Nowadays, many of the good domain names are already taken on Internet. Many people buy domains just for reselling and not for personal use, people who make shorter the list of good available domains.

I remember when the .me was launched, I wanted to buy some names to work with in the future. The problem was that many of those good names were already bought, and remembering a specific case, I found a good domain which I decided to buy and just then I press the button to buy it -after entering all my information related with my credit card- I got owned, someone bought that domain seconds before me.

But why that kind of competition? First of all, to understand the reason of these competition for the good names, you need to know what is considered a good domain name.

What is the first thing you notice when you type an url in the browser? In effect, the very first thing you notice (may be unconsciously) when you do that, is the length of that url. If the url is too large (20 characters or more) the people can forget it because of its complexity. Even a string of 15 characters are considered as long by me. So the best thing you can try to find is very short domains, strings which less than 15 characters would be fine. In my case, I have just 6 characters on my domain name, but what’s the advantage of having a short web domain?

People tend to remember catchy and short words faster than long ones. If you think about it, you will remember faster a word with 2 3 or up to 4 syllables  than a word with more than 4 syllables. But besides having a short name, you should also look for simplicity. What if you choose a string of 6 characters but all of them are random letters? i.e. jahsdjsjdg.com, khaslkdh.net…. Could you remember that? So lesson two, you should use a simple domain name, something that you can spell and remember without problems.

Many people tend to include keywords in the domain, which is not bad. In fact, it is a very good way to rank higher on search engines but sometimes, it’s not possible. For example, if you try to include “forex” or “diet” in a domain name, you will see that there is only one way to have it included, and this is choosing a very long and complex domain name, at least in english, the more common language on Internet.

Have you noticed that in the present time, many of the new web services have strange domain names? As example we have flickr, plurk, tumblr and others… The reason of that is due to the supersaturation of the internet, forcing the people to acquire strange, but short and easy to remember domain names.

Where to buy?

You can acquire and register low cost domain names at GoDaddy. GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain name registrar and is the flagship company of The Go Daddy Group, Inc. Go Daddy is widely recognized for its success, having been ranked #8 on the 2004 Inc. 500 list of the nation’s fastest-growing privately held companies; #20 on the 2005 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 (growing 8,274 percent!); and having won the CNET Editor’s Choice award in 2001, the Name Intelligence Largest Net Gain Award in 2002, 2003 and 2005; the Name Intelligence Users’ Choice Award in 2005 as well as the #1 Best Overall Registrar in 2003. Go Daddy also won the Arizona Corporate Excellence Award for fastest growing privately-held company in 2003 and Most Innovative Large Company in 2004.

Things you should consider before buying a domain

Before buying a domain, I recommend you to make a big list of possible names. Remember that possibly, many of that names could be already taken by someone else, so try to have a wide list. Also, you should ask to yourself the following questions:

• Is it catchy, is it easy to remember?
• Is it easy to spell/pronounce?
• How long/short is it?
• Is it complex or simple?
• And may be the most important, match this name with my website/service/product?

Then, it’s time to go to GoDaddy and look for what you have listed. If you are lucky, you could find a shot and catchy website domain name . Good luck with that!