Choosing a good domain name for your business website can be very hard but it is also essential to get it right, after all you want it to work for you. In this article I explore the many different aspects that you should be considering when deciding on a suitable domain name. I also take you through the steps I follow when choosing an appropriate domain name for my websites

On March 16th, the International Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) publicly de-accredited the domain registrar RegisterFly.com for fundamental contractual breaches. BusinessWeek Online appropriately called the RegisterFly.com debacle a "Train wreck" and although this is not SEO-related I think StepForth SEO Blog readers should be kept in the know about this situation. Perhaps this post will help you protect your domain(s) and ultimately your livelihoods from future train wrecks. To that end, I have outlined some tips at the end of this post that will serve as a checklist to help protect you.

Transferring traffic and popularity to a new domain is a painstaking process that no one on the web appears to be immune to, or so Topix.net has realized. Topix.net is a leading news aggregation resource that has been in the news lately because they are planning to move their site from Topix.net to Topix.com after purchasing the .com for a cool million from a Canadian animation company.

How long ago was it that you purchased your Domain Name? Is it time to re-register? Check your expiration date today! If you have six months or less on your contract, re-register today, before something happens and it's too late.

.Mobi - The Birth Of A Mobile Internet Revolution?

The recent announcement that .mobi domain names had been released for general sale caused very little stirring on the Internet.

I’ve written quite extensively before about how to select the best domain name for your business. It is also a good idea to secure alternate versions of your primary domain name as a means to prevent competitors from trying to squeeze in on your name and branding efforts. Buying multiple domain names is a great strategy that can be used to capture additional type-in traffic, secure other branding avenues you may wish to pursue, or simply to prevent your competitors from securing them.

What's your domain name worth?

Perhaps it is better to ask how much a potential buyer would be willing to pay to acquire your domain name. If there was some interest in your domain name, you ought to, at least, have some kind of idea of its value. Generally, is the domain good or bad? If good, how good is it?

Choosing your domain name is a no-brainer, right? Not so fast. Your domain name, or URL, can have vast consequences in both the online and offline marketing arena. Long or difficult to spell domain names can be the death toll for any website, long before its even been given a chance at success. Short or clever domain names can make people remember where to go more easily, while keyword domain names can often bring in unintentional, yet quality, traffic as people type in whatever.com.

One of the most important aspects of choosing a domain name is that it should be non-infringing. This is not an easy task since most unique names have already been registered. The number of useful domain names from the marketing point of view have become extremely limited. Several companies now register variations of their trademark names as a preventive measure against infringement. For example, check www.coke.com, www.coca-cola.com, and www.coca-cola.com, or try www.3m.com and www.mmm.com.

Let's just take a quick glimpse at what we've done so far:

We've used www.wehavethem.com, www.DeletedDomains.com or www.namewinner.com to locate names that are about to expire or have expired. We've located consumer site names with a large amount of traffic in the past month. We've grabbed them either personally or using an automated grabber to ensure we get the names we want.