A successful domain name branding strategy requires some efforts, because your choice of domain name will in all likelihood influences your site's tone, search engine optimization (SEO) effectiveness and internet marketing strategy. One common and recommended practice is to use your company name as your domain name. This will protect your corporate identity online even if you end up using a different domain name than that of your company name. Not registering your company name, which would cost less $20 per year, may run the risk of someone else registering your company name as their domain name, and unless your company name is a registered trademark, there is not much you can do to the owner should they decide to host questionable contents under your company name.

Take your time and select your website's domain name carefully, because it can be a hassle to change your domain name once your website is online and indexed by search engines. There are many inconveniences that come with changing your domain name, such as, having to change your business cards, letterheads, and so forth. Changing domain name midway will set you back considerably with most search engines because all your pages will need to be re-index, and that can take months. For instance, it took Yahoo almost a year to index 18 pages of a 32-page website. Below are some considerations for selecting domain names:

Domain Name Extensions - When choosing a domain name for your business you will need to consider which extension to use, such as, domain-name.com, domain-name.ca, domain-name.net, domain-name.us, domain-name.org, and so forth. Search engines will crawl all domain name extensions without preference, because search engines value contents and actual domain names but not the extensions. However, businesses tend to prefer domain names with .com (commercial) extensions, and for that reason most good .com domain names are taken.

Domain Names Containing Keywords - When possible incorporate your websites primary keywords or keyphrases in your domain name selection. Search engines will give more weigh to keywords that are included in domain names, and for that reason having a domain name with keywords or keyphrases is a preferred practice in search engine optimization.

Unique and Short Domain Names - A long domain name can be harder to remember and could be a turn off for your online customers. Keeping your domain name short, concise and to the point will give your online business the impression of legitimacy. A short domain name will be easier to work with when it comes to print material, such as letterhead, flyers, posters and business cards.

Keyword Relevant Domain Names - One of the best ways to improve your website's ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs) is to choose a domain name that contain your website's primary keywords or keyphrases.