Choosing a Good Domain Name
Why should you register your domain name? The domain name for your website is what makes it unique by providing it with it’s own name. A good domain name also looks very professional on your business cards and sends out the signal that I am a serious website and business.
Your domain name shows that your website is serious to you and means something. It’s true that domain names are inexpensive these days and might not be as special to have one. That’s why trying to use a directory or subdomain provided by your host is really not a good idea. It really won’t matter if your website happens to be very innovative and provides the best and most up-to-date information. If your website does not have its own domain name, the credibility of your site instantly decreases as well as the chances of successfully performing its job. Why is this? Because surfers on the web these days are a lot smarter. They are more Internet savvy and realize that websites that have their own domain names are usually more credible.
Another important benefit to your website having its own domain name is that the URL of your website will remain the same no matter what hosting company you use. Links pointing to your website always will work because your website’s address won’t change. It’s a lot easier to remember a URL that looks like “http://www.mydomain.com” than it is to remember “http://www.hostingdomainname.com/mysite” or “http://mysubdomain.hostdomainname.com.”
What exactly makes good domain names? Good domain names are easy to remember. What this usually means is they should ideally be short-one to two words long and with the least characters possible, ideally under twelve. Also you want the domain name to be easy to spell.
Good domain names are also catchy. It could be smart, funny, weird, or could just be the name of your company, which would have the added benefit of your domain name being more easily associated with your company which will help with your branding.
Good domain names are also descriptive and provide information about your business. The domain name should ideally create interest and demand attention. It helps to identify and describe your business.
A good domain name is also easy to pronounce and spell. They are melodic, rhythmic and joyful. This helps to make them stand out and easy to memorize.
How many domains should one business have? After you have your list of potential good domain names you can either just register the best one or register multiple ones.
There are some good reasons for registering more than just one domain name. You might only really be interested in the .com version of your domain name, but if the .org and .net versions are also available you may want to register them as well so your competitors can’t get them. That is the same reason why you would want to register any other domain names that are valuable from your list.
Businesses really should register every good domain name that they can afford to register. It is getting harder to find good domain names. Registering them now will help to ensure that you have access to them rather than your competitors.
When you register domain names you won’t have to use them all. Generally, you will only want to use one domain name. The rest of the domain names are just register to make it more difficult for your competitors to locate good domain names.
Top level domains such as .com, .net and .org are the most common type of domain name extensions. If your company does business worldwide then a .com domain name is a great option.
If your business provides web hosting, internet connectivity or other types of Internet services, then a .net domain name can be a good choice. If you have a non profit organization or business offering a free service then a .org domain name would be a good choice.
However, if you are only targeting visitors or customers from a certain region or country then you might want to get an extension that is country specific such as .au for Australia or .ca for Canada.
There is a website called deleteddomains.com that shows you domains that were deleted recently or also registered recently. There are also other statistics about domain names available in addition to the registrations for the day. Power search can be a useful feature to use.
Many people want to register domain names that are not re-registered by the website owner due to the fact that work has already been done into making the website (and domain name) popular. Some of these domains may even be included in the Yahoo and DMOZ directories which can make them very valuable. There may even be some intrinsic value to some of the domain names. Domain names that are just one word are usually quite valuable, with values in the free market ranging anywhere from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Another type of domain name that became popular at one time was hyphenated domains. This happened when people started to realize search engines took keywords that were in the domain name into account.
Search engines will take separated keywords into account. If keywords in a domain name aren’t separated search engines might not notice them and think it is one single keyword. When there are hyphens separating the keywords, the search engine will be able to recognize them as separate keywords.
At one time hyphenated domain names that were keyword rich were very popular. However their popularity has faded. Search engines noticed people starting to abuse that particular part of their algorithms. Keywords in domain names are not given as much weight these days. Nowadays the main benefit for using hyphenated keyword rich domain names has been reduced.
There is, however, still some light weight given to the keywords that are a hyphenated domain name. One drawback, however, is that hyphenated domain names can be hard to spell.
Domain names with dashes also don’t look as professional as those that don’t have dashes. You don’t see many big and successful companies with hyphens in their domain name.
It’s also harder for average users to type a hyphenated domain name than an unhyphenated one.
It is not a very good decision to use dashes in a domain name. It really never was a good decision. Unless there is some other good reason for using dashes, you shouldn’t use a dash in your company’s domain name. Domain names should be optimized for people to use, not for the search engines.
Hosting companies ofter offer domain registration services as well. It offers them a good opportunity for upselling their customers who don’t have their domain name yet.
There are some hosting companies that are unscrupulous and will register the domain name under their name. That makes them the owner even though you paid for the domain name. If you decide to change hosts you might find out that you are stuck staying with your current hosting service because of the fact that they own the domain name to your website.
There are times when hosting companies register domain names under their name due to privacy issues. The Whois information for domain registration is publicly available. For this reason the hosting company by default may register domains with them. However, if the customer requests that the information be changed they will do so.
Domain hijacking used to be a lot more common. Even today it can still happen. It is usually better to use a widely known and specialized registrar for registering domain names rather than using your hosting company.
When it comes to domain registration paying a higher price doesn’t necessarily guarantee quality. In fact the more expensive domain registrars actually don’t usually provide high quality service. They are often, in fact, reported as worse than cheaper ones. Why is this? There are usually other reasons for their higher prices.
One example would be that older registrars who first offered these services tend to cost more than new services. One of the main reasons for this is because even with the high prices they were able to get a lot of customers because they were well known.
They also have significant numbers of domains that are already registered using their service. Domain registrations need to be renewed for specific time periods. Most people have a tendency of renewing their domains with the same company that they registered with initially which means even at high prices they still get significant amounts of renewals.
Companies that are most expensive will have a tough time repositioning themselves as budget registrars. Also, competing on price alone is never a good idea. You should also be selling your image, value added services, special technologies and other things that help to compensate for your higher prices.
Once companies position themselves as high class or expensive, they rarely change their image to being cheapest or least expensive on the market type of image. Expensive can be a very profitable niche.
The problem is that often the older, more expensive registrars usually offer worse service than newer, cheaper ones. They also tend to be slower to change. Inertia is often more common with larger companies.
A registrar that is expensive is not necessarily better than a cheaper one. To find good registrars you need to know which registrars have good reputations and are fair to their customers. Your first criterion should never be price.
Two domain name registrars that have good reputations are Godaddy and Namecheap. You can find reviews of various registrars by doing a search at one of the search engines.
Any serious website must have its own domain name. There’s no excuse with today’s inexpensive prices. Before you do register a domain name though you do need to put some serious thought into selecting the best domain name. A good domain name is easy to remember and short. You need to consider that it is people who will be seeing and using the domain name and is there for their use.
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