Many people struggle to pick a domain name. The article outlines how to pick the perfect domain name for your business, blog, and eCommerce websites.
When picking the perfect domain name for your website, make it easy to:
- Spell,
- Remember, and
- Share with friends over the telephone.
Go with super clear English expressions or just easy words. The shorter the better. Make it simple.
Criteria for two-word domain names:
- The words might be a known phrase, a play on a common phrase, an animal, a thing, a popular industry, or a known industry, or multiple industries, or
- Both words should be spelled fully and correctly and have a linguistic connection (same first letter, same vowel sound, etc.)
Your domain name should:
- create trust,
- be powerful,
- grab attention, and
- be authoritative.
Avoid domain names with:
- Numbers
- 3+ Keyword combinations
- 3 words with 1 hyphen (eg. bigdata-toronto)
- Very long words
- Spammy words (eg. trendsmkt)
- Words plus numbers (they’re usually viewed as unprofessional)
- Prefixes like ‘a’, ‘the’, or ‘my’
- Suffixes/endings such as ‘app’, ‘biz’, or ‘inc’
Avoid Names Similar to Trademarks
Examples of domain names that were confusingly similar to trademarks:
- Blacksbaud .com was too similar to Blackbaud .com (WIPO UDRP Case No. D2021-4138)
- Loansmarter .com was too similar to LOANSMART (Hoffman v. Ranjijifroody, 1:21-cv-00973 (E.D. Va. Feb. 2, 2022)
Premium Domains:
There’s prestige when your website and email address uses a very short domain name. One-word, between 3 and 9 characters is optimal.
Do not try to start a high growth business without your perfect domain to use in your email and website.
The top premium domains sold in the past 20 years include:
soap.com $500,000,000
voice.com $30,000,000
diamond.com $7,500,000
Types of Domain Names
- First names
- Last names
- English dictionary words
- Foreign dictionary words
- Coined words
- Hybrid words
- telescopic words, Eg. RemoteDepo.info
- LLL and LLLL Acronyms, Eg. acz.ca
- N to NNNNNNNN number strings, Eg. 88888888 .com
Picking a Coined Word
Four letter coined words should follow the CVCV (consonant vowel consonant vowel) pattern. CVCV + word is also a popular option.
Coined words can also be neologisms. They are often formed by combining existing words (see compound noun and adjective) or by giving words new and unique suffixes or prefixes. Neologisms can also be formed by blending words, for example, “brunch” is a blend of the words “breakfast” and “lunch”, or through abbreviation or acronym, by intentionally rhyming with existing words or simply through playing with sounds.
For example, GoDaddy is a well known neologism: Go + Daddy.
Because neologisms originate in one language, translations between languages can be difficult.
How to pick two-word domain names
Two word domain names should be normal everyday phrases.
If you are running a blog about resorts and hotels, the perfect domain name would be resorts.com, hotels.com or ResortHotels.com. Another good domain name choice is HotelResorts. But HotelsResort doesn’t make any sense. According to the GoDaddy valuation tool, GoDaddy assigned these valuations in July 2020 for these four domain name options:
| Domain Name | GoDaddy Valuations |
| resorthotels.com | $12,247 |
| resortshotels.com | $4,913 |
| hotelresorts.com | $9,570 |
| hotelsresort.com | $2,720 |
But I’d like to point out that HotelsResorts isn’t worth much at all. It was listed on NameLiquidate.com after being renewed for 16 years! Nobody was interested.
Which TLDs Domains That Are Fine for Blogs?
The .com Top Level Domain is the most popular TLD and can be used for almost anything. While it’s generally cheaper to renew a .com domain name, most of the good ones are already taken.
Taken .com domains are often shown in the domain registration path as a “premium” domain name at many registrars, so you can still buy these domain names. But shop around, as taken domain names often are listed at different prices on various domain reseller platforms, such as sedo.com, Epik.com marketplace, GoDaddy, nameliquidate.com, and dan.com.
So what do you do if you can’t afford to buy the .com version of your ideal domain name? Try to buy one of the other popular Top Level Domain, such as .net, .org, .info, .tv, or your local ccTLD, such as .ca, .us, .uk, etc., or a gTLD such as .xyz, .life, .world, .vip, .top, or .biz.
Two-word gTLD domains are usually cheaper than many popular one-word or “premium” domains that may cost you a lot to register and renew every year. For example, I paid $218 to renew boxing.world at Epik this year. GoDaddy wanted $249 USD to renew boxing.world, so I transferred all of my client’s .world domain names to Epik.
| .world gTLD | Epik Price | GoDaddy Price |
| boxing.world | $218.00 | $249.99 |
| golfvacations.world | $21.80 | $41.99 |
| luxuryvillas.world | $21.80 | $41.99 |
So clearly, it pays to shop around at different registrars.
Finding Popular Everyday Phrases
One way to compare various choices of everyday phrases is to use Google.com/trends
Tools to Analyze Potential Domains
Google.com/trends
Google Keyword Planner
Spyfoo
SEMRush