This post is the first in a 4-part series of essential steps in getting a website up and running.
Much like your business name is your identification in the commercial world, a domain name is your identification on the internet. Examples of domain names include the following:
www.example1.com
www.example2.com
www.example1.net
www.example2.net
www.example1.ca
www.example2.ca
Most businesses try and find a domain name similar to their business name, take for example how The Home Depot operates online under the domain name www.homedepot.com. Another option is to register a domain name under your most popular product or service, for example, if your business name was something like A&A Bicycles, you could try to register something like www.bicycles.com and have that as the A&A Bicycles website domain name. However, the likelihood of registering a domain name under your top product is probably quite small – most of the ‘popular’ domain names were snatched up well over a decade ago. So, for the sake of this article, we’ll go ahead and assume the domain name you want reflects the name of your business.
A few things to consider when planning your domain name, as taken from http://www.domainregistry.com/faq.jsp:
1. A domain name can be up to 63 characters PLUS the extension (.com, .net, .org etc.) Keep in mind that domain names longer than 22 characters (plus the extension) may not be compatible with older browsers, e-mail programs or certain Internet applications.
2. A domain name can contain characters (A-Z), numbers (0-9), or both.
3. A domain name can contain a dash “-” (example: psych-online.com).
4. “Case” (upper or lower) does not matter with domain names. The domain name “Larry.com” is the same as “LARRY.COM” or “LarRy.Com”.
Once you choose your domain name, try and register that name with the “.com” extension, if available. Dot-com domain names are by far the most popular and widely used domain extensions, and if the dot-com extension is available, there is no point considering any other extension. To check and see if a domain name is available (unregistered), try using a service like that found at http://www.domains.com/.
I would also highly suggest you do a history search on the domain you’re looking to secure – looking into the history of that domain can reveal any possible previous websites that have been registered under that domain name that have since given it up. Something to keep your eye open for is any previous websites using that domain operating with a taboo theme like offshore gambling, illegitimate pharmacy sales or pornography. Registering a domain name with such a history can have negative effects on your future search rankings. Here’s a handy tool that will help give insight into any history a domain name may have: http://www.archive.org/
For those that are looking for a more creative domain name, I’ve come across a couple handy web-based tools that will help generate some ideas. The first is http://www.makewords.com/, which allows you to generate some domain name ideas for a list of keywords you input into their engine. Similarly, http://domain-name-generator.com/index.html lets you piece together separate keywords you may want to integrate into your domain and spits out whether any of the possible combinations are available or not. Lastly, we have http://www.nameboy.com/, which has been around for years. It’s a rudimentary domain compiler that gives you some ideas for domain names, even if you only know one word you’d like in your domain.
Once you’ve settled on an acceptable domain name, you’ll need to register that name. However, there are some important things to consider before doing this…so stay tuned for our next post on how to register a domain name!
Tags: choose a domain, choosing a domain name, how to choose a domain name
*Breaking News Update*
ICANN, the top-level organization behind domain name rules and regulations has announced that it is ready to integrate domain names in non-latin script, meaning that domain names will be available for registration in signs, symbols and letters outside those that make up what we know as the English language. For more info, have a look at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/29/internet.domains.languages/index.html?eref=rss_latest
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A small offtopic comment on this, Im using the google chrome webbrowser, but it looks like your blog is not displaying correctly… Just to let you know. Regards.
Before publishing posts, we make sure it checks out in the major browsers…I just took a look in Chrome and it looks OK – do you think it could be a setting on your system? Let me know what isn’t displaying correctly if you have a moment…
[...] outlining the essential steps in getting a website up and running. If you missed our posts on how to choose a domain name and how to register a domain name, we suggest you have a look at those [...]
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