With over 50 million registered domain names, it's tough to find a good one that suits your internet business. Unfortunately the domain name industry is full of opportunistic traders who buy and sell domain names without any intention of ever using them. Because of this, the majority of registered domain names don't even have a website to go with them.

This can be quite frustrating as you seek out a good name to build your internet business around. But at the end of the day in a first come first served world, we must try another way to find that great domain name.

There are several tools online that can be very handy, when it comes to looking for your domain name. Although, in this article we will discuss what makes a good domain name.

To brand or not to brand?

Branding is a key element in traditional offline marketing. Having a unique, catchy name does wonders for any business in the real world. However, when it comes to an online presence, you might just be better off with a domain name that is rich in keywords.

Search engines primarily work on keywords as you may know. You enter a search term or keywords and the search engine produces results based on their formulas and the websites they believe to be the best fit for your search.

Now, there are many Search Engine Optimization techniques that can be used by anyone on any site. The same techniques could and are applied to most websites, so my question is what could possibly be the number one thing that is unique and can separate one website from another? Of course, the domain name!

Using keywords in your domain name could give you the edge over your competitors internet businesses, and get your website listed on the first page of search results, for your chosen keywords.

Of course, it's not so important if your website is a personal one and you are not looking to make any money from it. But, if you are selling something or wanting to make money from your website, I would strongly recommend using keywords in all of your domain names.

Just to prove it, go to Google and search for "pizza place". You will see in the results that any occurrence of the words "pizza" or "place" is actually highlighted in bold. So Google is definitely looking out for your search terms and highlighting them for you.

On the other hand, branding your internet business is still a strong concept online as well. If you find that catchy name (such as....hmmm Google?) and market it well, then you could be on your way to word of mouth fame in no time.

If your business name is available, register it. You can always register keyword rich domain names to draw the traffic, and redirect them to your business name domain.

Hyphens or no hyphens?

Another common topic of discussion is whether to use hyphens in your domain names. I own mixtures of both hyphenated and non-hyphenated names. There is nothing wrong with hyphens. In fact, for search engines you are helping them by separating words that could be read differently.

Here is one example: johndoestables.com. This domain could belong to a horse trainer John Doe as a website for his racing stables, or it could also be read as John Does Tables. Now, if you use hyphens john-doe-stables.com. you can see it would actually help to distinguish where the words end in this example.

The only small problem you will run into is word of mouth advertising where people will have to call out the hyphens. But believe me, you want all your traffic to come from search engines because it's free and the volumes are enormous.

Using abbreviations?

If your preferred name was something like pizzatoyou.com but it was taken, and you see pizza2you.com is available, should you take it? There are several common abbreviations or variations of certain words that are almost commonly accepted, particularly on the internet and in sms messaging.

Whether you choose to use such variations in your domain name is totally up 2 u, however word of mouth advertising will always require the person making the recommendation, to remind people of the substitute used in the domain name of your internet business. Choose wisely! If you cant remember your own domain name easily, neither can your potential customers.