David Fiske Affiliate marketing & web development musings from Fiske Towers

I need a .co.uk domain name as I will be building a satellite navigation site with UK prices and UK affiliate networks.

The best search tool to see if a domain has been taken is at Nominet. They are the registry for .co.uk names and they have the most complete list of .co.uk around.

I will be using the keyword research tool from the last lecture to form domain name suggestions with "sat nav" in it.
 
Here are my results of this long task!

(It is probably worth mentioning that I will not be using brand names in the domain as that restricts what I can do with the site).

• satnav.co.uk
• sat-nav.co.uk
• satnav4u.co.uk
• satnavreviews.co.uk
• cheapsatnav.co.uk
• natsav.co.uk [ I had to try it ;-) ]
• satnavsystem.co.uk
• satnavsystems.co.uk
• gpssatnav.co.uk
• carsatnav.co.uk
• bestsatnav.co.uk
• newsatnav.co.uk
• buysatnav.co.uk
• satnavuk.co.uk
• comparesatnav.co.uk
• mysatnav.co.uk
• satnavgifts.co.uk

From that, there are four possible names:

• satnavreviews.co.uk
• newsatnav.co.uk
• comparesatnav.co.uk
• satnavgifts.co.uk

We now need to know how popular each of these names is (in terms of searches). We will use Good Keywords again to do this.

• Sat Nav Reviews - 1,028 searches in October 2006
• New Sat Nav - 5 searches in October 2006
• Compare Sat Nav - 179 searches in October 2006
• Sat Nav Gifts - 23 searches in October 2006

However, it is not just search quantities that we should decide upon. If your domain name is not memorable, how do you expect people to remember it? It needs to be snappy. And broad.

Broad? Well, if I went with Sat Nav Gifts, people would associate my site with presents. If they are not looking to buy presents, they are not going to buy from my site! Plus, what happens if I want to add satellite navigation accessories:

Fred: Here Cousin It, Merry Christmas!
Cousin It: My, what I have always wanted - a cable for my Tom Tom!

To me, cables are not gifts. They are accessories and hence called accessories! I wouldn't want to find cables on a gift site. I would want to find sensible gift ideas.

New Sat Nav would rule out becoming affiliated with eBay and listing satellite navigation auctions on my site.

Compare Sat Nav is good and so to is Sat Nav Reviews. Price comparison is certainly one thing I will be offering but it is not the only thing. I want to add reviews. Conversely, Sat Nav Reviews is limiting too. However, we need a domain name and one of these will have to do.

I could buy both, and perhaps I will. But I need a root domain name that will be associated with my web hosting. Any other domain names can be pointed there.

Therefore, I will now register http://www.comparesatnav.co.uk as the base URL and http://www.satnavreviews.co.uk as a forwarding URL.