Domains are the pillar of the commercial Internet. Before the domain system was born, every server on the Internet needed to indicate the IP address of the destination server to establish contact with. This IP address is a combination of numbers like: 32.123.43.65 and you could imagine how cumbersome was to connect with each other, but that was not the worst problem of this. This numbers changed from time to time and because of this, lists of IP addresses should be maintained and shared between each participant to keep the networks without failures.
The Domain Systems Saved All This Mess
The domain system established a way to keep those lists public, but each server was assigned a name and when someone wanted to communicate with this domain, first the public database was consulted to get the underlying IP address of this server in order to start the connection. This not only made easy communications from the technical stand point, but also opened commercial possibilities to everyone that wanted to create a brand on the Internet that previously was impossible because the cumbersome numbers that were assigned to servers. Domains now were independent from the machines and converted into an asset that could be bought and sold very easily.
The Rise of Cyber Squatting
Some smart people saw the incredible value of this and started to snap domains like crazy, because in the early 1,994 they were still free! As organizations started to see how fast generic domains were taken, they started to charge $60 per year for the registration of a domain, but still many organizations where caught by surprise for the Internet and didn't reserved their own domain brand being victims of cyber squatting, the act of snapping a domain than has a brand name. I saw cyber squatting first hand when a client told me that their domain was taken and paid $5,000 to the cyber squatter because at that time, there was no legislation against this practice. Currently, you are able to issue your case to the ICANN and probably the domain will be given to you if you prove that you are the legitimate owner of the brand.
Generic Domains got extremely valuable for a simple thing: They got extremely high traffic naturally because people typed those into the address bar of the browsers. Getting traffic without having to pay for it is what everybody in business wants, so when people took note about this, the generic domains were being register even faster than initially.
Today, you will not find generic domains with a lot of traffic, but opportunities still exists. The real opportunity to get type in traffic for your domains is build a brand that people recognize when they have a problem, so they would type the address directly into the address bar of their browser to visit your site. Building a brand does take time, but you will be able to do it if you follow these instructions:
1. Choose a Short Name
Short names are more brandable than long ones. Also, remember that the best brands communicate in same way the main benefit that the company is offering to their clients.
1. Don't Use Generic Names
Although generic names with exact match to keywords searched by people are recommended from SEO experts, those names are not good for branding purposes. If you want to apply SEO for your keywords, just register 2 domains and build 2 different sites around them, the SEO one could be a blog and the branding site could be in flash or something that has some more life.
