Creating a website is not just about designing your pages and including all the important information, it is also about creating a domain name that relates to your products and services and that is also easy to remember and spell for your customers. A domain name that is easy to remember will have more return customers and more word of mouth advertising than domain names which are hard to spell, remember, or both.

When it comes to searching for a domain name, all you have to do is go online and search for ones that you are interested in to see if they have been taken or not. There are hundreds of sites that will let you search domain names in hopes to sell you the domain name and then get you to buy their web hosting services as well. To start your domain name search, however, you should follow a couple of basic steps.

* Come up with a variety of domain names you are interested in. When you have a variety of unique domain names, you can start searching to see which of them are available.

* Don't set your mind on one particular domain name. The reason for this is most common domain names are taken, so you will need to be creative.

* Make a list of general types of domain names you are interested in and start searching.

* Stick with a .com, don't opt for .tv, .biz, or any other suffix if at all possible especially if that exact domain name is taken as a com. You will end up losing business to that site.

Now that you know some basic steps to follow for searching your domain name and choosing one, you need to understand how important it is to choose a good domain name rather one that has some other meaning that customers will not understand. For example, you might want to make a domain name up of all of your children's names, while this is very sweet it has nothing to do with your services and will be hard to remember. Instead, choose something that has something to do with your business and services that is short, sweet, and easy to remember. By doing this people will be able to remember your web address and visit it often. If you do not follow these suggestions, obtaining brand recognition will be difficult if not impossible. People will not remember how to get back to your website because your address was either too obscure, too difficult to remember, or just too long.

If you follow these suggestions you will end up with a URL that will lead to long term branding for your website and products and since this is your business, this should be what you are after. Keep this in mind when you are tempted to name your website after your childhood nickname or long lost pet!

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You own a single site, but several domains - perhaps you wanted to make sure that even if your customers misspelled your domain name they'd get to your site, or perhaps you'd like to have a specific domain name direct to a page deep within your site - whatever the case, there are some important considerations surrounding multiple domain names routing to a single site and search engine submission.

Search engines like Google and Yahoo won't always wait around for you to submit a site - Googlebot and Yahoo Slurp (which you may recognize from your server logs if your site has been up for a few weeks) are constantly running across new domain names to index. It's a good thing - unless your domain names are being forwarded incorrectly.

What constitutes and incorrect forward?

Many major domain name registrars offer a "Domain Name Forwarding" feature which, while it may be the easiest way to forward your domain, can cause some real problems when search engine spiders like Googlebot or Yahoo Slurp visit your site.

Here's what happens:


The search engine spider pulls your domain name (usually from http://www.whois.sc/ )
The spider visits your website, using the domain name forwarded through your domain registrar
Your domain registrar is using a Temporary Redirect (most likely because it's assumed that you'll point the domain name to a new hosting account sooner or later), frames, or other incorrect forwarding method
The spider indexes your site

But what went wrong? Your domain name registrar did its job, and sent the spider to your actual site when it visited the domain name you registered. The spider did its job and read the content of the page or pages it found, and then incorporated them into the search engine index. Everything's copacetic, right?

When the search engine spider read the page, it associated it with your alternate domain name, the one that was supposed to be forwarding to your primary domain name. This means that the search engine has effectively tracked down what it will quickly identify as duplicate content - and, after years of dealing with sites trying to sell Viagra on the sly by duplicating their content across hundreds of pages, today's search engines will respond to duplicate content with a drop in your ranking.

Given enough time, you may find your site has been banned from the search engine index.

What's the solution?

Your domain names need to be routed from the domain name registrar to a hosting account - from the hosting account (and this varies - consult your technical support provider for the account) you'll need to set a Permanent Redirect to your main site.

A Permanent Redirect is logged as a code '301' (thence, it is often referred to as a '301 Permanent Redirect') - if you have multiple domain names which you wish to direct to a single site, it may be especially useful for you to consider a website hosting account which offers multiple add-on domains and subdomains to accommodate all the domain names you'll need to forward.

Dan LeFree is a Web Design and Development Consultant specializing in database applications for e-Commerce storefronts, custom realtor websites, and other small business tools.