There are two main ways to approach marketing on the web.  First you can look to get a good generic name (usually one word describes something generic) like training.com which gets a lot of type-in traffic and will search well in most search engines.  Second you can register a non-generic name like elitetraining.com and market the site.  The first one will take less money to advertise but is more general whereas the second will require spending on advertising the site.  For most domainers are goal is to find the generic names, well any that are left since they are the easiest to park, resell, and need less development.  If your enjoy web development than the other option may work as well.

Keyword Domains

You'll notice we said any generics left, most have been registered for years now and as seen lately they aren't cheap - televisions.com went for $215,000 (#28).   Since most generics are out of most of our price ranges the next best thing are keyword domains.  This combine two generic words together such as domainname.com.  If you look in overture there were 487,374 searches in Jan. 2007 for that combination of keywords on Yahoo.  Not bad of course this is also taken, but if you can identify areas that you know well you can find some solid keyword domains.  Also be sure to check to see if the plural or singular of the keywords makes sense, maybe register both just use your common sense.

We should also mention that when you search for domain name in overture you come up with more searches for domain name register over 1,645,004.  We have to point this out because sometimes having 3 keywords can be better than just two keywords in this example domainnameregister.com would probably be better than domainname.com.  It all depends on the specific keywords although in general the shorter the domain name the better.  Also remember the keywords can be great but if no one wants to advertise on those keywords there useless. One downside to the domainnameregister.com is that it isn't as "human friendly" as domainname.com.  There is a balance between domain names being "search engine friendly" vs. "human friendly" we want the "and".  Both good for search engines and memorable enough to come back to.

Here's an example of how keywords in your domain impact your search engine. In 2004 there were two widely publicized incidents of manipulating Google's search.  The first made President George W. Bush White House Biography page show up as the number one entry whenever someone searched for the terms "miserable failure" and the other for John Kerry's election page whenever someone searched for "waffles".  The phrases didn't appear anywhere on the site, or in the meta tags, titles, headers, content no wear on the site.  Instead hundreds of web sites owners created links to the pages and used the terms "miserable failure" and "waffles"  in the link text.  Google has since changed there algorithm to fix this.  So if you have a web site named domain-name-register.com you can be certain that those key terms will appear in any link to your site.  Whereas if you chose masterdomainer.com you won't be sure whether the links to your site will tell the search engines anything about the content on your web site.

Geography Keywords

One keyword area not to overlook is geo domains or geography domains.  This just means that a geographical name is part of the domain name.  For example Denvertravel.com would be a geo domain for Denver.  These can be decent for selling to end users and sometimes even for parking depending on the area and subject. 

Personal Names

Most of the generic personal names like mark.com are taken and to be honest registering markwhatshislastname.com won't do you a lot of good.  Not many people are spending top dollar for their names and it really limit's who is going to buy from you.  Although some people will do this.  On the other hand if want to get into blogging, professional speaking, or any type of profession registering your name for yourself makes a lot of sense and you can even use it to drive traffic to your other domains.

Length of Domain Names, Spelling & Sound?

A good domain name should be short, the shorter the better. Of course within reason if abbreviate everything so no one can understand the domain name won't due well.  For example let's say we own Domain Management Services, Inc. we tried to get dms.com it was taken so went for dmngmts.com.  It's short but who is ever going to remember that domain name even if we develop it and we know for sure no-one will type it in.  So instead domainmanagementservices.com is long but it would be better option than those two, of course I'd prefer domainmanagement.com. This does not mean you have to register your exact business name but for $7 or less it's probably worth registering your business name unless it "The Longest Business Name in the World run by Fred".

So in general go for a shorter domain just use your common sense.  The goal is to have people remember the domain so they can get back to it or be able to find it naturally on their own.  One thing to keep in mind is how hard the domain name is to spell.  Probably.com will probably get misspelled (sorry) so it may be worth registering probaly.com as well if you have to have that name.  Or try a different name like maybe.com which probably (sorry again) won't get misspelled.

 One aspect most people don't look at when buying domain names is the sound of the name.  Now if your reselling or looking to park into may not matter as much, but if your selling to end users it can help make you a little more cash.  Let's say you have two domains to choose from wilsonwebsite.com or wilsoninternetsite.com neither are great names but you need one for the client your working with which sounds better ignoring that web is shorter.  Wilson Web Site seems to roll of the tongue easier and that will make it easier for people to remember.

Domain Name Extensions

When selecting a domain name you may have to be a little creative to register just the domain you are looking for.  The most used domain name extension or TLD (top level domain) is .com which stands for commercial.  The extension is the first part of the domain name used to resolve the web site with the DNS server.  For more information on how DNS resolution works check out _______. Since .com is used the most many of these names are registered and you may have to look for other domain name extensions if you want a particular name.  Below is a rundown of the most commonly used extensions.  We will talk more about which to use with parking, reselling, and development.

There are numerous other domain extensions for a complete list try IANA.  Always remember what the native language is for each extension and register the appropriate domain name.  The country tld's are the new frontier of domaining so if you missed registering those keywords in .com this is your best chance.  Make sure you do a lot  of research before purchasing the domains.

Try Some of the links below for additional articles on choosing a good domain name.