When planning your business site, you will probably be already deciding how you want it to look like online. You will also be more than likely to be thinking of ways to promote it, such as hiring SEO services. However, before you go on further, stop for a while and ask yourself: Have I thought of a good domain name yet?

If your answer is no, then you are not alone on this one. Certainly, many businesses, both online and offline often go through putting up a website without even bothering about the domain name, and most often would just use whatever comes into their minds first for domain names. However, carefully deciding on your domain name is very much as important as choosing which color and theme your site is going to be. In fact, choosing the right domain name might very well be considered the first step in coming up with a good website.

One of the things that you need to consider when choosing your domain name is its length. Keep in mind that the longer your domain name is, the less likely that it will be remembered by web users. For the most part, you should try to limit your domain name to at most seven characters, if possible.

Don’t simply try a jumbled set of letters for you name. Instead, make it meaningful. For instance, you can use your domain name to tell what your site is all about or what it sells. Here, even long domain names can actually work if you do it right. Having a witty phrase for a domain name will do well in adding to the recall of your site. But again, remember that it should still tell users what your site is all about. Another trick in coming up with your domain name is using keywords. This one has an added benefit aside from making it easier to remember. Using keywords on your domain name will make them more prominent in the search engines, which will also increase your site's visibility to users. However, don't overdo this one though, as you will likely end up with something less than meaningful.

Once you have finally settled on your domain name, it's time to register it. One way to ensure that you will have a unique domain name is to actually register it for different extensions, like .com, .org. or .biz. This way, you will also be sure that no one will be able to illegally profit from your domain name. Also, register all the possible alternative spellings of your domain name. However, you need to also make sure that you are actually going to use the other domain names that you have secured. It is highly likely that you will be charged by the registration authority if they noticed that you are registering too many names.