This series of posts is for the person asking "How do I start my own website?". To begin with: What do you want your website to portray? Thoughtful consideration of your website’s future direction will help you in deciding on the optimum domain name for your site. A well chosen domain is a key component to your website’s success. Good search engine optimization, or SEO, begins with domain name selection. Not to mention your positioning and branding with your customer.

What if someone already owns the domain name you covet? But you really wanted it badly. Can the domain name still be acquired? Could be. It’s possible, but with conditions to consider. With some research and hard work you can get the domain name you want even if it is already spoken for. But for now, lets look at some alternatives to getting that domain name you want:

Hyphenated Names If the domain name you want is already taken, consider hyphenating it, as in taking billsplumbingsupplies.com and making it bills-plumbing-supplies.com. Is hyphenating the best way to go? Possibly, but maybe not. If you want a domain name that is already taken by someone else and is already a well known, well traveled website, this might be a bad move, because users already familiar with the original domain name will just type the original, non-hyphenated version into their web browser, and end up not at your site but at your competitor’s site. Not the desired result! Also, the longer the name you have chosen, the more tedious and error prone it becomes for the surfer to type in the name correctly, again foiling the chances that they will end up at your website.

Definitely shorter is better. Hyphenating a domain name might be a good strategy for you in the following scenario: Let’s say the domain name you want is taken, and the current owner is not willing to give it up. After researching it you find that there is no website published under the domain name, or perhaps there is but it is poorly designed and gets very little traffic. In a case like that hyphenating the domain name might make sense and in fact could be a wise strategy. But be careful: the last thing you want is to cause internet domain name confusion because you have decided on a domain name registration that is so close to a major competitor’s name that you end up losing business to them.

Longer or Shorter? You can purchase domain names up to 67 characters in length. At 63 characters, thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com claims to be the longest domain name in the world, and it may very well be. Can you envision anyone wanting to type it into their browser? My website is www.StartYourWebsiteToday.com and has a domain name that tells what kind of website you will be surfing to. Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking. In as few characters as possible the name of the site, the purpose of the site, and the keywords of the site have all been neatly put together in a domain name. Keep it as short as possible.

Brand Name or Generic Should you give your website a descriptive generic name or do you want to use a brand name? Definitely if your business is known by a fairly well known brand name, then you would want to try and secure that as your domain name. For instance, Nike.com is a well known brand name site, although there is nothing in the domain name to suggest that it is a site about shoes. Still, Nike is such a well known brand name to the public that people automatically know what they will be shopping for when they get there. If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name. But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well.

People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names. A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike. So if possible cover all the bases. You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better. A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one. To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine. So in conclusion, the first step in "how to start a website" is in the wise choice of your domain name.

Editors Note: For best SEO traffic results, It is better to use an un-hyphenated name and it is best to use the .com, then the .net  or .org

Learn how to increase website traffic (here) 

Results of ‘SEO tips for beginners’ on Poom Domain

—Domain (failed, because of too much competition) Traffic to PoomDomain: Despite PoomDomain being created for about 2 months already, the amount of traffic coming to it is still small and has

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this is for expert seo’s that know how choose a good domain from traffic to search engines to cash and contacts…… please if your very good at nailing the correct domain

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