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TIPS, HINTS & ADVICE ON DOMAIN NAMES

The first three are all my own work - but there isn't much else out there. The first domain names - a marketer's perspective is quite lengthy, but you'll struggle to find anything similar anywhere.

The second - why register a domain name - is a promotional hand-out I used at meetings, seminars, presentations and the like around 1997/8. At that time I was 'selling' domain names - but if you can get past the 'selling' element of it there is some reasonable advice on choosing a name included.

When I talk on domain names I always emphasise the way they will look in print [see also articles above]. There are some classic errors around [one of my favourites is the holiday site ChooseSpain.com which reads as 'Chooses Pain']. However, it seems I'm not the only one obsessed with the subject, take a look at Good URL Bad URL. For some more 'classics' here's another site - Easily mispronounced domain names.

Just out of interest really - there are some odd-ball .uk domain name suffixes out there. The chances are you will never see most of them - and you certainly won't be able to register them.

How URLs Can Affect Top Search Engine Rankings is an excellent article based around the way search engines 'read' domain names and URLs. Notice that the author uses the term 'subdomain' where I use 'second' and 'third' level - no worries, they're the same thing. Also worth noting that the Americans are VERY anti-hyphen, whereas we are more accepting of it in the UK. Another minor point is the use of the underscore in URLS [as in the URL of the page of the article] - I don't like them because when used on a web page or 'Word' file the underscore disappears into the underline that identifies the phrase is a hyperlink.

You should bear in mind that this is about Naming Your Web 2.0 Startup - but it does address the issue of domain names in that for a pure online business your domain name and trading name are the same.

This article - Sender-Line Branding Tactics In Retail Emails - is on the 'sender' details on emails, but it does include some domain name stuff.

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