When you choose a domain name, you need to give careful thought to what name you choose. Choosing the right name for your site can give you numerous benefits.

Domain names can be registered with lots of different extensions these days including: .com, .net, .info, .us, .org, .biz. Many of the most popular .com names have already been registered and are either unavailable or would cost thousands of dollars to purchase. However, if you are creative, you can still find good names. I tend to stick exclusively with either .com or .net domain name extensions.

Your domain name will become your brand. Think of some of the great Internet businesses that are known by their web addresses. Amazon.com, godaddy.com, yahoo.com, google.com…etc. Often these names tell you little to nothing about what you will find on the website, but they are catchy and easy to remember and they have become synonymous with what they provide. Web searching can now be referred to a googling.

Don’t create a domain name for your business that is too long or difficult to remember. Keep it as short as possible and easy to spell. This is your brand and you need to choose it carefully.

Heres another strategy you may want to consider. In Day 1, we discussed the importance of nailing down a keyword strategy before doing anything else. If you can register a domain name that is an exact match with the keyword that you are targeting, you may be able to get an automatic boost in Google’s rankings. Here is an example. Say the keyword that you are targeting is cereal. If your domain name is cereal.com, then you may receive a boost in the rankings for having a domain name that exactly matches what the searcher is looking for. Of course, you also need an optimized relevant web-page to go with it in order to receive a good ranking. If you do a google search, you will also notice that google highlights in bold the part of your domain name that matches the search text. This can also create a higher click-through rate for your search listing.

If it is a good enough name, you will also get traffic from people simply typing applesauce.com directly into their browser. Your best chance of getting an exact match domain is to get in on an industry early before there is any competition. However, if you are creating a brand based on a unique domain name that doesn’t already have competition, you should rise to the top of the google rankings pretty quickly. Typing semapex into google will bring up my site semApex.com as the first listing.