Step 4 – Choose a Domain Name
This sounds like an easy step, but you may soon find it can be surprisingly difficult. As mentioned before the majority of your traffic will hopefully come from search engines. To rank well in search engines one of the key factors is to obtain a domain name that includes one or more of your keywords. This can be a real problem because YourKeywords.com is most likely already registered. You can start by going to a domain registrar such as Go Daddy and enter the domain you want on the homepage. If it’s not registered already you can register it. If someone else has already registered it you will receive a list of suggestions of available domain names or and go back and try another domain. Depending on the term you chose you may or may not find a domain you want by doing this.
The second method I’d recommend is a domain name suggestion tool such as Name Boy. This tool will let you enter your keywords and come up with a large number of suggestions for domains based on those keywords. It will also show you which of those domains are still available. I used this tool to register the sample site TropicalArt.org. I normally...