Domain Names

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How to Choose Domain Names for Your Website

How do you expect to be found by people who don't know the name of your business? There are three categories of domain names to be chosen in order to make your domain name work for your website. I'll explain each category and why you need one from each of them.

We'll start with the old standby: your business name. YourBusinessName.com is great for printing on business cards and letterhead, vehicle signage and banners. This is the one that people will use IF THEY HAVE IT IN FRONT OF THEM. However, most people get stuck on using only this domain name. I'll tell you why this is such a bad idea: most business cards get thrown away - why do you think they're so cheap? Letters and invoices get filed. Your business domain name just won't be in front of the people you want it to be when you need it to be.

Dot net or dot com? For the name of your business usually it doesn't matter unless it's a well-known brand. Remember, this is the one people will have in front of them when they go online. You could even try one of the lesser used extensions like .info, .us, .biz or .tv if it works with your business name.

Next is the most basic, yet underused type of domain name - "Your Name". I don't mean your business name, I mean YOUR name. A good reason to get YourName.com is to prevent someone else from using it. Even if your name doesn't mean anything to anyone yet, we're certainly hoping it will eventually as you gain attention. If you write and submit articles, press releases, contribute to blog posts or forums, you most likely sign your name not your business name. See, already you're gaining notoriety.

Belong to a networking group or Chamber of Commerce? As you get involved in those organizations, people may not remember your business name (because you don't use it to introduce yourself, do you?), but will likely remember your name. They may not always have your business card available, but will remember working with you. They may just do a search for your name to see what pops up. If your business or articles are among the search results, you've just accomplished the goal of this domain name.

If you give seminars or participate in other speaking engagements, your name is stickier than your business name. Are you in real estate? Your name is on every yard sign you set out, not the name of your business. There are many other industries where that will apply as well.

So what if someone already has YourName.com? Then find a domain name that contains your name and add a word or phrase onto it that is pertinent to what you do. Jane Smith has a cooking utensil web site called Cooking Stuff Online, so she could use janesmithcooking.com. Hyphenated domains work too: janesmith-cooking.com. This one should be a dot com if at all possible because that's what people try first when searching almost anything.

The third type of domain is the keyword domain, and is undoubtedly the most important. Search engines give weight to a web site called frenchloprabbitpets.com that is about, and sells, French Lop Rabbits because the keyphrases for the web site are contained in the domain name. Most web directories will list links by category and allow you to search for a type of business, such as Pets. The goal here is to be found in searches of your keyphrase, type of business and product or service. The obvious thing to not do with keyword domains is try to use them for something they are not: sausages.com won't do you any good if you site is not about sausages!

I recommend getting all three types of domain names to cover your bases. In the competitive world that is online marketing and search, you want every advantage you can get.

Cindy Dykstra of CD WebMaker has been successfully designing and marketing web sites since 2000. Her company website offers information on web design, hosting and marketing to web site owners.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cindy_Dykstra

Registering a Domain

The World of Domains

One of the first things you need to consider when deciding to build a webpage is a domain name. The internet is made up of millions of domain names. What is a domain name? A domain name is your address on the internet. Your dot com, dot net, or dot org. It's what comes after the www. For example my domain name is oceanbox.net. People type www.oceanbox.net to get here. Your domain name can be whatever you want as long as it is not being used by anyone else you, which brings us to our next point.

Registration

You choose your domain name by going to www.godaddy.com. There are a few repudible companies out there who will set you up with a domain but GoDaddy is the best and cheapest way to go. Whatever you do, do not use Network Solutions. They've been around for the longest but their business ethics suck. GoDaddy is the largest internet registrar, being responsible for over 1/3rd of the US's new domain name registrations. Visit www.godaddy.com to register a new domain name

Choosing a Domain Name

When choosing a domain name, keep it short and mermorable. Long domain names are harder to remember, and harder to get people to come back to. Short & easy to remember websites such as google.com, amazon.com, and ebay.com keep people coming back because they are easy to remember. Also try to stay away from dashes. (e.g. something-something.com) unless it is neccessary. People often forget about the dashes, and end up somewhere other than your website.

Conclusion

Well that's all there is to it. Register your domain today and get start building your website.

This article was written by Erin Chew of www.oceanbox.net

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Erin_Chew

Don't Risk Losing Your Business Domain Name! Or-WHOIS My Registrar?

I Can't Remember Where I Purchased My Domain Name!

It wasn't until my third client had called asking how to regain control of her domain name that I realized that it was a common problem for small business webmasters to forget where they had registered their domains. WHOIS my registrar? Why didn't I get an email about renewal? Why did my site stop working today?

People rarely realize how important it is to keep their domain registrar notified of changes to their email address and and other contact information. The registrar will send renewal notifications to the email address last on file. For most domain owners, the only time they think about contacting a registrar is the day they reserve their domain name. If they move to a new city and get a new internet service provider, it doesn't occur to them that the old email address will change and that meeans that the registrar can no longer contact them through the previous address, or phone or fax as each of them change and we rarely notify the controller of our domain of those changes.

Sometimes the first indication a business owner will have that there is a problem is the day their web site stops working. If they failed to notify their domain registrar of changed email address, they may never have received their domain renewal notice. Since many registrars honor a 30 day "redemption period" allowing expired domains to be redeemed, it may be possible to save the registration within 30 days following expiration by contacting registrars during 30 day domain redemption periods.

The following URL leads to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (AKA ICANN) discussing the grace period and redemption period rules it enforces.

http://www.icann.org/bucharest/redemption-topic.htm

So how does a domain owner find out who their registrar is if they've forgotten? Simple WHOIS inquiries will tell you everything the registrar knows about your domain. Public WHOIS records show the owner's contact email, street address, phone and fax numbers. But that's not all, it also shows the current registrar, DNS servers, the creation and expiration dates of the domain name. Here is how to check your WHOIS data. Type the following into your browser address bar:

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=google.com

Replace google.com with your domain name and click go. If you don't, you'll see the following contact information:

Administrative Contact:

DNS Admin (NIC-14290820) Google Inc.

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway

Mountain View CA 94043

*********@google.com

+1.6506234000

Fax- +1.6506188571

You'll also see the domain servers, which usually includes the host name like so:

Domain servers in listed order:

NS3.GOOGLE.COM

NS4.GOOGLE.COM

NS1.GOOGLE.COM

NS2.GOOGLE.COM

This normally shows only two servers (Google is bigger than you.)

So now that you are armed with WHOIS data, you can see:

1.Who the registrar is. (Hence WHOIS)
2.Who the Domain Administrative, technical contacts are.
3.Owner names, addresses, emails, phone and fax numbers.
4.Domain creation, expiration and "last updated" dates.
5.Domain servers and backup servers.

What do you do if your domain name shows expired and it has stopped working? Do that WHOIS search and contact the listed registrar at their customer support number. They'll ask you to prove who you are by verifying some registration details. If you can't remember access passwords to log in to domain management consoles, they'll often accept faxed copies of your photo ID or a some standard identification proof and reset your username and password to give you access again.

Forgetting to notify your registrar is not the only way to lose control of your domain. There are hundreds of stories of unethical hosting companies, webmasters and even spouses (since divorced) holding domain names in the name of a small business because the domain owner was not web savvy and didn't understand how important that domain name signup day was. Keep your registrar name, your log in username, password and domain management URL permanently recorded somewhere with your most important business papers. Don't allow anyone to register your domain name for you if they don't put YOUR name, email address and phone numbers in "Administrative Contact" position during registration.

Some business owners confuse their web host with their internet service provider and further confuse both with the domain registrar. Since many ISP's offer web space, or hosting, and also provide domain registration through their initial signup package, it's not easy to separate the three distinctly different entities. You needn't host with your internet service provider and they're (almost) never your domain registrar. Keep them separate and completely apart in your mind.

1.Internet service provider. (AT&T, Verizon, SBC Global.)
2.Web hosting provider. (Pair Networks, Verio web hosts.)
3.Domain Registrar. (GoDaddy, Register.com Yahoo Domains.)

When a client recently moved her hosting, she asked me how to make that happen and had no idea how important the details were. We first established a new hosting account, then determined new domain name servers, uploaded her web files. we made sure that account was live with the new web host, then contacted the domain REGISTRAR to change to the new domain servers in a domain management console.

This same client had nearly told her old web host to close her account before we found out that the registrar had her old, previous email address as "Administrative contact" email for her domain name. It took two days to straighten that out and make corrections. Her site would have been down for two days if she had shut down her old hosting account as she had planned before speaking with me. She had a new hosting account set up, but failed to realize the importance of the registrar change to DNS server records in the moving scenario.

We then notified the previous host of the change, only AFTER the domain was resolving to the new host so that when the site was turned off at the old host, it was already working at the new host.

Don't be caught by surprise! You can protect your domain name by registering it for the maximum time of ten years and extend it every year to that final, tenth year, rather than waiting for it to near expiration. This will prevent you losing control of the name, but shouldn't mean you can forget your registrar login details or renewal date. How likely is it that you will move, or at least change internet service providers within that ten years? Be sure to keep your registrar apprised of new email, street address, phone numbers at all times! Especially that all important Administrative contact email. "WHOIS" your domain registrar? Do you have domain name management console login details? Have you extended your registration to ten years? Your business is worth careful domain name management.

Mike Banks Valentine operates WebSite101 Small Business Ecommerce & Domain Tutorial and offers domain name registration at: http://website101.com/Domain_Name/ WHOIS lookup at: http://website101.com/Domain_Name/Domain-WHOIS-database.html Transfer your domain to another registrar http://website101.com/Domain_Name/transfer_domain_registrar.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Valentine