In this article, I will share my thoughts on how to choose a domain name.

A domain name is usually composed of two parts. The one to the right of the dot (.) is called the top-level domain (TLD) name while the one to the left is called the (SLD) second-level domain name.

In choosing the second-level domain name, I always choose or look for a word or phrase which is descriptive of what I am trying to achieve with my site. My reason for this is two-fold. First, it will be easier for humans to remember, and second, it will work better with contextual advertising programs like Google AdSense.

In my experience, the words that can be found in the SLD are the set of words which the AdSense program initially looks at to determine which ads to serve on your site. Thus, the second-level domain name of my websites: FilipinoWriter, WriteLit, PinoyFilm, PinoyTechie (PinoyTech and the better PinoyTechnology already taken). In choosing an SLD name which is composed of more than one word I see to it that the name is not too long -- again, for easy recall.

As much as possible I avoid using the dash in my second-level domain name. There are assertions that using a dash is very "sploggy" and may turn off the search engine spiders/crawlers especially that of Google and will penalize you in its Search Engine Results Pages or (SERPs).

Footnote. Splogs or spam blogs according to Wikipedia, are "artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed. Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either Inauthentic Text or merely stolen from other websites."End of footnote

Meanwhile, I always go for the .com top level domain name if it's still available. (A good place to look into the availability of a domain name is the site Domainsbot.com which also gives a myriad of domain name suggestions based on your domain name search.) Since the birth of World Wide Web, the .com TLD has always been the most well-known and popular TLD so one figures that it will be the first thing which the user will try. Although one can argue that a user can always search for the name of site, I think it's better not to leave anything to chance and to have all your bases covered.