12 May Top 10 Domain Name Tips That Secured NBA Advertising For My Site

In 2002, I had a website that marketed to Urbanites in Atlanta. In was called “BlackLanta.com”

It was cute and played to the term HOTlanta.

Traffic and attention was low because in my assessment, it was:

• Hard to spell
• Hard to type
• Hard to optimize as a brand on a limited budget.

It is hard to give someone a website name and have to stop to spell it… Been there and have a t shirt!

I had to buy something more recognizable.

I saw in the whois that BlackAtlanta.com was going to be available. This would be more recognizable with easier spelling.

Back then, there were not that many registrars would  ‘back order’  a Domain name for you.  Today, registrars allow you to put your order in prior to name expiration… Then, they do all the grunt work to get the name for you.

So a friend and I programmed an application that would check the whois every 30 seconds for availability. IF available, it would send an message to my pager.

(Haha, remember pagers? And beepers?)

So the morning I bought BlackAtlanta.com for less than two Big Mac meals, I forgot my pager. I called into Godaddy on a gut feeling and it was available. Visa in hand, I grabbed it!

So I redirected DNS for BlackLanta.com over to BlackAtlanta.com.  To my surprise, SEO recogntion skyrocketed and within weeks, there were several NBA players and party promoters that contacted me to advertise their events for the 2003 NBA All Star Weekend in Atlanta.  Good times!

That was one of my favorite memories on the power of the internet, search engine optimization, and a good domain name.

A Few Tips About Domain Name Registration

Domain names have an expiration date. I was able to predict the date of availability based on a period of about 45 days after the expiration that included a redemption period for the previous owner to renew it.

Today, that post-expiration period has shortened to about 30 days. Registrars also charge current owners a premium to renew their names that are in redemption period.

My Domain Name tips are:

• Keep your domain name simple and easy to spell and remember.
• Keep it short as possible
• Always try to get the most memorable domain extension –> The dot com.  Otherwise, you may lose type-in traffic to a Dot com if you choose one of the other top level domains.
• Know that brand building will take more cash or some type of guerrilla marketing to promote for off the wall names.
• Include keywords, if you can, in the domain name. For example, seaurchins.com will be easier to optimize for SEO since it includes the keywords “sea urchins”
• Purchase the “stack” if you can…
• Get the dot com, dot net, dot org, dot info, dot tv and dot biz. . This can prevent cybersquatting or those guys who may want to put up a porn site on one of your non-puchased tld’s.
• Buy and keep your domain names with a reputable registrar.
• Keep your registrar passwords secure, but always share with a family member or business associate. This will keep your online site or business running if something ever happened to you.
• Keep your billing information current and put your most important names on auto-registration to renew them. In case you are too busy to get renewal reminders, you have a peace of mind that it will renew before expiration.