Have you lately considered purchasing a domain name for your website? There are countless people at this very moment contemplating to invest in a domain name for their next project online. The internet had evolved into such a powerful tool that anyone without a presence online is forfeiting a tremendous source of income and profit. The potential of having a domain name is endless and it makes sense to invest in the right domain name if one wants to leverage the power of the internet to his or her advantage.

So what is a domain name?

Online, a domain name is equivalent of a residential or business address of an entity. The entity in this context is an online business or personal website. To visit a website, people need this address as a direction of where to go. The shorter, more creative this address is, the more memorable it becomes. In short, a shorter, meaningful domain name is much more valuable than its longer counterpart. I am now going to outline some very important tips from which you can make the most out of your domain name investment.

Think for the Future

Let me ask you a question. Have you wondered why some domains, out of the many short, premium names registered a decade ago, are still popular? Why have the rest of the premium names failed to find a footing on the level of these popular names? Let me tell you. Some of these names continue to be popular for a major reason…its relevancy to the current and future trends. Let us take emarketing.com as an example. In today’s world, and in years to come, eMarketing (aka internet marketing) is and will continue to make up major component of online activities. Some people call it the “in-thing”. I hate this overused cliché, but the reality speaks for itself.

Now let me ask you another question. Does you domain name reflect its value in time to come? Will it make sense in the next 10 years to still continue with this website? Which domain name will serve you better through the next decade? Iphone3GS.com or AppleSmartPhones.com? Definitely the latter. Apple will continue to produce smart phones in years to come, so AppleSmartPhones.com will still be a good choice to blog about, review and discuss on new Apple technologies as they come around.  In the next 2 – 3 years, iPhone 3GS will become obsolete; the trend will die off. Therefore, if the former is your domain name choice, expect your website to be just another archaic page on the World Wide Web in future.

The above will also be a deciding factor if you consider flipping your website. Selling any website for profit is largely based upon its domain name; no doubt about that! People usually go for “hot” niche related domain names when starting a website for flipping. This is ok for immediate flips. However, for long term flip projects, with a huge profit margin in expectation, it is always wiser to go for domain names that take the future trend, as a major factor, into consideration.

Choose a TLD that Works!

I will keep this short and simple. Go for “.com’s” when registering a domain for your online business or personal website. Some of you may disagree with me here…If Search Engines do not discriminate amongst domain extensions, who am I to propose any different? Let me clear things for you here. I am no “SEO Expert”. I see websites and domain names from the perspective of a normal internet user. Which is the most sought after domain name? What domain name has the largest probability to bring type-in traffic? Which domain name extension sells for more where the domain name is same? The answer for all these questions is .com. So…it does not take much to figure out which domain extension you need to go after.

The Actual Domain Name

This is probably the most important point about domain name investment that I am going to discuss here…! This is where most of your emphasis needs to be placed. Short and memorable domain names are the best; but it is extremely rare nowadays that you will get your hands on one such name. Keyword rich names are also an excellent choice; especially when it comes to search engines. Google may not place much emphasis on the domain name itself when ranking websites; nevertheless, it is always better to own a keyword rich name rather than something no one will remember.

In Summary…

Domain name investment is an integral part of any projects involving an online presence. A domain name can make or break a website. Period! Just take a look at Google, Yahoo and Bing for a moment. All these entities are household names just because of the domain name. Google may still have been popular if their domain name was, say, searchengine.com. But let us be honest here! How many of you would have preferred to say “Let’s search engine it” rather than “Let’s Google it”?

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