Panducity

Although much has been written about the importance of a domain name, I believe a name only has an impact in the short term. What is far more important is the content of your blog. However, certain names can hurt your site and its best to avoid the following mistakes:

1. Do not pick long names. Long names increase the possibility of spelling errors and hence loss of traffic and at the very least visitor irritation.

2. Avoid names that are phonetically challenging. For example, ubiquitious.com. Such domains probably will lose 20% of traffic to people spelling the same word in various ways.

3. Avoid using numbers in your domain name. Think about the top sites you visit, how many of them have numbers in them? Unless the number is a natural part of the name like rescue911, it should be avoided.

4. Avoid dashes, sort of. Using dashes is one of those more controversial themes in the domain naming universe. Dashes can cause confusion and has the potential to negatively impact word of mouth and viral marketing. It is easier to talk about whatagreatsite.com than what-a-great-site.com. However, as domain name supplies are decreasing each day, using dashes is becoming an increasing necessity. Some SEO experts even believe it to be good practice. My opinion is to avoid it if you can.

5. Avoid using double letters. If Toms Shoe store wants to get a domain name exactly as his business name, then his domain name could be tomsshoestore.com or tomshoestore.com. Both names are confusing to a visitor.

Plenty of effort is needed to generate traffic, why lose it because of a bad domain name. To end this post, here is a link to some funny business names in the real world.