Choosing the right domain name for your website is critical to your success. I’ve probably registered well over 400 domain names in my life and after throwing away 399.5 junk domain names I can tell you the difference between a good domain name and a bad one. Instead of telling you what you definitely should or should not buy, I will give you some suggestions based on your sites purpose.

1. Personal Sites: Register your name as your domain name. Regardless of if you plan on starting your own website or not, register your name! I registered both my full name and short name, andyisaacson.com and andrewisaacson.com many years ago. If you cannot get your first/last name, try getting your first name/last initial or something easy to remember.
2. Blog Sites: Try to come up with something unique, something catchy. More and more I’m noticing that the big blogs have a unique identity. I would try to avoid putting the word “blog” in my blog domain name. I put the name blog in “Blog of Revenue” because I thought it was catchy. Had it been “Revenue Blog” it might have been kinda cheesy, however, it also might have received better search engine ranking. Some good examples of unique, popular blog names are: engadget, lifehacker, technorati, doshdosh, just to name a few. I helped a friend setup a blog today that will be dedicated to Registered Nurses. We registered the name rnitus.com. Its catchy, short, has to do with “RN’s” and a disease. Perfect.
3. Forum Sites: As with blogs, forums also demand a certain level of a unique/catchy name. However, I think that with forums it is most important to grab the most direct keyword domain name available. You can cover for not having a unique/catchy name with a sweet logo and design. Because so many people are searching directly for “Dodge Dakota Forum”, “Mac Forum”, “Honda Forum”, those are the best domain names to purchase (dodgedakotaforum.com, macforum.com, hondaforum.com). When the “forum” domain name is not available, look for something catchy. To find out what keywords people are using, check out: SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool.
4. Ecommerce Sites: A unique/catchy domain name that relates to your product and niche is important. A few good examples of domain names in the Auto Parts industry for example are: AutoAnything.com, AutoPartsWarehouse.com and TruckRacingParts.com. Very descriptive and still catchy. These domain names leave the user with no question as to what the sites might be selling.

www.GoDaddy.com is the only registrar that I will ever use. They have competitive pricing, the best domain name management, and the best customer support that I have used so far. I have used other companies such as Network Solutions, Moniker and Enom in the past and GoDaddy is way better in every area.

In the end, you want a domain name that people can remember. The most important thing is the content you put on your site. Stay tuned and we will get to that shortly.

This last week I logged into my moniker account to manage one of my domain names. Now, I normally keep my domain names at Godaddy but I had used moniker earlier this year for their escrow service. When I logged into my moniker account, I immediately noticed that my domain name was missing. I called moniker to see what had happened. Customer service, which claimed to be available mon-fri till 12AM EST was gone and it was only 4PM PST. So I pressed “3″ to get their corporate/advertising dept. The lady I talked to could not tell me anything about my domain name, but instead told me to put in a ticket on their website and someone would get back to me monday.

“Are you SERIOUS?!”, I said. “You are seriously telling me to put in a ticket and just freak out all weekend? If I were calling GoDaddy, someone would be helping me right now!”

The lady replied with, “If you called GoDaddy, you wouldnt get anyone right now.”

“Yes I would!”, I replied.

My friend Thom, who was sitting next to me and my dad who was sitting behind me heard the conversation and both piped in, “Yes we would!”. The Lady continued to diss Godaddy and was refusing me anymore help. So, I hung up.

I called Godaddy and after 2 rings someone answered and began helping me immediately even though the domain name was not even under their registry. I told him all I knew about the domain and after he did a little research he gave me a few possible scenarios and some very helpful suggestions.

This morning(monday), I finally got a call back from customer service at moniker. I told the lady that I had logged in, and that my domain name was missing. I told her how much I had paid for the domain name, and that it was urgent. After 10 minutes, she was unable to tell me anything. Like, seriously anything. Not like she couldnt tell me more than Godaddy told me, I mean, she could not tell me ANYTHING!

Her response was, “I’m going to put in a ticket so that the techs can look and see what happened. I cant see anything in the history as to what might have happened here. They should respond to you after about 3-4 days, the tech’s are in the middle of a migration right now”.

I was like, “Whoa, are you telling me that my domain name sits in limbo for 3-4 days because your techs are doing a migration?!”

“Yes”, She said.

The conversation pretty much ended at that. I will have to wait 3-4 days to find out what might have happened to my few thousand dollar domain name. I am never using them again. Godaddy would drop everything that they were doing to find out what had happened and resolve the problem. I’m telling you folks, use Godaddy. It will be the best thing you can do to promote world peace. I am convinced that the reason that Osama Bin Laden is a terrorist is because he once used Moniker.

Thank you for listening to my rant. The domain name in question is/was one of my most valuable assets/possesions. However, it is only a thing. In the end, its not a big deal. My wife is way more valuable and she is well. So that is all that matters.