OK – so let's say you’ve just decided to create a new website..
Whether it's an online store, an affiliate review blog, a product launch or even a website for your offline business, the first thing you need is a domain name.
The domain you use for your website will be recognised as your online brand and it’s important to choose a domain that will become a real digital asset.
Choosing your domain can be a really exciting process as it’s widely known that some domains which start out as a bright idea can go on to become tremendously valuable.
Many 7 and 8 figure online brands probably just started out as a good domain name idea.
Picking the right web domain is also important because your website is the platform you will be creating to communicate with your audience and show your potential customers why they should listen to you rather than your competitors.
In this article I’m going to talk about 4 completely free online tools which can help you find a memorable domain name that helps to set yourself up as a leader in your niche:
LeanDomainSearch.com: You can use this site to discover the best currently available .com domains by simply entering a keyword to search. The site then responds with as many currently available (ie.not on premium sale) domains as possible with your chosen keyword or keyphrase combined with popular keywords. The .com tld (top level domain ie. the bit after the .) extention is the most commonly used on the net and also by far the most recognisable domain ending from the perspective of your prospects and customers. For this reason, this tld is the most powerful for boosting your brand and the most helpful tld for making your site appear more professional and trustworthy. It also gives your website more sales potential if you plan to sell the domain or domain and website files at any point. Put simply, opting for a short, brandable dotcom domain is your safest option for an online business project and LeanDomainSearch.com enables you to find one of those without wasting too much time. This image shows the top few results I obtained when I entered the keyphrase ‘markets' for the example:
ExpiredDomains.net: ExpiredDomains.net is an easy-to-use search engine for expired domains, that is domains which were previously in use but that stopped being renewed by their previous owners. You can conduct searches based on several different criteria. Here are just a few of the options you can search under but there are many more:
– tld extention (eg. .com, .org, .net, .biz, .xyz, .co, .co.uk, .us, .ca)
– keywords and phrases within the domain name
– domain age
– expiry date
– backlinks to the domain
This is a brillliant tool for discovering potentially very valuable and commercially viable domains which have been missed by other entrepreneurs. You can use it to grab potentially valuable domains as soon as they become available which you ca then use for your own projects or even resell as a domain broker.
You can use this site to discover previously used domains which are now available.
The Go Daddy domain name appraisal tool: This is a valuation tool for domain names with any TLD. I use this url: https://uk.godaddy.com/domain-value-appraisal but the url you access will probably vary depending on your geographical location. When you perform a search on a given domain, the appraisal tool runs an algorithm to provide an estimate as to the value of the domain name based how much commercial demand there would likely be for it.
Here is a screenshot of the output when I used the appraisal tool to give an estimate of the domain name value for my blog domain.
The Epik.com domain valuation tool: Epik is a web domain registrar and domain name services provider. They offer a free domain name appraisal service for their members very much like the one available at Go Daddy. You don’t have to pay for appraisals or even have a domain registered with Epik to be a member and you get valuations of domains you are considering for development at this url:
https://appraise.epik.com/
When you enter a domain name into the appraisal tool, it will provide you with an estimate for its value based on several different factors like the sld (left of the dot domain name), tld (right of the dot domain name extention), how frequently people search for the words in the domain, how many search results match the sld domain name, along with numerous other .factors which affect the value of the domain being evaluated. The valuation tool at Epik provides different results than the one at Go Daddy and my experience of using both these tools has brought me to the conclusion that the Go Daddy tool provides a valuation which is more based on the brandability and memorability of your domain whereas the Epik tool provides a valuation which is more based on the keyword popularity of the word(s) which constitute the domain.
This is a screenshot of the output from the Epik domain valuation tool when I appraised my blog domain ‘ClickMarketer.com'.
As you can see there is a big difference between the 2 valuations and your ultimate guide when deciding how valuable a domain could be for YOUR business is your own instinct. Computer algortihms can provide useful insights but your own feelings about a domain and whether you would like that domain as a representation of your brand should be your biggest consideration when making your final decision as to which of the available domains you have shortlisted is going to be the one you use for your project.
The other thing to remember is that it is the CONTENT you put on a website which converts visitors to prospects and prospects to customers. There are lots of brilliant web domains out there and most of them do absolutely nothing because there is a big gap between buying a domain and making it into a profitable website.
It all STARTS with a good domain though 🙂
