Select and Register Your Domain Name
Anyone serious about doing business on the Internet should have their own domain name!
If you are truly serious about marketing your business online, you should definitely register and get a domain name.
- It gives your business a professional and internet-established presence.
- Choose a name that is short, memorable, not easily confused with others, hard to misspell and that relates to your core business. The maximum allowed size is 63 characters, however, it is advisable that you keep the name as short as possible. Short names are easier to type and remember than the longer one.
- It should be easy to pronounce and easy to spell — make sure that it spells the same way as it sounds.
- Domain names with special characters such as hyphens and under-bars are harder to describe to the customers over the phone, and is a good reason to not use them. There have been instances where customers have been accidentally sent to competitors who have the same names without special characters.
- If at all possible, choose a name ending in “.com” (“dot-com”). This is still the most widely recognized ending and the most popular. When typing in a domain name, most people will, by default, try .com first. The next popular ending after .com is .net — but always try for a .com name if at all possible.
- It’s Important to Identify With Your Domain Name
- The low cost for your own domain name is a small price to pay for the positive impression you will leave with your potential customers.
- Regardless of who hosts your site, the name will always belong to you (as long as it doesn’t infringe on another company’s rights) and your address remains the same even if you change servers.
We will be happy to register a domain name for you as part of our web design and/or hosting services, or you can register it yourself.
Beware of registering your domain name bundled with a web hosting account. Some hosting companies will, in effect, hijack your name and make it difficult to transfer in case you change hosting companies.
How to Register a Domain Name
The first step for the domain name registration process is to look for a domain name registrar, whether by word or mouth, by means of advertising, or through a search engine. Registrars are companies that register domain names for those seeking them.
Our recommendation for a domain name registrar is GoDaddy.com .
Your next step is to check the availability of your desired domain name. This can sometimes be the most challenging step because the most common and better domain names have already been registered by somebody else. Be creative and keep in mind the suggestions about domain name selection above.
Sometimes a great source for domains names are DeletedDomains that others have registered at one time but either failed to renew or allowed to expire. Every day, valuable domain names come up for renewal and every day, the owners let them slip away.
Technically, once expired, all names are available. However those that have expired in the past 45 to 60 days are in a grace period. Prior owners are given the chance to make good on their payment. If they don’t, and the grace period expired, the name is “deleted” from the master domain registry and is then available for purchase by others.
If the domain name is still available, you will next enter your contact information and billing information to pay the registration fee.
The registry will enter your contact information in the Whois database and adds the zone documents, including your DNS information to the master servers, which transmits the information on how to locate the domain name consumer’s site.
What are Domain Name Servers?
Domain name servers (DNS) play a vital role in the domain name process. Domain name servers are the internet service that transforms or translates the domain names into an IP or Internet Protocol addresses. These IP addresses are used by all machines to refer to one another. And every time that you use a domain name, you basically use the internet’s domain name servers or DNS to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address.
Your web hosting service will provide you with the correct domain name server (DNS) information you will need to provide your domain registry service.
Let’s Continue Your Marketing Strategy…
Now that you have registered your personal domain name, it’s time to begin creating your website!
Plan
Implement a Killer Site
Internet marketing really is not rocket science. You just have to get a few things right and then repeat, repeat, repeat. Success will not happen overnight but will take time to build momentum.
