Domain Suggestions
It's important to find a good domain so your site (our your squidoo lens) can be found by search engines. You can find a lot of lousy sites that rank very well simply because they have excellent, "keyword rich" domains (I hope you don't think this lens is one of those).
Unfortunately, the big domain buy-up occured years ago--and, yes it is still going on. All the 4 letter domain names have been taken (I calculated that there are 1.6 million 4-letter domains, including numbers). Even the pathetic domains like t9i8.com are selling for hundreds of dollars, and sometimes thousands. Don't believe me? Go check out Ebay for domains.
Shout Domains is a wicked, awesome domain search tool. First of all, it searches as you type--for the word you type in the top 3 TLDs - .com, .net, and .org. Second, it's got powerful domain suggestion tools that allow you to come up with some relevant and fun domain names. Create a domain just by typing a word that describes who you are and watch as it gives you suggestions based on added adjectives and industry words.
The Top Five Reasons to use Shout Domains
Take a look.
ShoutDomains.com
- Instant Domain Search. Shout Domains searches multiple TLDs for the domain word you type, as you type.
- Domain Word Combiner. There are a lot of great domains out there that were created from a simple word combination. Here's some examples: frogdesign.com, newsvine.com. Shout Domains has a comprehensive database of terms to generate word combinations from words that you type.
- Domain Word Cruncher. Have you ever wondered how companies came up with words like Skype, Furl, Diigo, and Moli? The Domain Word Cruncher is an intuitive system that generates new words like Kwista. It can also generate words based upon letters you enter. Try it out. Go type 'te' in the Cruncher and see what you get. One of those results could be your next highly brand-able company or website name!
- Over 30 TLDs. You don't just have to stick with .com, .net, or .org. Shout Domains has a whole list of other optional TLDs to check. There are even a bunch of country codes available to search for (i.e. .it, .tv).
- Check PageRank, Expiration Dates, Print your list. If your favorite domain was taken, you can check if it expires soon. You can also save all your domains to your computer or print a list. Don't worry about your domains being registered before you get to. All your searches are safe, not stored. Check out their privacy policy.
Domain Suggestion Tools
Registrars
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How to Register a Domain
There can be a lot to coming up with, finding and registering a quality domain.
Your domain tells customers and Google what your website is about. It has to be short, simple, memorable, and seo-friendly.
Short and Simple
Short is better than long. Howwouldyouliketohaveadomainlikethis.com. Exactly my point. Think of the bigwig websites: digg.com, furl.com, google.com, yahoo.com, live.com (you get my drift).
Memorable
I love memorable domains. I have so many websites that I visit every day--the effort of utilizing bookmarks has become useless. Google is memorable. Facebook is memorable. I hate straining to remember that website about 'catsanddogsforyou.com'. Chances are, if your site doesn't rank well, visitors will never make a return visit to your website, because they definitely won't find it in Google and they won't remember it.
SEO-Friendly
This one's important. Use keywords in your domain. Just for an example, I did a search for "house fire". The number 6 result was houseoffiremusic.com. If you take a look at that website, they have almost zero content and their keywords and title tags aren't optimized. However, simply because their domain contained the words, "house" and "fire" they appeared on the first page of Google! Getting a good domain will save you loads of preliminary SEO efforts and costs.
Learn How Register a Domain
A little rant about Domainers
I've always hated trying to find a decent, available domain name. In my experience, it seems only 1 out of every 20 searches reveals an available domain name. It's quite sad really. Domainers have done such a great job of buying every possible, good domain. That really isn't the bad part. What really gets me angry is how a majority of all the domains registered don't have relevant, content-driven websites attached to them. I am always running into websites, with good domains, that filled with advertisements and no content.
A few weeks ago I happened upon a super domain... And it was available! It was a short five-letter word, had two syllables, and sounded catchy. Unfortunately, I didn't buy the domain. I wanted some time to decide if I really wanted the domain. The next week, I finally made up my mind to buy the domain, but to my horror, it had been registered a few days earlier. I went to the URL and the page was only a templated site with a notice that the domain was being sold for over $500! Moral of the story: When you find a half decent domain--buy it! $6.99 is a lot cheaper than $500.
"If you find a domain you just gotta have, buy it before someone else does!"
What is a TLD? - from the Wiki
A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the label that follows the last dot of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is com, or COM, as domain names are not case-sensitive. Management of most top-level domains is delegated to responsible organizations by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and is in charge of maintaining the DNS root zone.
Originally, the top-level domain space was organized into three main groups,RFC 920, Domain Requirements, J. Postel, J. Reynolds, The Internet Society (October 1984) Countries, Categories, and Multiorganizations. An additional temporary group consisted only of the initial DNS domain,RFC 921, Domain Name System Implementation Schedule - Revised, J. Postel, The Internet Society (October 1984) arpa, intended for transitional purposes toward the stabilization of the domain name system.
Countries are designated in the domain name system by their English two-letter ISO country code.Codes for the Representation of Names of Countries, ISO-3166, International Organization for Standardization. (May 1981) This group of domains is therefore commonly known as country-code top-level domains (ccTLD).
The Categories group has become known as the generic top-level domains. Initially this group consisted of GOV, EDU, COM, MIL, ORG, and NET.
In the growth of the Internet, it became desirable to create additional generic top-level domains. Some of the initial domains' purposes were also generalized, modified, or assigned for maintanance to special organizations affiliated with the intended purpose.
As a result, IANA today distinguishes the following groups of top-level domains:IANA root zone database
*country-code top-level domains (ccTLD): Two letter domains established for countries or territories or their internationalized domain names (IDN ccTLD). With some historical exceptions, the code for any territory is the same as its two-letter ISO 3166 code.
*generic top-level domains (gTLD): Top-level domains with three or more characters
**unsponsored top-level domains: domains that operate directly under policies established by ICANN processes for the global Internet community.
**sponsored top-level domains (sTLD): These domains are proposed and sponsored by private agencies or organizations that establish and enforce rules restricting the eligibility to use the TLD. Use is based on community theme concepts.
**infrastructure top-level domain: This group consists of one domain, the Address and Routing Parameter Area (ARPA). It is managed by IANA on behalf of the Internet Engineering Task Force for various purposes specified in Request for Comments.
In addition, a group of internationalized domain name (IDN) top-level domains has been installed under test for testing purposes. Since November 2009, countries and territories may apply for IDN ccTLDs.
The authoritative list of currently existing TLDs in the root zone is published at the IANA website at http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/ and a Wikipedia list exists.
Get some super domains.
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Register your domain at a Registrar - from the Wiki
A domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) or by a national country code top-level domain (ccTLD) authority, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries and offer such services to the public.
Blogging about Domains
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byBecome a Domainer - from the Wiki
Domain name speculation is the practice of identifying and registering or acquiring Internet domain names with the intent of selling them later for a profit.
The main targets of domain name speculation are generic words which can be valuable for type-in traffic and for the dominant position they would have in any field due to their descriptive nature. Hence generic words and phrases A 242 page list of premium generic words and phrases reserved by the .mobi TM registry, mTLD during the Sunrise phase of the launch of .mobi TLD such as poker, insurance, travel, creditcards, sex and others are attractive targets of domain speculation in any top-level domain.
The speculative characteristics of domain names may be linked to news reports or current events. However, the effective period during which such opportunities exist, may be limited. Quick turnaround in the resale of domains is often called domain flipping.
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