Choosing Your Domain Name
Even if you already own an offline business, starting an online business website will help you reach people beyond your geographic boundaries and will also provide your business exposure to a much larger share of prospective customers. In fact, a strong online presence is now a must for every company in order to maximize sales and profits. And one of the most important factors that could make the crucial difference between success and failure for an online business is the choice of a good domain name. A domain name is not just a unique name that a business chooses as its website address on the Internet, it forms a very important part in the branding of the online business and later in marketing and promoting the business. It is therefore very important that you choose the domain name very carefully.
If you find that almost all the names on your list are unavailable, do not lose heart. After all, with billions of websites on the Internet, it is not surprising that most of the so-called good domain names have already been taken. However, do not be discouraged – all you need is a little creativity and some guidance to think of ways in which you could come up with a domain name that closely matches one on your list of preferred ones. You could also use one of the many domain name search tools available on the Internet that will offer you suggestions for domain names based on the keywords that you provide. In fact, your web hosting service provider may offer this tool and offer to register your domain name for free if you choose one of their hosting plans.
Let us now look at what one should take into consideration while choosing a domain name.
• Top Level Domain – The most commonly used top level domain is .com Other fairly common top level domains are .org, .net, and country specific top level domains like .uk, .ca and so on. If you are catering to a fairly local community, then choosing a country specific top-level domain makes more sense. On the other hand, many visitors are used to hearing about and typing a .com at the end of the website name. So, if you are setting up an online business, then since the top level domain for commercial sites is .com, you might be better off choosing a domain name that ends in .com.
• Name Recognition – Focus on choosing domain names that are short and simple, straightforward and thus easy to remember. Bear in mind that even if you come up with a name that you believe is extremely creative but visitors find it overly complicated or overly long, they are more than likely to forget it. Name recognition will bring you far more visitors and customers. Of course, in some cases where there is already a known brand, like for example nationalgeographic.com, a long domain name can still be effective. However, if you are just starting out, you are better off using fewer words and characters in your domain name, as that will create fewer problems. Visitors will be able to remember it more easily and make fewer mistakes in typing the name.
• Being Creative – If you are unable to get the domain name myfavoritedomainname.com, then you could try searching for the hyphenated version like my-favorite-domain-name.com. However, bear in mind that you need a domain name that not only identifies your business, but also is easy to remember for the visitors.
• Using Keywords – Using the keywords relevant to your business in your domain name will not only make it easier for visitors to retain the name for future reference, it will also help during Search Engine Optimization. Optimizing your site for keywords or phrases will help visitors locate you more easily using major search engines, by placing your website at the top of search engine results. Also, suppose you were looking for silver jewelry, which site would you be more likely to go to – jamiehart.com or silverstyle.com?
If you have tried searching for the domain names of your choice and tested a few other combinations but are unsure if your final choice is clear or simple enough, ask a few friends or family members to take a look at it. If it takes them more than a few seconds to read and tell you what the domain name is, you might want to try looking for another name.
Finally, if after several attempts, you find that the domain names you want are all taken and are not happy with other versions, you might consider contacting the owner of the domain names you are really interested in. Ask them if they would be open to selling the domain name to you. Most hosting companies will also allow you to use a ‘Whois Search’ tool in the Domain Name Registration section to find out who presently holds the right to use that particular domain name.
Registering Your Domain Name
Once you have gone through several possibilities for your domain name and finalized on one, the next step is to register the name and make it officially yours. For this you will need to sign up the domain name with an accredited domain name registrar. You could either sign up with a registrar or use your web hosting company to register your domain name. The registrar or your web hosting company will take care of completing all the formalities that are required in order to make the domain name officially yours and to activate it. They will essentially take care of the following tasks –
• Submit your detailed contact information
• Submit information about the period for which you have registered your domain name
• Submit your domain name for listing in the official Internet list of domain names being maintained by the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
Whether you want to register with your web hosting service provider or a registrar may depend on the kind of prices they charge to register your domain name. Nowadays, most web hosting companies offer to register the domain name for free for any customer who signs up for a hosting plan with them.
You should also bear in mind that with the number of extensions available now – like .biz, .tv and .mobi – you might want to register some of the more popular versions of your domain name like the dot-com, dot-net and dot-org and so on so that you can protect your domain name. Else, someone could register a domain name that sounds very much like yours and this could have a negative impact on your business. For example, you may have registered silverstyle.com but not silvertsyle.net. Another company could easily register this for their business and divert business meant for your site. Remember that registering alternative versions of a domain name does not mean that you have to set up that many websites – it merely means that you are preventing anyone else from using those domain names.
You could try a site like GoDaddy (godaddy.com) that will allow you to search for the availability of your domain name and for domain names with other extensions like .info, .us, .me and many more. It will also provide you with a list of recommended alternatives based on the keywords used in your domain search. On the other hand, a registrar like Register.com (register.com) will help you register your domain name and also offer specially-priced packages like email packages, website designing packages or web hosting packages.
But the one and only and the best domain registrar for me is Namecheap.com so be sure to register your domain names with them. You won't be sorry.
