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Monday, November 30, 2009

How To Register Your Website Domain Name: Guide To The Best Resources

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Are you thinking about registering your own website domain name? Good idea, but are you aware of the many choices and variables at play when making this critical step? Selecting your appropriate website name, choosing the most appropriate domain extension, while making your most cost-effective choice has become something that should be identified as a real investment, and one for which it is wise to think and prepare well before acting.

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Photo credit Kadir Karcioglu

While most everyone knows that a website domain name is a unique label that you apply to your website so that people can find your site on the Internet, very few can clearly list the key reasons for which IT IS SO IMPORTANT to register your own domain name

  • Findability A well-chosen domain name makes it easier for people to remember and find your website without having to use notes or bookmarks.
  • Credibility If you own a business, a domain name helps your brand become more easily recognized and trusted on the web. A generic URL provided by a free web host like http://www.blogger.com/yourwebsite may not always provide the idea of a professional, trustable entity - essentially because it is free.
  • Brand Investment By purchasing a website domain, you own the property of something that is related to your business, your marketing strategy, your company or anything else that is connected to you. By registering your website domain, you also prevent anyone else from using that web address in the future.
  • Focus People can tell what your site is about and your location right from the extension (.com, .org., biz) of your domain name. The .com suffix is generally used for commercial US-based domains, .org is for no-profit organizations or websites, .biz indicates commercial websites, .gov stands for an institutional website, and so on.
  • Brand Strength By registering multiple website domain names (e.g. MasterNewMedia.org, MasterNewMedia.com, MasterNewMedia.net) you can secure your brand against malicious competitors who may offer content while leveraging your name but on a different domain extension. By pre-emptying those complementary domains you secure a stronger presence online that is more difficult to attack.

The domain registration process itself is quite straightforward, but the options and variables at play are not as easy to spot and understand if you have never registered a website domain before.

In this MasterNewMedia guide you will find all of the basic information you need to start registering your web site domain name, including some strategic advice and the key steps you need to take to make your domain name selection and registration process a full success.

 

How To Register Your Website Domain Name



How To Register Your Website Domain Name: Best Practices

A website domain name is an identification label that you can use to let people access and find your website on the Internet. Each domain name is linked to one (or multiple) IP address(es). You can think of an IP address as your name and the domain name as your nickname. Both will help your friends contact you, but a nickname will make easier for people to find and get to know you.



1. Registrars and Payment

  • There are several services on the web (or "registrars") which will allow you to purchase a website domain name. These services work with the ICANN, a large worldwide organization without commercial interests that manages and controls how domain names are used across the globe.
  • Not all registrars are the same. You may want to compare the different registrars prices, reliability, support and features the registrars can offer you.
  • You will need either a credit card or a PayPal account to pay for the domain.
  • Registering a domain name is generally very cheap for common extensions like .com, .net, .org, .mobi etc. and should cost you around $10/year. The popular registrar Go Daddy prices .com at $10.69/year, .net and .org at $9.99/year till .mobi domains which will cost you $7.99/year.
  • Localized domains (like .it, .de, .jp, .co.uk) or domains that identify a specific market niche (.tv, .fm) are more expensive than the general .com or .org. A few examples from Go Daddy: .it is $14.99/year, .de is $17.99/year, .co.uk is $19.98/year .jp is $99.99/year, .tv is $39.99/year and .fm is $69.99/year.

 

2. Domain Name

The very first thing you have to do to register your new domain, is to choose a name for your website. This step is crucial, as you must consider your domain just as your street address. If it is not clear, nobody will come to your site or, even worse, know that your website even exists.

Here are some quick tips you want to remember to choose a good domain name::

  • You can register domain names up to 63 characters long, but that does not mean you have to use all 63 characters.
  • Make your website domain name very easy to remember or jot down. Ideally, it should not be longer than 2-3 words.
  • Your website domain name should also be easy to spell and clearly pronounceable.
  • Do not use dashes if you can. A domain name with dashes could be misleading or not so immediate for people to remember or find.
  • Avoid acronyms (e.g. mnm.org instead of MasterNewMedia.org) as they tend to be misleading and do not help people to remember what you do and what your website is about.
  • A popular shorthand is to use "2" for the words "to" and "two" and "4" for "for" and "four". Do not do this, as it will only confuse people, especially those who are less computer literate.
  • Be careful not to make your website domain name conflict with an existing trademark. Check beforehand that no one has used your name earlier.

 

3. Commercial or No-Profit Domain

There are a number of top level domains (TLD), including .com, .org, .us, .net, .info, .biz, and various country names (.it, .es, .br, .fr, .ru, etc.) you can choose from when registering your website domain name:

  • If you are a commercial business, you will want to register the .com variation of your domain name and most likely the newer .biz variant.
  • If you are a non-profit organization, or even an individual, you will want to register the .org version and quite possibly the .com and .us variants (for US-based organizations).
  • Beyond the extension you choose for your new website domain, it is always a good idea to protect your website domain name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, etc.). This practice deters people from utilizing your new domain name. Choose one domain extension and set a redirect from the other domains to your main one (i.e try to go to MasterNewMedia.com).

 

4. Personal or Business Domain

Another choice when selecting your next domain name is whether you should choose to name your domain with your own name or company name, or maybe using the keywords that identify your market niche.

To identify the best domain for your market niche, you can use a free service like DomainsBot that will give you suggestions and alternatives on those domain names you could pick to identify your business activity.

DomainsBot also helps you discover whether the domain name you want is still available, for sale, or yet purchased.

Once you have identified your market niche, do the following:

  • If being found on the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.) is important to you, it is highly recommended that you register a domain name that contains your major keywords.
  • If instead you are creating a website for a local business, getting traffic from all over the web may not be as important to you. This is because your customers will be local and you may want to grow your brand name in a specific area.

 

5. Privacy and Security

  • Your website domain name should be registered in your name, under your ownership. This does not mean that it has to be registered in your own domain registrar account, but rather that you are identified in the domain contact information as the domain owner.
  • During the registration process of your website domain, you will have the option to keep your domain name private. This is a special feature you may want to take advantage of. A private domain registration will keep your information (name, email address, etc.) out of the global Internet database, and will prevent a lot of spammers from reaching your email box.

 

6. Hosting Space

A website domain name is connected to a hosting space, a virtual storage space on the Internet where your site lives and grows.

  • If you already have a web host, obtain from your web host the names of their primary and secondary nameservers. You willl need this information to point your domain name to your website after you buy your domain.
  • If you do not have a web host yet, you can always allow the registrar to you to park your domain name at a temporary website specially set up for you. This way you can quickly secure your domain name and take your time to set up other aspects of your site.
  • A web host is not linked to your website domain. Once purchased, a domain is yours and so will be for good. If you ever change your web host, your domain name goes with you.










How To Register Your Website Domain Name: Best Resources



How To Name Your Site: Beginner's Guide To Search Engine Optimization

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Naming your site appropriately, titling your posts in effective ways, using keywords to help search engines understand your content focus are all key ingredients to get people to find your site on the web.

by - MasterNewMedia

 



How To Choose The Best Domain Name For Your Website

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Before you register your website domain name you must evaluate first if you want a domain name that contains your major keywords or your business name. Both choices are good, it really depends what your plans are and what audience (local / worldwide) is your site referring to.

by 2CW Editors - 2 Create a Website

 



How To Choose Your Website Domain Name: Best Tips

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Your domain name is like your street address. How will customers find you if they do not know where to look - or worse, if they go to what they think is your address only to find your company is not there? Here are ten tips to choosing a domain name for your business.

by Anita Campbell - Inc. Technology

 



How To Register Your Website Domain Name: A Basic Guide

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Registering your domain name is a simple procedure that involves indeed very serious and long-lasting choices. If you want to know how to take the first steps to put online your brand new website, here is a basic guide to get you started.

by CWD Editors - Clifton Web Design

 



Website Domain Name Registration: Step-By-Step Procedure

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If you have a website, you should seriously consider registering your own domain name, which is the name you use to let people refer to your website. In this article you will find a step-by-step procedure to get started and other useful resources.

by Christopher Heng - TheSiteWizard

 



How To Register A Website Domain Name: Best Practices

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How to choose your website domain name and then register your website domain are pretty straightforward processes, but they can indeed be fraught with problems and pitfalls along the way. In this articles you will find some useful suggestions to avoid those pitfalls.

by ECS Editors - Elbel Consulting Services

 



How To Tell Google Your New Website Is Alive

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After your new website is up and running, your first concern should be to request Google to include your domain in its searches. It is crucial that Google web crawlers take your site into consideration when a search is executed. Here is how to tell Google your new website is alive.

by Katharine Hadow - eHow

 



What Can You Do Once You Own A Domain Name?

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What can you do with your website domain name after you own it? Since you bought the domain, it is yours to do anything you want with it: use it, park it for future use, sell it, use it for redirection purposes, show a bunch of rotating ads. It is completely up to you.

by Chris Pirillo - Chris.Pirillo.com

 



Domain Name Registrars: List Of The Top Ranking Services

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Wikipedia has a useful list (updated to July 2009) of the top thirty domain name registrars ranked based on market share according to the statistics compiled by RegistrarStats. Use this list to find your first - or next - service to register your domain name with.

by Wikipedia - Wikipedia

 



How To Protect Your Website Domain: Beware of Cybersquatting

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If you own a trademark and find that someone is holding it hostage as a domain name until you pay a large sum for it, you may be the victim of cybersquatting. Learn in this article how to protect your website domain against fraud and scams.

by Nolo Editors - Nolo




Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on November 30th, 2009 as "How To Register Your Website Domain Name: Guide To The Best Resources".




Photo credits:
How To Name Your Site: Beginner's Guide To Search Engine Optimization - eutoch
How To Choose The Best Domain Name For Your Website - Irina Tischenko
How To Choose Your Website Domain Name: Best Tips - scorpp
How To Register Your Website Domain Name: A Basic Guide - Alex Bramwell
Website Domain Name Registration: Step-By-Step Procedure - tatisol
How To Register A Website Domain Name: Best Practices - fyle
How To Tell Google Your New Website Is Alive - Jostein Hauge
What Can You Do Once You Own A Domain Name? - Alexandr Trankov
Domain Name Registrars: List Of The Top Ranking Services - juliengron
How To Protect Your Website Domain: Beware Of Cybersquatting - Jón Helgason

Daniele Bazzano -
 
 
 
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posted by Daniele Bazzano on Monday, November 30 2009, updated on Tuesday, May 5 2015


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