Articles on Private Label Rights packages, PLR, Naming Your Website, website names

Starting your own website is a huge endeavor. It takes a lot of time, effort and work to run a successful website…as well as a bit of ‘know-how’. There are many decisions that you have to make along the way, and all of them can affect how well your website does.

The first choice you have to make is what your website will be about. That is probably the easiest decision for you because it is more than likely an idea that you are passionate about. Of course, you will have done all the research that will back your idea up with potential customers in mind.

Now you have to decide on a domain name. This can be a little bit trickier. Many domain names that you may want to use have already been taken. The logical, simple names, such as ones like ‘www.dogs.com’ (for a website about dogs) or ‘www.cooking.com’ (for a website about cooking), have been snapped up by others before you. So you will have to be a little creative in the name you choose. Here again is where your research will come into play.

You should match your domain name with what your site will be about, but you also need to make it memorable for your visitors. You want your visitors to keep coming back to your website. The more times visitors come to your website, the more chance you have of them becoming customers. And also making the name relevant to what your website is about helps the search engines connect your site with keywords entered by people searching for your topic.

You can choose to have a long run-on name, such as www.buildingbighouses.com or you can have a hyphenated name like www.building-big-houses.com. Either is acceptable, but as you can see the latter is more readable. You will have to decide if people will remember to put in the hyphens or if running all the words together makes sense.

You also need to decide if you want a dot.com name. Dot.com is the most common and popular ending, but there are other name extensions that you may want to buy and associate with your domain name as well. For instance, in Canada the dot.ca ending is one you may want to consider adding. So you may want to register www.building-big-houses.com as well as www.building-big-houses.ca.

There are other endings you may want to register as well in order to get to the most amount of people possible. These would include:

.biz -domain extension for businesses
.tv -geared to sites with video or interactive content, or an

.info -for a website that provides information (businesses, organizations and individuals)
.org -basically for non-commercial or charitable organizations
.net -for internet infrastructures or related services
.mobi -for companion site that can be seen on a mobile device
.me -for sites all about you (me), your product or your services (great for blogs, resumes or personal pages)

Some of the reasons you may want to register different extensions for the domain name you choose are as follows:

It provides your potential customers more ways to find you
It keeps the competition away from your domain name. For example, a person may be searching for ‘building-big-houses.com’ but type in ‘building-big-houses.ca’ and are directed to your competitions site instead of yours.
You can product various products or services on the different sites
Different extensions allow search engines and customers more opportunities to find you.
You can create advertising strategies that appeal to different markets.
It enables you to capture common misspellings of your domain name.
It helps to protect your brand if you register all the extensions available. No one else will be able to use your name of ‘building-big-houses’.

Choosing the right domain name can attract a lot of traffic to your website. Making it memorable and snappy will help your potential customers find you when they search for keywords related to your topic. It may take a bit of market research on your part to find the best domain name for your new website. But in the end, it will be worth the time and effort you put into it.