After selecting a topic for your web site, you'll need to select and then register a domain. A domain is what people will type in to access your web site. For example, the domain of this web site is webpublishingguide.com. People will typically also include the www in front of the domain more out of habit rather than because it is actually necessary.

When selecting a domain, you'll have to decide to go down one of two paths. You can pick a name that is "brandable". For example, dell.com is a branded domain because Dell doesn't have any meaning. It's actually the founder's last name.

The other path is to pick a name that includes keywords related to your topic. My sites often take this approach. Although I'm looking to monetize traffic, I don't expect to ever be a major media outlet where a brand would matter. So I pick domain names that give the user some idea about the topic of the site. For example, if I wanted to create a site about first aid I would pick a URL like firstaidplanet.com or if I my site was about investing I'd go with something like investmenttopics.com. The names aren't catchy, but they do have meaning which in my case is more important. And as you can tell, I've chosen to go with a non-branded URL for this web site -- webpublishingguide.com.

The keyword-rich domain can also have some influence on search engine rankings since it guarantees that links to your site will contain keywords relevant to your web site's topic. In effect, this means that whenever someone links to your web site and uses your domain as the text that people can click on, they are reinforcing with the search engines that the destination web site is about those keywords.

Be prepared to look at variations of your domain name. This is because it is likely the domain you select first will already be taken. I've certainly found this to be the case which is why I've appended words like "topics" and "planet" to the end of domain name selections. Try to use the shortest modifier as possible since you're aiming for a domain name that is easy to communicate to others whether it is verbal or electronic.

You may be inclined to try and buy a domain name from someone else because the one you want is already registered. I have never felt that this practice was worth the money as these domain name squatters are usually looking to make a substantial profit on every sale to make up for the many domain names in their portfolio that will never sell. The one exception I can think of where you might really want to consider buying a domain from another owner is the one that matches your name. Such domains are natural fits and might be worth a few extra bucks.