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Having trouble choosing a good domain name? Learn some useful tips and tricks for choosing domain names in this handy article.

Choosing a good domain name for your website can be tough. After all, most of the short, easy-to-remember domain names have been taken, right?

Don't worry. With a little thought, and a few tips and tricks up your sleeve, you can find a great domain name for your site today. This article gets you started!

Choose a domain name that's easy to use

It helps to have a domain name that is easy for people to:

• remember
• pronounce, and
• spell.

This is especially important if you plan to market your website offline (in a flyer or magazine, for example). An easy-to-pronounce name also helps with word-of-mouth marketing.

Of course, shorter names tend to be easier to remember, and most short domain names are already in use. However, with a bit of creativity and brainstorming (see below) you should be able to come up with a catchy, easy-to-spell name.

Avoid hyphens in the domain name

While hyphens in domain names are allowed (for example, my-great-domain.com), they are uncommon and can lead to confusion. If possible, go for the domain name without the hyphens (mygreatdomain.com).

If you want to make the individual words stand out better when writing the domain name, you can always capitalise the start of each word (MyGreatDomain.com). Domain names are not case sensitive.

Don't limit yourself to .com domain names

.com domain names are the most sought after, so it can be hard to find a short, snappy .com name. However there are many other choices available, such as .net and .info, so don't feel you have to limit yourself to .com.

It's true that .com names have certain advantages — people will assume a domain name ends in .com if not told otherwise, and Web browsers often look for .com versions of domain names first. For example, if you type "example" into your browser's address bar then the browser will probably look for www.example.com before www.example.net.

Despite the .com advantages, a .net or .info domain name can work well, as you have a far greater choice of available names. This can mean that you can grab that snappy, easy-to-remember name you want. Just don't forget to include the .net (or other) suffix whenever you mention your domain name to people.

Keywords in domain names — a good idea?

If you need to drive a lot of search traffic to your site then it can help to have your main keywords in your domain name — especially if the keywords are highly competitive. For example, if your site sells dinky widgets then a domain name of AllDinkyWidgets.com is going to fare better than MyOnlineStore.com.

That said, having keywords in your domain name isn't likely to make a huge difference to your search traffic. It's nice to have, but if you already have a strong brand name or business name then it probably makes sense to base your domain name around your brand name, rather than around search keywords.