Having a business or a blog, a passion you would like to share with other users online involves some small details that many do not give enough consideration to. One of these details is choosing a web domain to use. This task is however important as the ease of the domain to be remembered, the relation between the domain name and content of your website, the relation between the website category and the domain extension became significant “musts” as all these could bring visitors back to your website and avoid confusions, as some domains have some well defined general uses.

Whatever you want to do online, business or directory, or anything else, in order to be taken seriously, you should use a TLD (top level domain), not a free sub-domain you would get from many providers. TLD means having a website as follows: www.yoursite.com, and not www.yoursite.shorturl.com.

Without your own domain, the website address and email address you would use will be based on the domain name of your host, that might not be so easy to remember to others or with no relation to your content. Owning a web domain is like having your own piece of the Internet. Note the relation between domain as a space on the Internet, and domain from a real estate view. In other terms, web domains are part of the real estate of the Internet.

When choosing a web domain you should consider some tips:

Generic domains

Generic domains or international domains refer to the extension that makes the them general. Such extensions that appeals to a global audience and their uses are:

• .com - a popular web domain extension with commercial use; companies or online shops tend to use this domain extension, but not only
• .biz - used for businesses
• .net - for internet administrative sites, but not only; very used for many internet related websites
• .info - for websites that provide information
• .org - for non-commercial communities, organizations
• .mobi - for mobile products or services, or websites that can be browsed from mobile devices
• .jobs - for job portals
• .name - for individuals, blogs
• .edu - for educational institutions
• .aero - for air-transport industry
• .int - for international institutions
• .tel - for business / individual contact data, for phone companies
• .asia - for Asia community
• .museum - for museums
• .travel - for travel industry, online bookings for hotel rooms, car rentals, cruises, air tickets and more
• .gov - for United States Government institutions
• .mil - for the United States Military

Country-specific domains

There are over 200 country domains with a good use in targeting a country’s audience, or maybe a group. Also, some of these domains could find a use for international or other country institutions, such as .tv or .fm. Some of the country domains would be:

• .au (.com.au, .gov.au) - Australia
• .br (.com.br, .net.br) - Brazil
• .ca - Canada
• .cn (.com.cn, .gov.br) - China
• .de - Germany
• .eu - European Union
• .fr (.com.fr, .gouv.fr) - France
• .in (.co.in, .mil.in) India
• .it (.co.il, .org.il) - Italy
• .jp (.co.jp, .ac.jp) - Japan
• .mx (.com.mx, .net.mx) - Mexico
• .pl (.com.pl, .mil.br) - Poland
• .ro (.com.ro) - Romania
• .ru (.com.ru, .net.ru) - Russian Federation
• .uk (.co.uk, edu.uk) - United Kingdom
• .us (.fed.us) - United States
• .za (.co.za, .net.za) - South Africa

Some of the country domains with use in other fields would be:

• .tv (.co.tv) - Tuvalu - for the television industry, TV networks
• .fm - Federal State of Micronesia - good use for radio stations
• .cd - Democrat Rep of Congo - good use for CD producers / sellers
• .dj - Djbouti - good use for DJs
• .as - America Samoa
• .cc - Cocos Islands
• .cv - Cape Verde - maybe you can post your CV on such a domain
• .cx - Christmas Island
• .hr - Croatia / Hrvatska - good use for HR companies (human resources)
• .ee - Estonia
• .is - Iceland
• .mm - Myanmar
• .pr - Puerto Rico - good use for PR companies (public relations)
• .st - Sao Tome and Principe - probably a good use for states or saints
• .tt - Trinidad and Tobago

Keyword domains

Search engines are a major source of traffic, so including one or more keywords in you domain name can help you in getting a good ranking on any of these terms. Internet users search for some keywords, so having that keyword in your domain could help you get extra visitors.

Length of domains

Shorter domains tend to be easier for typing. Also, a shorter domain reduces risks of typo errors, would of course be easier to remember and offers more flexibility in promoting it. However, here would be a problem, as most short domain names have already been bought. So getting a 2-3 letters domain would be really expensive, a price only corporations afford to buy it (MSN.com, AOL.com, GE.com). At the other side, an informational website that gets most of its traffic from search engines would do just fine with a domain with two or more words.

Traffic diversion

Choosing a wrong domain name could result in a lot of lost traffic due to mistyping. An easy way to avoid this would be to use simple domain names, with no numbers (or if the case to be pointed out clear on your website so that it can print in visitor’s mind), or exotic extensions (most users type generic domains extensions, or country domains if they are from that region).

Now, if you decided to buy a top level domain, than use one of the Registrars I have in this list for the smallest prices, or you could just look for other registrars with search engines.