Creating My Own Website: Step 2 Deciding On a Name

Coming up with a good name for your website is harder than naming a baby. That’s why when I’m pondering over how to uniquely identify my latest creation I don’t take this step very lightly. If your name doesn’t reflect the nature and vision of your website or you don’t build a branding strategy to back it up, you’re likely to confuse and lose visitors. Don’t make the fatal mistake of arbitrarily picking a name.

Be a Pro Via Due Diligence

Let’s Face it, not everyone has what it takes to be a marketing or copyrighting genius but spending some quality time on developing a decent name is essential to success and longevity of your site. Trust me when I say there’s a hundred things wrong with naming your online shop for mom’s “FrogStopMerchandise.com.” Whether you’re going for trendy or you’re targeting keywords for search engine traffic, following these steps that I use in my own development process will help guide the way.

1. Research words, keywords and word relationships

Words have the power to move mountains, build cities, start wars, andmotivate minds. You can tap into this very power by effectively choosing the words that will be the foundation your website. You are the great painter and words are the colors that will mold and shape your masterpiece so choose them wisely.

Of course when choosing a name for a website your objectives from step 1 are going to be your guiding light in deciding what keywords to use.

For example if you’re goal is to write about dogs or maybe sell products for dogs, you’re more likely to get hits from more general interest people using the word DOG, but what if you target the keyword DALMATION? You’re going to get a more specific audience since the keyword is more refined. Using this technique of refinement you can target a particular audience. The word canine is usually more scientific, so maybe you’ll get more research related hits or police related hits. It all depends on your word choice.

Side Note:
If you’re planning on having ad-space on your site this crucial step will help you more if you do it in the beginning. Plan ahead!

2. Pick Between Absolutely Unique or Search Engine Friendly

Now that you’ve brainstormed and research a number of words and phrases to represent the nature of the content on your site, you arrive at a fork in the road where you must choose between having a highly targeted, generic, keyword-based domain name like learning-all-about-dalmations.com or a highly unique, poorly targeted brand-based domain name like Millionster.com

Use the words you’ve just brainstormed and research to help you come up with name ideas, using one of the two name methods below:

Keyword-Based Domains:
As you might have guessed: all the good ones are taken. But fear not, there are still plenty of clever ways to grab domains you like. Some tricks being used for grabbing a good name include using hyphens, numbers, articles (a,the,an), adjectives, and actual phrases or sentences. If you take this approach you’ll find that more domains are available to you. The good thing about having a keyword-based domain is that searchable words are in your domain name. This helps makes your site easy to remember, and definately boosts your site in search rankings ahead of brand-based sites that haven’t yet established their brands.

Brand-Based Domains:
You probably know a couple hundred off-hand, like Yahoo, Google, Meebo, Facebook, and even Millionster. Brand based domains are usually random words that don’t exist or don’t have any relative meaning to anyone. Who ever though that words like Google (search) or Xerox (photocopy) would become part of the lexicon? Initially these words meant nothing to nobody, but strategic marketing moves helped them develop a brand (identity) that later associated these otherwise meaningless words with real meanings and related keywords. This is the challenge of a brand-based site. You have no meaning, no keywords, until you define them.

Take Millionster for example. To summarize, the focus of my site is finding ways to become successful (that’s a pretty broad topic if you ask me, but I’m working on narrowing it down), of course I had to create that idea and connect the idea to the brand. In my case I piggy-backed off another word “Million” or even “Millionaire” an added the popular “-ster” ending (Friendster, Dogster, etc. there’s plenty of them), but while my name idea didn’t directly have any meaning I was able to imply some meaning playing around with other words related to the subject matter of my site. Later as I developed more content relating to my topics, Millionster’s brand took shape (still is taking shape), and search engines took notice.

Your challenge is to create a brand and connect it to keywords via content and other marketing strategies. You’re probably going to find as well, that the more creative your name is, the easier it will be to find a domain for it.

Side Note:
In the end I believe brand-based is the way to go, especially since it forces you to build the brand behind your name. Even if you use keyword-based names you’ll still have to build a brand around it if you want it to take off! Also be sure to check if your domains have meanings in other languages (like Millionster!)

3. Finding the Right (and Available Domain)

With so many domain squaters using domains to hi-jack search engines and make money off of misleading ad clicks, it’s hard to find a REALLY good domain anymore. Though if you’re in the game long enough and do enough searches eventually you will run across a couple of gems! Search, search, search. Keep a list of the domains you’ve found in your beta notebook. List taken domain names that you want and their expiration dates (usually it can take from 90-120+ days to become available once it expires.)

Still you may find that your great idea domains just can’t be found, so get creative. Think Del.icio.us, or Meet.us, sites that use the US domain… What about the ES domain… If you’re clever you will find a gem! I keep saying that but it’s true. =) They haven’t thought of EVERYTHING yet.

Side Note:
Finding the perfect domain can be a pain! But if you use my techniques above you’ll be sure to find one that you can grow with!

Don’t go out and buy a domain name just yet! We’ll go over where you should put your money in terms of services for your upcoming website. For now we’re just doing research. However if you can’t wait, my immediate recommendation is to get a free domain from Dreamhost as part of one of their site-hosting packages.
We’ll review how to pick services and which ones are good in upcoming articles.

Next time, as I mentioned we’ll be going over how you should choose from the various options and services available to you for setting up your own website.

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