Choosing the right domain name for your business is important, and a good domain name can help your search engine ranking and, of course, be more memorable for your visitors.

Here are some tips in getting the right domain name for you:

• Be creative. The register of domain names is massive and you may think all the best names have been taken. With a bit of lateral thinking you could locate a name as good as flickr (TM) or Youtube. I am not a fan of del.icio.us - look at the punctuation they had to insert in the middle of the name. Are your customers going to remember a complicated address like that?
• Keep your domain name as short as possible so your visitors can tell each other about it or type the name into a web browser
• Buy the domain names for the most common mis-spellings of your name, then you can redirect visitors to the right page
• Do not try to be clever by using trademarked names. They have very well paid lawyers who will find you and your site could be closed down overnight.

Finally, always buy your domain name direct from a reputable domain name registrar, do not allow it to be registered on your behalf as part of some special hosting deal. A domain name costs about $8 per year, and good web hosting is about $10 a month, pay it yourself and make sure that you own and control your own business - if you want to know more about why you should register your own domain name, read more …