What Makes A Good Domain Name?

[Lee]

So ive been talking to a couple of people over the last few days about domain names and, during the couse of the conversations, we got on to the subject of what makes a good domain name.

Here are a few of the things we came up with but, we're pretty sure there are some others, that being said, what else would you add on to this list?

1) Short and catchy - Preferably under 25 characters at the most unless you have a really tight use for the domain such as, a site about free adult webmaster programs in which case, we agreed that a domain such as freeadultwebmasterprograms.com would be a good name to use.

2) Niche specific - No point in having the domain asian pussy and using it to sell the surfer access to a gay ebony paysite, seems like common sense to a lot of us but, this does in fact happen LOL

3) Dot com - Unless you have the ability to market your domain like crazy, we all agreed that dotcom was the way to go unless, you are just looking for a disposable domain.

4) Hyphen free - As with #3 above, we all felt that having no hyphens in a domain allowed us the optimal chance to keep hold of all the traffic we could generate through branding and marketing (see below).

5) Brandable - A short and catchy domain (see #1) has a higher chance of getting a better brand recognition that a lengthy domain full of hyphens. On the same train of thought, a unique sounding domain, that gives you several different branding options is good, for example, if you owned the domain ethnicthumbs.com you have a much wider choice when it comes to building your logo, brand identity and, marketing text etc.

6) Marketable - Most important of all, the domain must be easily marketable, domains-crammed-with-keywords-and-hyphens.com is going to be a lot harder to market than a simple nichespecificdomain.com would be.

So what else would you folks add on to that list of 6 items when it comes to making sure you choose the perfect domain name fr your next projects?

Regards,

Lee

[claudio]

a very useful listing...

Thank you very much Lee

[basschick]

yeah, but beyond niche-specific, you need to find the most important keyword and try and use that. for example, for an uncut site the word uncut is far more popularly used than foreskin or uncircumcised. so you would want a domain that uses the word uncut because.

i've made more money with a 3 word domain that included the most important keyword than with a 2 word domain that used a second-choice keyword. everyone told me that amateurhairypussies.com was too long but it was the best money maker of all our hairy domains and hairy site names. the site name includes the triggers and that works best for us.

[Matt 26z]

I rank the total number of syllables much higher than word or character count.

Most really big sites have two. Sometimes three. Occasionally four. Rarely five.

Goo-gle
E-bay
Ya-hoo

Am-a-zon
My-web-search

[krusher]

I bought hotGayGalleries.com to build freesites on. I know it is not niche-specific (besides "gay") but I thought I could use subdirectories for niches. Any thoughts on this approach?

[Daymare]

hotgaygalleries sounds like a good domain to put free sites on and to niche.

good buy

[Doctor Dre]

Definitly

My specificatoins are :
short, brandable, dotcom.

[webnet]

what is the best
.com, .net, .tv .....
domains with hyphens are good?

[basschick]

read lee's post and find the answers to those questions.

i agree with lee on both these issues - .com is the best and no hyphen is better than hyphen.

what is the best
.com, .net, .tv .....
domains with hyphens are good?