Tips that save time.
Before I explain what a domain suffix is and give you a list of my favorite ones, let me just acknowledge one sad thing… Finding a good domain name for your online business or blog can be a tough task these days. It seems like every decent domain name has already been taken.
Just so you know. If, for example, you’d like to put your hands on any three-character domain, you can forget it. If you’d like to have a general dictionary word domain (like: “pizza”, or “bicycle”), you can forget it too. Unless, of course, you have $5M to spare.
Moreover, it doesn’t get any better with various keyword-rich domains. If you happen to be a guitarist and want to share your experience with other likeminded people, guess what … you can forget about “learnguitar.com”.
That being said, the situation is not that hopeless either. That’s because you can use a domain suffix (or prefix) and put it after (or before) your ideal phrase when you register a new domain.
I first created this list as a resource to help me whenever I need a shiny new domain. I hope you’ll find it equally valuable. Also, remember that choosing a domain name is an important decision and that you should research all the possibilities before you make the final choice. Feel free to check out these two articles for further reference: Which Domain Is Right for You, 6 Important Factors When Choosing Perfect Domain Name.
Domain prefix
Let’s start with prefixes, as there’s not that many of them that look real and make sense.
Some of the most popular are:
- howto
- my
- best
- top
- pro
- free
Basically, all items on the above list are pretty self-explanatory. But let me tell you something about the last prefix on the list – free.
“Free” is proven to be the most powerful word in English language (check out “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely). As it turns out, people are much more likely to react to anything with “free” in it.
Unfortunately, it can’t be used in every situation. If you’re offering something for free then by all means go for it. But if you want to use it just as a trick to draw people to your site, then it might backfire and you might end up making a lot of people angry, which is never good for business.
In a nutshell: use “free” whenever it makes 100% sense.
Domain suffix
Choosing a domain suffix is much easier. There are many great suffixes, so I divided them into separate categories. Depending on what kind of website you intend to create you’ll find some of these categories more applicable than the other.
Let’s start with the obvious stuff:
1. Numbers
These are the easiest suffixes to use, and they look pretty good with every phrase.
Examples:
- learnguitar2.com
- tutorial9.net
I wouldn’t advise to use numbers as prefixes though. Unless you have a really solid idea for the name of your website. For example, if you want to start a self development blog called “7 Days to Happiness” then the domain “7dayshappiness” makes sense. On the other hand, including a number just for the sake of it looks really weird.
2. News related terms
This type of terms indicate that the site is providing some kind of current news within a given niche. These are terms like:
- news
- now
- today
- daily
- journal
- diary
All of the above terms have a kind of “newsy” feel to them. They all make great suffixes.
Examples:
- sandiegotoday
- learnkickboxingnow
- writingnewsdaily
As you can see in the last example, I’ve used two suffixes at the same time. This can be a solution if you’re really desperate for a specific term.
3. How-to/information related terms
They work great for all kinds of blogs and information websites that focus on giving some specific advice about something.
Terms like:
- guide
- blog
- advice
- info
- hq
- report
- journey
- tutorial
“HQ” as for “headquarters”. What’s more about the “hq” suffix is that it’s extremely short, so it might be great if you have a long basic phrase for your domain.
Examples:
- ultimateweightlossdiethq
- bestxboxgamestutorials
- becomingaracedriverjourney
As you can see the second example uses a combination of both a domain suffix and a prefix. Of course, you can use this with all the other phrases from this post. However, I would advise to leave such an approach as your last resort because your main keyword phrase might get lost among all the prefixes and suffixes, which in essence are not that important.
4. Product-based terms
If you want to create an affiliate site, or any other commercial site for that matter, you can try using some product-based terms. These are terms like:
- review
- reviewed
- discount
- shop
- store
This type of terms work best with highly commercial core phrases. For example, if you’re starting with something like “powerdrills” and intend to create an Amazon affiliate site around this term, then product-based terms may be just what you need.
Examples:
- powerdrillsreviewed
- bestpowerdrillsstore
5. Internet-marketing hype terms
Sorry about the name, but I’m just trying to be honest here. Let me just show you what I mean:
- bonus
- bonuses
- scam
- truth
The fact is, these are completely normal terms, but they are overly used by many internet marketers who are trying to attract people to their offers by any means necessary. Therefore, they look very pitchy and very spammy. If you think that you can overcome this burden and create a good experience for your visitors anyway then you might consider going with them.
Examples:
- cheapairlineticketsscam
- weightlosstruth
This concludes the list. I hope you can find something interesting among all these phrases. At the same time I’m sure that a lot of other suffixes and prefixes have been left out, so feel free to leave a comment and share your own ideas.
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Been looking for domain names for a few days. The .com, .org, .net are all taken. This gives me some ideas to find another keyword match domain. Thanks a lot!
we used “the” as a prefix for a newly registered premium keyword domain. Also, single letter “a” can be used as prefix. example: awebmasterforum dot com.