As mentioned previously, your domain name is your identity and great care should be taken when choosing your domain name.

1. Keep it short and simple

You can be extremely creative as you are allowed to have 63 characters in your domain name but don't be tempted to use it up: the shorter, the better. It is much easier to remember. Unfortunately, though, the shortest domains are most probably taken so just choose the shortest name that can be associated with your product or service.

2. Stick to simple and memorable words

Not everyone is a Spelling Bee contestant. Avoid using words that are difficult to spell or type.

3.  Mind the extension

If you can still get a .com extension, go for it. When people try to remember domain names, they think of the .com first.  However, keep in mind that a short and simple domain name with a .net or .info extension is better than a complicated one with a .com extension.

4. Your domain name must reflect your business

There are some gurus that espouse using  creative names for your domain names to separate you from the rest. The argument is that people remember creative names; hence, you remember google, yahoo, amazon. Keep in mind, however, that these names were during the Internet heydays when companies had millions of dollars to spend on offline advertising.

If you are a small business owner, your best bet is to use words in your domain name that reflect your product or service. If you are selling costume jewelry, it is better to use costumejewelry.com (granted, it's available) rather than something creative like razzmatazz.com

Another reason for using words that are related to your business is to help your site's findability. This is so because the actual domain name contains the keywords that are being searched for. So, you have higher chances of being ranked higher for your keywords. To illustrate, if a Net user is looking for costume jewelry, your site will appear in the search engine higher if your domain name is costumejewelry.com than razzmatazz.com.

5.  Generic or Branded?

During the dotcom heyday, there was a rush to register generic names as domain names. So you have pets.com, books.com, business.com, wine.com, etc.  Hindsight showed us that not all generic names became very successful, as a site, although quite a number became very successful when they sold their domain names. A recent example is vodka.com, which fetched more than 3 million dollars when it was sold last November 2006.

These days, however it is not easy to register a generic name, as most generic names are no longer available. But if your product can be equated with a generic word, it is worth a try, as you can also get a higher search engine ranking because of the keyword search.

6.  Use lower case

Although browsers can recognize both upper and lowercase, stick with lowercase.

7. Use only letter, numbers or hyphens

Only hyphens, letters and numbers are allowed when choosing your domain names. Other special characters are not allowed. Hyphens are  used to represent a 'space'. For example, if your domain name contains two words (eg. copper pans ), you can register copper-pans.

8. With or without hyphens?

Users prefer URL's with no hyphens and search engines prefer domain names with hyphens. The best bet is to register both, if they are available. This way, you also protect your domain.

The difficulty with a hyphenated domain is that it fails the radio ad test or teleconversation test. Obviously www.mysite.com is easier to say than www.my-site.com.  As a general rule, see whether you can come up a with a non-hyphenated domain before you settle for a  hyphenated one.

9.  If you found it, grab it

Remember, there are millions and millions of people registering domains everyday. Unless your product is extremely unique, you are sure to have competition for prime domain names. If you think you've found your ideal domain, register it right away.

10.  If it's no longer available, you still have hope

If after you have tried com, .net, .biz, .info and found that they are no longer available, check out the list of expired domain names. If you have the budget, you can also purchase existing domain names. However, be prepared to pay at least 50 dollars to a few thousand dollars.  If you are a newbie, I suggest you stick to a new domain or expired names and use the money to promote your new site.