1 – Name Your Brand

The first thing you should do is to consider what urls are available to you–then choose your brand name accordingly if you can. Be creative–do your research and see who else is using that name or anything similar. Be original, exciting and innovative when naming your brand— the same way you should be with your product.

2 – Tie Your Brand to the Domain Name

Your domain name should match your brand. Always choose one that doesn’t need explanation.

3 – Don’t choose a domain based just on keywords in the URL

Main keywords are not the key for high ranking in your domain name, although this is a factor. Think out a memorable, brand-related and available domain name, but don’t get obsessed with it. And keep it short and simple if you can, like JANE. One of the biggest problems with buying domain names is domain abuse. Existing backlinks in Google (“link:www.yoursite.com”) should always be checked beforehand (Wayback Machine is great to ensure clean domain names).

4 – Don’t Try to be Clever

Forget about hard-to-spell, long and clever words or anything too complex–unless you want to make it hard for people to remember your url. Do yourself a favor: dump the cutesy names and don’t use numbers–they won’t help. Best practice? A name with only one possible spelling.

5 – Extensions Matter (.com, .org, .net, etc.)

As of June 2013, there are 110 million .COM, 15 million .NET and 10 million .ORG domains on the web. Because most people still assume that .COM is the only possible choice, it’s the better option.