Domains still play a very important role on the success of the websites built upon them. A good domain can be the difference between a successful site and a flop. It is important to do some thinking (with your marketing cap on) before deciding on a name for your website or blog.

The domain name plays an important role on the returning website visits and word of mouth. A short, catchy, easy to remember and spell domain will make it easy for a visitor to return in the future. If the domain is long, hard to remember and spell, it’s likely the visitor will end up somewhere else or never return.

If your domain is long, contains dashes or numbers, there is a possibility that the user will completely forget about it. After two or three days they won’t even remember that your site exists. A short and memorable domain, will stick in the mind of the visitor. With a memorable name, even if they don’t remember the exact website address, they can type the catch phrase into Google to find your website again.

I recently stumbled upon a domain name study by Daniel Scocco in 2008. The results were pretty interesting. In his analysis, he gathered the top 250 most popular websites in the world (according to Alexa) and counted how many characters and words their domains had.

• Average number of characters in a domain name: 7.15
• 70% had less than 8 characters
• The most common structure was 8 characters and 2 words
• 86% of the domains had a .com extension
• 4% contained numbers and only 3 used dashes

What insight can you take from this research when it comes to picking a domain name for your blog or website?

Follow these six GOLDEN rules when picking a domain name:

1. Keep it Short (target around 8 letters)
2. Memorable & Catchy
3. Easy to Spell (phonetic, spell it like it sounds)
4. Descriptive and Brand-able (think Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter)
5. No Hyphens or Numbers
6. .COM Extension

The bottom line is a name alone won’t make your website successful. It’s only a name. Good content, products, and services make a website a success. That being said and all other things being equal, a website with a good domain name will always outperform a competitor with a bad or average domain name.

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