Beginner's Guide to choosing a web site domain name

Choosing a Web Site Domain Name

Choosing a web site domain name is the next step.

If you have done the previous exercise well you should have 3 or 4 keywords that define your e-business. You now need to register those words as your domain name.

You can do this as MyThreeOrFourWords.com or My-Three-or-Four-Words.com or My_Three_or_Four_Words.com. Choose the option which you feel is going to be the easiest to advertise and be recognised by your target buyers. Remember to keep it short.

If one of your choices is already taken, look over the site to see whether or not you would like to receive visitors that miss-type their name. More importantly, do you want to risk losing your visitors to their site?

Domain names are cheap, so buy up any that are similar to your choice to prevent anyone else buying them and taking your visitors. Dot com names are aimed at businesses that are global. If your business is regional choose a name which reflects this. Many search engines have a regional filter - this may filter you out if you use the dot com names. Some regional search engines use the IP address to determine whether or not to include you in their index - check that your IP address is hosted in the region where you want to be indexed.

Choosing a host for your domain name

There are many web sites that will allow you to check for the availability of a domain name. For every site there is also a variation in cost to you and the service which they offer. Before you go ahead to purchase your domain name make up a schedule of what services you get as part of the domain name hosting and choose the site that gives you what you want.

• Does the domain name host give you the ownership of the domain name?
• Are you the contact person for the domain name or is the domain name host listed as the contact?
• Can you change the DNS servers that the domain is pointing to?
• How easy is it to transfer your domain to a new host?
• Is there a charge to transfer your domain to a new registrar?

To register a domain name with your choice of contact and DNS details, use the banner below.

A cheap option may be just what you need or it may cost you a lot in lost revenue. See 'Web Site Domain hosting' for things to look out for before buying. I spent over four months wondering why my carefully optimized web pages were being ignored by the search engines. Within a week of changing the web site hosting I had been found and indexed by search engines.

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