How to generate brandable domain names

You have a great idea for a website or business but can't seem to find a matching domain name. The name you want is either taken, or it's just too expensive. So what do you do?

The process of finding a perfect domain name can be tricky, but there are ways to make it easier. In this article, we'll give you some tips on how to come up with a good domain name.

General recommendations

Before we get into specifics, such as methods and tools on how to find a domain name that rocks, let's go through some general recommendations.

First, try to keep it short and sweet. A shorter domain name is easier to remember and type. It also gives you more flexibility when it comes to creating a brand around your domain name. 

Second, when picking your domain name I would try to avoid using numbers, hyphens, and special international characters.

Third, I would also always prefer the .com domain over a similar domain with a niche domain extensions for example codingpartners.com over coding.partners (both made up names). This is due to several reasons, but one of them is that the value of a .com domain is just much higher compared to a niche domain such as .partners.

If you’re ever going to resell the company or if you’re looking for investors to buy in your project, you want to be able to present that you own the .com domain for it. If that’s not the case then the chances are that somebody else might own it and that could potentially hurt the value of your project. 

Forth, use keywords that describe your business. This will help people find your site when they search for those keywords.

Now that we have gone over these basic arguments, let's jump into more specific tips and domain search tools which can help you find that perfect domain for your business.

Simple domain name generators

Domain Name generators use artificial intelligence, so they aren't flawless. 

However, they are good enough to stimulate your creative thinking and help you choose the finest domain name for your business.

Nameboy

Nameboy is a popular website that helps you find domain names for your business. You put in some keywords and it gives you a list of domains that you can use. It also tells you if the domain name is available to register or not.

Domain wheel

Domain Wheel is another awesome domain name generator that can give you some inspiration for finding good domain names. They also give you ideas that are similar to your search, rhyme with your search, and some other random ideas. You can get some really funny results with it!

Methods that are a bit more advanced

Now that we have gone over some simple domain search tools, let's jump into some more advanced methods that you can use to find good domain names.

Combine keywords

A good place to start is by combining relevant keywords to make up a new word. This is also the most obvious one and therefore you will quite quickly hit a roadblock when all the good names are already taken by other businesses.

If you want to give this approach a go, you can use Bust a Name, which allows you to input a list of keywords and the tool will then combine the words automatically and lookup if the domain is taken.

Wordoid

If you want to get really creative with your domain names, then you can use the tool Wordoid. It helps you create made-up words that sound real and are pronounceable.

You can specify what kind of word you want, how long it should be, what kind of ending it should have, and so on.

One of the most interesting features is that you can specify what kind of word you want it to generate. For example, if you set the "quality" to "high" it will output words that sound and feel like real words.

Use AI to generate a fictitious domain name

A funny concept that I've been experimenting with in the past months or so is to use the modern text generation AI models that can help you generate text based on text input. 

What this will allow you to do, is to input a list of domain names that you think are good examples of what domain names should look like, and then you can have the AI continue suggesting new domain names as if they were to finish the list of domains. 

However weird this might sound, you can actually come up with some pretty cool new domain names that do not exist in real life but the AI found that it was the most natural continuation of the list you gave it. So the better the list you gave the better the result you'll have. 

In some cases, you might actually find that the domains the AI suggests are actually already taken so then you just have to keep generating new ones. 

To test this out for yourself, you can try a tool such as AI21 or a similar text-based AI model.

Next steps

So you spent hours and hours searching for the ideal domain, and you finally managed to find it. What's the next step? For a start, you need to investigate its history to make sure it doesn't have any negative connotations that you're unaware of. 

Fortunately, we have a post, "10+ tips on how to check domain history" that will walk you through the process of investigating a domain's background.

If you have already performed a background check and now you are looking to buy a domain, you might find our article “How to Buy Your Brand Domain Name” interesting. We interviewed expert domain brokers who shared their insights.

Conclusion

Coming up with a brandable domain name is basically almost the same as coming up with a good business name. You want it to be unique, easy to remember, easy to pronounce, and as short as possible. 

At the start, it may seem like an impossible task, but it's actually not that hard if you use the right tools and methods. Just take it one step at a time, and don't get frustrated if you can't find the ideal domain for your business within the first two hours.

It might be possible that you will have to let go of some ideas along the way, but most probably, after spending enough time on it, you'll eventually manage to find something that works well.