A domain name is the name that you give to your website. www.yourname.com is an example of a domain name. It is usually sold by companies online and it is paid for according to the period you want to buy it fo. It is usually sold for a minimum period of one year. the payment for a domain name is usually one off.

A domain name is seen as the real estate of the internet and just as location is important for a brick and mortar business, a domain name will be a cornerstone for the success of your online business.

It is important that your domain name reflect your business and it is short. though, you can use numbers and alphabets in a domain name up to 67 characters, it is important that your domain name is sort enough for a person to memorise and not complex. A word domain name is encouraged but not more than three words. It is also good to avoid using special characters like hyphen, underscore or numbers in a domain name.

A domain name must have the keywords of ur website embedded in it to make it easy for seach engines and also helps in rankings.

If your domain name is not available, then you can also add the prefix my, the, your, self , online or suffix like ing etc to see if you can also have that available. For example, I bought www.makecoolmoneyonline.com and also www.makingcoolmoneyonline.com.

Depending on the strategies that you choose, it is better buy a .com for proper websites and blogs. Note that apart from .com, others can be bought very cheap which is an advantage if you just want to redirect an affliate link to it and not a website or a blog.

Steps for checking a good domain name

Research the top 5 keywords that come to mind in your niche and check if they are available.

In researching for the keywords, you can use google keyword tool where you can type the keywords in and associated keywords will be displayed.

Check for the availability of each keyword displayed one after the other. If they are not available, then add the prefix or suffix as explained above anc check if it ia available.

If this steps are carried out diligently, you will surely get a domain name that will add a great value to your online business.

I buy my domain name from Hostgator because they have excellent hosting and after sales service but of recent, because I am a member of Chris Farrell membership Site, I have since move my domain name to chris farrel server since he is offering all people on his membership sit free hosting of unlimited number domains.

Godaddy.com is equally good to buy domain names from because it can actually be used as part of the research for finding a domain name. After logging in to godaddy.com and search if a domain name is available, godaddy also shows you a list of other options for that domain name.

Author Bio: http://www.makecoolmoneyonline.com/tutorials http://www.makecoolmoneyonline.com

Category: Internet
Keywords: buy a domain, buying a domain, keyword, find a niche, domain name, godaddy, hostgator