What is a domain name? A domain name is the location of your website on the Internet. Your domain name will be what you become known by online so it’s important to get it right.

Each website on the Internet is labeled with something called an IP address which is the actual address of the website online. A typical IP address looks like this: 159.134.27.64. Remembering a string of numbers like that is difficult so a domain name translates all those numbers into something like amazon.com. This is far easier to remember.

#1 Dot what?

Each domain has what’s called an extension. The most well known of these extensions is .com. This, however, is not the only type of domain extension available. There is also:

.net

If you can’t find your preferred .com domain name you could always choose the same domain with a .net extension. It might not have the same ring as a .com but is still as just useful as a .com.

.org

These domain extensions were orginally designed for educational and more formal websites. Anybody can register a .org however so you have more options for domain selection.

.info

A more recent introduction to the domain name game are .info domains. Many of the valuable .info domains were bought up overnight but there’s still a huge range of good .info domains available. With a little creativity you could really make a .info work for you e.g. www.moviereview.info.

Bear in mind that most web surfers tend to remember .com more easily than anything else.

#2 Branding vs Business Name

There is an age old debate on the whether or not you should establish a brand name online or use a domain that more actually reflects your real business. Let’s look at Amazon as an example. Amazon sells books online. Most people setting up a business would have chosen say www.booksonline.com instead of amazon.com Amazon has since established itself as a brand name of global recognition - proving the value of building a brand name.

You’ll need to choose between the two. Brand name or your own business name. Consider how your domain sounds, how it might look on a business card and how well it relates to your business.

There’s no one right answer to this question. You need to choose what makes most sense for you, your website and your business in general.

#3 Hyphenated or not

This is another area of debate. Should your domain be one single word or should the words be separated by hyphens? There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Single word domain names can be easier to explain, use on header paper and lend themselves to brand names very well.

Single word domains are in very, very short supply.

Hyphenated domains names can be slighltly more difficult to explain, may not look as well on headed paper and possibly harder to establish as a brand name. There’s no shortage of multiple word domains.

The single biggest advantage a hyphenated domain has is that search engines can “read” the domain more easily. For example in a domain like foreignholidaysonline.com the search engine can only read the first word “foreign” and that’s it. It can’t tell anything else about the website domain name.

If you hyphenated that to foreign-holidays-online.com the search engine can read “foreign”, “holidays” and “online” as separate words and therefore knows that this website is about foreign holidays.

A well chosen hyphenated domain name can be just as effective as a single word domain name.

#4 Your Domain Registrar

These are the people you pay to register the domain for you. There are dozens if not hundreds of these companies out there so which one do you choose? This takes some research but things worth checking are:

• Do you retain sole ownership of the domain or do the registrar keep some level of control over it?

• Search Google for any horror stories relating to the registrar

• Does the registrar allow you to transfer the domain to another registrar?

• Is there an online control panel for domain administration?

• How easy is it to change the domain Name Servers?

Shop around for domain registrars. What you really want to find is a previously satisfied customer to ask questions before you buy.

#5 Cheap Domain Names

You can save a lot of money on the domain names you purchase. A typical .com domain costs about $15 to register from most registrars. However you can get the same domain for as little as $7.95 from other, very reliable, companies.

Oddly enough some of the cheaper domain registrars are more reliable, have fewer horror stories and offer equally good customer service as their more expensive competitors.

Are there any disadvantages in using a discount domain registrar? Will it affect your website in any way? The answer to both is a definite No.

This article was provided courtesy of Domain Tutor where you’ll find tons of information on how to register a domain name

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You’ve seen them before and wondered what the heck they were thinking: small businesses with domain names like eallylonganduniquebusinessname.biz. Half-out-loud you say: what, was reallylonganduniquebusinessname.com taken? A new advertising technique of “illegal” casino websites helps prove that your snickering is absolutely justified.

Cheapskates and Johnny-dot-Com-Lately’s

If you’ve consulted for small business websites as long as I have, you have probably encountered more than a few whose owners decided to save three dollars at Godaddy by buying a dot-biz domain name. Or a dot-net, dot-info, or dot-whatever was on sale that week.
Whatever it is, forget trying to tell them that they may have lost out in thousands of dollars of business from type-ins. That is, from all the people who will type in the dot-com version and get an error message–or a parked domain advertising naughty-naughty pictures. Nor should you tell them that everyone who knows a dot-biz from a dot-com knows that the former is usually offered on sale and is the beast-mark of the most extreme kind of penny-wise-pound-foolish cheapskate. The obviousness of the truth of the observation will only make them hate you more.

Then there are the netrepreneurs who wanted that keyword-perfect domain name so badly that they took a dot-biz, dot-org, dot-cc, or dot-what-the-heck-does-that-stand-for? when the dot-com version was already taken. You know what I’m talking about: a one-man-band bookstore that buys the “book” domain with the Vatican’s top-level domain extension because Barnes & Noble has book.com, and every other possible variant was also already
taken.

Again, don’t bother telling these people they’re just sending type-in traffic to Barnes & Noble. You are arguing against a cottage industry. Pitcairn Island, population under 100, has its own top-level domain name extension. No doubt they can cut back on their rare coin and postage stamp production thanks to the hundred bucks (US, not Pitcairnian) per domain paid by wishful Johnny-come-lately’s. And GoDaddy is no doubt raking in the credit card digits from .us domain names that are worth their weight in gold pixels. This is the web version of small business owners paying thousands to put their kids in their TV commercials. If you’re a business consultant, you correct their error at your peril.

Why Casino Sites Know Web Businesses Need Dot-Coms

In case you have some justification for a dot-whatever lurking in some self-destructive corner of your brain, let me write this as clearly as possible. For a US or international business, the only suitable domain name extension is dot-com. Nonprofits can get by with dot-org, schools with dot-edu. Non-US country-specific businesses can use their own national domain name extensions. No, my fellow Americans, there is no justification for dot-us, even if your shipping area does exclude Canada and Puerto Rico and military addresses to boot.

Why? Here’s solid evidence the dot-whatevers are so bad.

1) Type-in traffic.

Yes, many people really will type in the dot-com version of a non-dot-com business website. I discovered powerful proof of this once after I saw a television commercial for a website with educational information about gambling. Curious how they were making money on this deal, I typed in the domain–and found a website with actual gambling right on the homepage, which would be flagrantly (though perhaps technically) illegal for me to use. Only later did I realize that the TV commercial had advertised the dot-net version of the domain, and I had typed in the dot-com version. The dot-net
version has the educational material.

How would a no-membership-fee content website–with little to no advertising–recoup the expense of television advertising? Only if a vast number of the visitors to go to the money-generating dot-com version.

2) Prestige

You may think I’m completely off-base and a business’s domain name choice is none of my dot-biz-ness But the fact is those opinions are my opinions, they’re not going anywhere, and if you want to impress me, a dot-whatever domain name won’t do it. And I’m certainly not the only one who feels that
way. Maybe you can just devote your dot-whatever website’s homepage to refuting the snickerers like myself?

3) SEO

True snobs, search engine algorithms are suckers for anything that smells of respectability–and dot-whatever does not smell like that. How often do you see a high-ranking dot-whatever business site? The irony is that many dot-whatever domain name owners hope that having the keyword in their unique domain name will help them in search engines.

In the end, I have to admit there’s one good thing about the snobbery against the dot-whatever domain names. They provide a way for web business consultants to sort out the serious inquiries from the slush, just by looking at the “from” address.

Joel Walsh is a freelance business writer and web business owner. The following site provided information for this article: Internet Casino: http://www.casinotimes.co.uk

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Using the results from a domain search can help you to select a
good name for your online business. A domain name is part of a
website’s URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Essentially it is the
“name” portion of a website address.

Doing a domain search, to see what domain names are available
prior to naming your business makes good sense. If it is possible
for your domain name to give some indication as to what your site
is about or to contain your business name or brand identity, it
will much more memorable to return visitors to your website.

A domain search is the first step in selecting your own domain
name to purchase. If you are serious about doing business on the
net, it really is important that you buy your own domain name
rather than using a free one. Lots of web hosting companies offer
free domains that include their domain name with your name at the
end of it. While that may be advantageous for a personal website,
a business site will lose its credibility in a heartbeat if you
use a free domain. Your business can also be easily disrupted if
the web host ceases to exist or if you decide not to do business
when them anymore.

By choosing and purchasing your very own domain name after doing
a domain search, you will ensure the stability of your domain and
you’ll have a lot more flexibility. Once you’ve completed your
domain search and decided on the domain you want, you register
it. Even after it is registered, you can change web hosts without
having to change your domain name.

Search engines change their rules often about how much weight is
given to various components of a website. It’s a common belief
that the domain name is given some consideration in regard to how
a search engine ranks a website. For that reason, many website
owners try to include relevant keywords in their domain name.

To get some good ideas about keywords that may be useful for your
domain search, check out Wordtracker at www.wordtracker.com .
Wordtracker is a nifty online tool that tells you how popular
specific keywords are. It is undoubtedly the best keyword
research tool around. When you search for a particular word in
Wordtracker, you’ll get a list of suggested keywords and keyword
phrases that are similar. The reports Wordtracker generates will
tell you the popularity of the suggested keywords and keyword
phrases as well as giving you great ideas for niche phrases.

It is best if you can choose a name for your business that has an
available domain name in your domain search results. Otherwise,
people who are looking for your business by name, may be
misdirected to someone else’s website if they hold the registered
domain name. If you choose a business name or you have one
already that doesn’t use keywords or isn’t terribly relevant to
what your website is about, you should still register the domains
for your business name. You can also register domain names from
your domain search that are relevant and do contain keywords.
Multiple domain names can be set up to redirect traffic to your
active website when they are input into a browser.

If you really want a specific domain name that is not being used
but your domain search shows that it is unavailable, you may be
able to buy it from the registered owner. There is a “Who Is”
service that you can use to find out who owns a particular
domain. To access this resource go to www.whois.sc . Using this
domain search service you can find out who the registered owners
of a domain are and you can track domains to be informed when
they expire and buy them then.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope,
fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing
advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing,
or a website owner who wants to make more money from your
website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your
internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

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