Locating the right domain name is very important for the branding of a business and the business website. These are my favorite sites for researching and finding domain name. This is the process that I will go through in selecting a domain name for a business website.

Keywords
My first step is to identify keyword phrases that are getting good traffic. There are a number of good research tools that are free.

1. Google Adwords Free tool based on PPC data
2. WordTracker Free tool based on search data

Locate Domain Names
I have two research tools that I will use to search using the keywords I want.

1. DomainsBot: Reasearch based on keyword phrases. Advanced features let you select based on many parameters including maximum number of characters.
2. NameBoy: Generates possible names based on Keywords and displays results in an easy to scan table showing results for all possible TLD’s (COM, NET, ORG, etc.)

Other Domain Research Tools

1. Buy and Sell Domains: Sedo is the leading marketplace for buying and selling used domain names
2. Expiring Domains: DropScout shows domains expiring (Pending Delete) in the next 6 days. Search by age, PR or number of characters.
3. Whois Search: Very complete set of whois info as well as screenshot, history and SEO information
4. Free Domain Appraisal: This is a free service and the results are always on the high side. This is still a good quick estimate.
5. Internet Archive: What websites have been on a domain name in the past.

When it comes to buying the domain, I recommend that you come you come to one of my websites DougWilliams.com or Dwassoc.com

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 4:37 am and is filed under Business Web Hosting, Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.