Help! I need a Good Domain Name for my Website

The preliminary step to start up a website is the registration of a domain name.  Whether you are building a site to advertise your local business, an e-commerce site, photo or video or music download site, information site, or if you want to start up a website to advertise your garage band, the entire undertaking begins with the selection of a domain name.

Then again you might ask- “What is a good domain name choice?”.  Well it depends.  For example, if you are someone who wants to build a website devoted to your cat, then the answer is that the choice of a domain name really doesn’t matter.  Why?  Because in a case like that you probably don’t really care about gaining a lot of traffic to your website, friends and family are your desired visitors, to let them know about the latest goings on.  You could pick something really obscure, something unique to you and your family, from the sublime to the ridiculous, and it won’t matter because you are not necessarily looking for great amounts of traffic to your site.   

The point is that in a case like this, there is no real concern with getting a lot of visitors to the website other than friends and family and coworkers, so there is no real harm in naming the website ANYTHING, because you will be giving out the website address to a select few people.  BUT……

What if you are looking to attract customers?  And to get as much traffic coming to your site as possible?

The simple answer is, it can bring huge dividends to have a domain name that reflects your website or company.  Depending on the type of business, an electrical contractor for example, would people look for your electrical contracting business online if your website had an obscure name like “bills-business.com?  So be sure and choose carefully when deciding on a domain name.  Best case scenario is to get the name of your business as a dot com or dot net, etc.  In lieu of that, at least try to get the category of business that you are in incorporated in your domain name.  For example, a plumbing website should have a domain name like plumbers.com or bobtheplumber.com, something that immediately associates the domain name with the theme of the site.  It’s all about branding, and making a lasting impression on the target audience or customers.

The WhoIs database contains all domain names registered, and when you are searching it will show whether or not your desired name is already registered.  For a quick search of your desired domain name, I have conveniently placed a domain name search engine on StartYourWebsiteToday.com for this very purpose.  After searching for the domain name, the results given will instantly show whether or not the domain name is available, and if so, give you the option to immediately register it.  If it’s not available, several alternative domain names will be proposed, to help you fine tune your search, or possibly giving you an acceptable alternative domain name to register instead.