames.com or something very similar to that, it would most likely pop up first in the search results, of course that's assuming the site is actually live and not camped, loaded with bad content, or doesn't exist. Why? Because of keyword value, that is why short and sweet domain names that are the same as what people type in to searches will have a lot of value. Basically, having a domain that is the same as what people type in for a search is worth a lot of bonus points in terms of how a search engine ranks you. Of course, it's not written in stone that it will end up that way, but it will definitely help.

Branding is another thing that is important to a serious business or personal site. You don't want a name that is long, and you don't want a name that contains a lot of dashes and numbers. Something short and sweet. Consider the domains of Yahoo, Digg, Youtube, and so forth. They are short and sweet, and full of branding potential. Are they keyword rich? No, not really. When I look for a domain name I make sure it has the following criteria.

• It's less than 10 letters long for a single word, or no more than 12 letters long for 2 words (ie www.cheapgames.com). You want it short and sweet, and easy to type in for people. It's also very memorable that way too.
• You want at minimum, one of the words to have keyword value. For example, if I'm doing a site on selling mountain bikes and I can't get any extremely keyword rich domains that are short, I'll settle for something like SuperBikes.com for example. At least one of the words contains value in relation to what my site's subject matter is about.
• The domain must have some sort of branding potential. That means I'm not going to get thenumber1vacationspots.com because there is no way I can brand that, and it's also long, and hard to remember for people who want to go back to it. They would need to bookmark it or write it down to remember. That's horrible!
  

I'm not talking about being a camper or squatter and selling to some unlucky people that have just turned my $6 a year domain into $6,000. I'm talking about having a solid domain name, building a site upon that foundation, and then eventually selling it in 5 years. The question is, would you buy a domain name that is named thenumber1vacationspots.com or would you buy the domain name of superbikes.com, if you had to pick between the two? Let's even say that both sites had equal traffic, and both sites are willing to sell for $10,000 a piece. Do you honestly think that thenumber1vacationspots.com will even sell for $10,000? No, it won't. The superbikes.com site would have a much greater potential of selling for that much because of it's domain name alone.