My perspective is a combination of the first and last group of people. It really doesn’t matter what you choose for your website’s domain name as long as it easy to remember. This approach makes my life much easier, because I do not have to worry about so called keyword rich domain.

I have no intention to dwell into what extension should you get, whether or not to include hyphens in the domain or should it be 50 characters long- these arguments were discussed in great details before. Chiming into the conversation, I would like to ad my personal experience and what I have learned from it.

When I have registered my first ever domain, I thought it would be a great idea to purchase a domain which would be a combination of my first and last name. While for some people, who’s name is easy to remember this may be a good idea. Having your name for domain may prevent you from selling it for a quick profit. However if you are from eastern Europe and your combined first and last name is about 20 characters or longer, chances are you should think twice before turning it into a domain name for your website.

I think a real time example would put things in prospective. I do have a website with a domain name as a combination of my first and last name (Volodymyr Zablotskyy), even though most of my English speaking friends call me Vlad- which I should have used instead of my “official” first name. So you can imagine that as my website became more popular, I was often asked about the strange domain name. Of course I have defended that it did not matter, while deep inside I knew that was not the wisest choice I have made. To my defense it should be said that I have purchased the domain long before I new anything how the world of online marketing worked.

The worst part of having such a domain is at times when the opportunity of word of mouth marketing arises and you realize that the person you are talking to will never be able to remember your website. So what did I do. I would just say, oh my domain is difficult to remember but if you can Google me by searching for …. I of course would give a keyword for which my website ranked #1, as for example for long time I ranked #1 for “Vlad The Affiliate”. You know what was in the back of my mind on these sort of occasions? Will Google change the algorithms tomorrow and I will look like a complete idiot?

If you are about to start a blog or website and are planing to use your own name for the URL, I ask you one question. Will it be easy to remember?