What is a domain name at all? A domain name is the text name corresponding to the numeric IP address of a computer server and associated website on the Internet. When you decide to have your own website you also need to decide on a domain name where you can use your website and where people can find it. But how do you find a good domain name and what do you have to be aware of when choosing a domain name?

Sometimes a good domain name for your website is to choose a domain name that matches the name of your website. As an example, a website uses the business name it represents as its name and the matching domain name is "businessname.com". This helps identifying the business on the Internet. A very well known real life example is the website of Microsoft, which can be found at Microsoft.com.

The use of keywords in domain names can be important. Some search engines identify the keywords and deliver the matching website as a search results to people doing a search for this keyword. Using keywords in domain names can often have significant impact on how well a website is ranked in the search results. However - keyword stuffing in domain names is a bad thing to. People will have difficulties remembering those names and it just does not look as professional. If you are serious about your domain name avoid domain names like "search-engine-success-guaranteed.com" or something like that. You will get the idea. How long or short should a domain name be? The shorter a domain name the easier it is to remember. A short domain name also looks more professional (some exceptions may apply though). The perfect domain name has 14 characters or less. However - it is not always possible to follow this rule. If you need to work with more than 14 characters, 22 characters should be your upper limit. Do not go with longer domain names to avoid problems.

Should a domain name include hyphens? Hyphens in general are not a bad thing but you might loose visitors to the same domain name without hyphens. Using a hyphenated domain name makes verbal advertising more difficult as the speaker has to make sure that people understand the hyphen (dash) in the domain name. Still - it will be a significant disadvantage using a hyphenated domain name for advertising. For search engine optimization a hyphen does not really matter though and the domain name or better - website will show up at the same position as a non-hyphenated domain name.

The domain name extension or TLD (Top Level Domain) plays an important role, too.