Strategies for Creating Domain Names - Phonemes over Spelling
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To enable a name to cut across different countries, name consulting companies avoid English-sounding names and words. A domain name like danchan.com or vooner.com successfully cuts across European languages, American English and urban Japanese. This is not a coincidence; all the above languages (apart from traditional Japanese) have the same language root. Domain names that sound too English won't cut it when the Internet floodgates of China and several other countries in southeast Asia open up. Name Labs calls this "multilingual function."
The next thing they do is make sure that their neologism is easy to say. They refer to this as "speech stream visibility," meaning how easy it is to hear the word in a complete sentence. The speech stream visibility is more important than the notational visibility (that is, how easy it is to remember in a block of text) since most people learn how to speak before they learn how to read. After this long process the word is edited to reflect modern trends in spelling and to replace certain phonemes, "f" with "ph," hard "c" with "k." Then the word is tested to make sure it reflects a particular input statement.
In order to save time during the development of the name, the input statement would have been developed during the information gathering stage of the name selection process. Any common morphemes (think keywords) would be eliminated in order to reduce the chances of developing a domain name similar to that of another brand. Name Labs' Domain Labs actually engages in the practice of selling domain names for particular categories (they must be running out of clientele in the domain name section). Domain names that were available at http://www.namelabs.net/ as of February include Blogasus.com, Blogadon.com, CityZap.com, Hubsters.com, LoadFly.com, Nitestik.com, Podasus.com, Pokology.com, NewBaron.com, LaserVoip.com, GuyPhones.com, Mobilife.info, Webideos.com, Travideos.com, e911.info, Wimaxpo.com, Firenzo.com, Namesaur.com, Namedon.com, Namegon.com, Namegone.com, Godslog.com, Phonery.com.
A Few Closing Tips
Leave out the dashes, hyphens and alpha numeric domain names. Seriously. It adds unnecessary key strokes to your domain name. Remember, the search engines were not important 12 years ago; who says they will be important 12 years from now?
If you are picking a domain name strictly for your SEO, then do go whole hog and cram it full of key words. If a domain name you want is taken but you would like to keep an eye on it until its available, get a watch service, pay them to watch it and snap it up if and when it becomes available. One such service I found online is located at www.fenclwebdesign.com. They call their service "back ordering" and it can be transferred at no cost if you decide to give up on one domain name after some time (the fee for the service is less than $20).
Finally, write this point down: get a proper name. When the smoke clears and the music stops, history has shown that web sites with proper names are the last ones standing.
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