Remember when I talked about How to choose the right niche for your blog? Well, I got an email from one of my blog reader. He asked me about how to choose the right domain name for his blog. And here is it! Below are six characteristics of a decent domain name that you can choose for your blog.
- Short
First of all, I think it would be better if you choose the short domain name for your blog. Generally, no more than three words. When compared with the medal at a championship, a domain with a single word is the gold medal, two-word domain name is the silver medal, three words domain name is the bronze medal.
In addition, some of the world’s top bloggers also confirmed that the shorter the domain name, the more expensive price. Practically, a short domain name like Play.com, worth millions of dollars. ProPlay.com, worth thousands of dollars. ProPlayNow.com, worth hundreds of dollars. And YourProPlayNow.com, worth tens of dollars.
- Easily Remembered and spelled
Most internet users do not do bookmarks. They only remember domain name. Therefore, when they were about to visit their favorite blog, what would they do is typing the domain name on the browser. If the domain name of your blog is too long or not easy to remember and spell, then probably the Internet users would forget your domain name.
- Using .com extensions
As we all know, there are some domain names extensions. Institution or organization fits with the .org extension. Companies that target specific market will register a local domain name ( .co.uk, co.in, .cn, etc.). Outside the interests of the organization or company, the .com domain is the best because most widely used and seem professional.
The real sample on how important the .com domain evidenced by Darren Rowse. He uses .Net extension for his blog (Problogger.net). Although the blog is so famous, many visitors still go to the wrong blog because they typed ProBlogger.com on their internet browser, instead of ProBlogger.net. Two years since ProBlogger.net made, this Australian blogger finally decided to buy ProBlogger.com (which had been owned by others) for $ 5000 and pointed it to ProBlogger.net.
- Descriptive
It’s mean the domain name has to give a clear picture of the respective blogs or websites. For example, when you want to know the latest movie reviews and typed those keywords on Google, mrqe.com will appears on the first sequence, and the third sequence is thebestmoviereview.com. Which one would you like to click first?
- Branded
Domains of this type are usually made of unique words or use a combination of keywords. Sometimes the domain name is not really descriptive. In addition, the owner of this domain is usually famous people, like SEOMoz.com which owned by Rand Fishkin (famous SEO expert) and DoshDosh.com owned by Maki (one of the world famous blogger).
- Have no conjunctions and numbers
Many bloggers say that the domains that have conjunctions and numbers have two basic weaknesses. I’ll show you what I mean:
Tech-World.com: people would forget to type the dash (-), and probably would typed TechWorld.com.
Tech5.com: the “5″ number is going to be confusing because people can just type the address TechFive.com so it will be wrong.
Coolest-Gadgets.com case is a proof of the weakness of domain name that use dash (-) symbol. This blog is one of the popular blogs that discuss gadgets. However, many people forget to type the dash (-) on the browser and lead them to CoolestGadget.com. Because they don’t want to lose visitors, finally the owner of Coolest-Gadget.com bought their rival blog.
That’s all. Six characteristics of a decent domain name that you can choose for your blog. Don’t worry if your domain name do not have one of those characteristics now. It still can be useful when you’re going to buy a new domain name. 
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