Starting a website or blog demands that you creatively come up with the perfect, most dynamic and descriptive domain name for it. Think, think and think. You decide upon something originally and pithy, only to go register it and find out it's already taken. Then, you think of something else only to find it's taken also. You repeat this process a few time over until hopefully you find a.com that has the right word combination you're looking for. Welcome to your first foray into the difficult art of registering domain names. When you first being searching for that right domain name you're going to find that most all of the clever, short phrase word combination have been registered by someone else. Even if the domain name you want is not being used, it's owned by someone else. In this instance the culprits are domain name squatters: People who register high value, keyword rich, exact search domain names. Want to register "WorldsBestBrownies.com"? Well you can't. It's gone. You may have better luck using more specific domain names like WorldsBestChocolateBrownies.com. An alternative is to try and use the names of people or a location like MikesBrownieHeavan.com or NewYorksBestBrownies.com. If this route proves to no avail, you could always just make up words and phrases that are play off your core word. In this case the core word is brownie. So try something like Brownieholic.com would work. Choosing the right domain name, one that captures the essence of what the website is about is not an exact science. However, there is plenty of anecdotal information available as to what does not work. Let's cover some common mistakes to avoid: Phrases that look confusing clustered together in lower case. domeinnaam kopen prijs Domain names are not case sensitive so when you type a name into a browser it converts that domain name to lower case. The problem is that some words and phrases blend together when in lower case to create something unintentionally awkward. This usually happens when a word starts with a vowel. A great example of this is a documentation company called Prose Xact. Now take that name and put it together in lowercase. What do you get? Not a documentation company, but the name of a popular drug for depression. This is one instance where a dash might have been useful. Having too many dashes in your domain name though is also a problem. It's sometimes tempting to use dashes to get an exact match domain name for a keyword or phrase you're hoping to create a website around, but don't do it. First, search engines no longer gives that much sway to long, keyword rich exact domain names. In fact, they penalize them now. Next, dashes may confuse people. If a website exists and is using the domain name you want without the dash, not only are you confusing people you're also infringing upon the copyright of the webmaster using the "non" dash domain name. Next, dashes can also hurt your direct traffic as no one things to type in a dash when wanting to visit a specific web page. They just naturally type in DomainName.com not Domain-Name.com. Lastly, an excessive amount of dashes is usually the sign of a low quality website as only a marketer would create a keyword specific domain name with lots of dashes in the hopes to help rank his website by having a keyword rich domain name. Another issue is when your domain name does not match your business. This is a common problem for small business with a physical location. Like a florist in New York for example called "Violets are Blue". But VioletsareBlue.com is taken. So you move on and eventually register something keyword specific but generic like BestNewYorkFlorist.com. To avoid this problem try to choose your business name and domain name at the same time so you know they'll match or settle on a domain name that has an extra word or two. Next up is to avoid unusual top level domains if possible. Do your best to secure a.com for your business. People naturally type in the dot com version while looking for your website. So if you own the domain name SuperShoper.Biz, it's likely that someone will type in SuperShoper.com while looking for your website. Sometimes it's worth taking a second choice domain name if it means you can get a.com.