webrampage

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. – Shakespeare

Seriously though what is in a name? Does such a small thing matter? Yes and no.

Look around. Its a very busy world. Ads all over. TV, radio, internet, newspaper, magazine and what not. What do they all have in common? Short, simple, catchy phrases. Do you know where I’m heading with this?

Now before we even start with having a little catchy tagline for your site or blog, we’ll have to deal with the name. So, yes names do matter (especially on the web) unless you would rather listen to the ancient playwright.

I personally have a hard time finding a decent name. I keep changing my mind more than I change gears while driving standard. A true fact. And I honestly know how hard it is when you finally find the perfect name only to find out the domain is taken.

Alright lets assume you have a domain and you’ve got a better one to work with. Now what? The fear of losing traffic and SEO. Well no worries. You can always do a 301 redirect using .htaccess.

Open up Notepad, paste the following and upload it to your root directory. It works like magic.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Now its very important that you make sure that this file is named .htaccess (no extentions like .txt or anything). And lets just hope this time you’ve picked a better domain.

Do you buy domains from people? Then you must read this. And if you don’t then you should still read this. Its something you should know.

Okay I know that a lot of people buy nice domains, build an “okay” site on it and then sell them. They don’t just sell them right away, of course. They get a nice PR first because the buyers want to rank high (or maybe buy the domain and then sell it for more). Well things like these are always going on.

But, the important thing is you need to watch out for fake PRs. No, I am not joking. You can put a fake PR on a domain. And I’m sure that there’s a lot of people doing it right now. So, how do you figure out which PR is fake and which one’s are real? Well just follow these four simple steps:

1. Find the domain you want
2. Go check out the site on that domain
3. Google this “site:www.YOUR-DOMAIN.com” and you should find caches of that site
4. Go check the cache. See anything fishy? Is it the cache for the site on that domain? Or a cache from a different site?

If you answered yes to step #4 then its a fake PR. To fake a PR, you basically redirect the Googlebot to a site with a high PR and it gets tricked. And you get the PR of that site. I’m not going to tell you how to do it of course, but you get the idea.

So, next time you buy a domain from someone remember to do this. Good luck! Oh and don’t forget to share your experiences with us. Like if you ever bought a domain with a fake PR (or maybe sold one?).

Your first step towards success is a great domain. And its not always easy to find a great domain. Most of the good domains are already taken. I know sucks, huh? But don’t worry. You can still get yourself an awesome domain. Let me help you a bit.

Oh and if you’re wondering where to register your domains from then check out Netfirms.

Which extension to use?

.com all the way. Wait, wait. Let me tell you a few other things too. There’s a lot of cool extensions like .me, .us, .in, etc which you could use to make a really cool domain. Like look at del.icio.us for example. They bought the domain icio.us and added a subdomain called “del” on it. And that’s how we got that domain. Pretty smart I must say.

But there is a problem. You could type deli.cio.us by mistake and end up somewhere else. That’s not good for us. We’re loosing quite a bit of traffic. So why not just buy delicious.com and redirect it to del.icio.us (that’s what they actually did). And its always easier to let someone know about Delicious by pointing them to delicious.com.

That way there won’t be any traffic leakage. And its a lot easier to remember for the first-time visitor. Plus most people just hit “yoursite.com” and if your site is on “yoursite.org” then that sucks for you. TRAFFIC LEAKAGE!

Lesson: Pick the extension you like and then buy .com too. Redirect .com to the extension you’re using. Zero traffic leakage that way.

How many words? How big or small should it be?

Well generally the smaller the domain is, the better. 1 word domains are 100% full of awesomeness and easy to remember (usually). If you get a hold of one then you’re one lucky little bastard. 2 word domains are pretty good. 3 or 4 or more just sucks ass.

Most of the 1 word domains are already taken. And you would have to pay a big chunk of money to buy one from the current owner. So try to pick 2 word domains. Make sure its easy to remember and that it makes sense.

And don’t use hard-to-spell or foreign words in your domain. You know why, right? TRAFFIC LEAKAGE!

List all the keywords

Yeah jot down all the keywords of your site. See which combination of keywords work well togather and give you nice little name. Like for a hosting review site, you could use hostreviews.com reviewhosts.com, hostratings, etc. You know what I mean.

Keywords in the domain?

Yeah sure, why not? A keyword in the domain doesn’t bother anyone. And it could also help you rank better in SERPs. But, a brandable and an unique domain is a lot better.

Making your domain descriptive helps too. You’ll know what moviereviews.com is all about, right? So when you Google “new movie reviews”, you’ll be more likely to click on moviereviews.com then cinemajunkies.com.

Who are you targeting?

Male or female? Kids, teens, young adults, adults or seniors? Think about who you’ll be aiming for. Lets say you have fuckingcoolsite.com. That would work well with teens and young adults, only. So think about it.

What about hyphens and numbers?

NO FUCKING WAY! Please try not to add hyphens and numbers in your domain. A hyphen in a domain is good for SEO (since search engines interpret hyphens as spaces) though and a number might make it look cool. Why am I saying no then? Lets say you have music-blog-6.com. Most people would forget the hyphen and number. They would just type in musicblogsix.com. TRAFFIC LEAKAGE!

But you can always buy both music-blog-6.com and musicblogsix.com. And you redirect musicblogsix.com to music-blog-6.com. No traffic leakage that way. Tada!

Easy to remember and unique!

Okay why am I even telling you guys about this. Domains should always be easy to remember. techblog.com is a lot easier to remember than tafkhda.com (not sure how I came up with that one).

Unique domains are an expection though. Like for example look at kotaku.com – a high traffic gaming blog. That domain doesn’t even make sense (at least not in English). You know why that domain is working well? Because its easy to say. Its like a jingle. Ko-ta-koo!

Compare kotaku.com and tafkhda.com, which one would be easier to remember? See you can also have unique domains that doesn’t make sense and still build a successful site on it. You just need to use the right letters.

Yep that’s it. You should now just sit down with a pen and paper, clear your mind, and follow these little tips and eventually you’ll come up with a great domain. Take your time!

To the readers now! Got your own amazing way to come up with great domains? Share it with us!