Domain Registration Basics
When establishing an online presence for your business, few things are as important as the registration of a quality domain name. A good domain name makes it easy for your customers to find you, and it can drive far greater traffic to your door.
Domain registration is an easy to do, necessary and very important first step toward establishing a solid presence on the web. A well chosen domain name will help your company succeed through increased search engine traffic, better search results ranking, and more. A list of important tips on domain registration is found below:
1. Choose your extension carefully. The most commonly used extensions for domain registration are .com, .net and .org.
The .com extension is used for business web sites, and it is the most commonly used domain registration extension. The .net extension is generally used for non-commercial web sites, and the .org extension generally signifies a non-profit organization web site.
There are specific requirements for registering a .org extension domain name (such as being a non-profit or social service agency. Many businesses will try to register the .net extension in addition to the .com domain registration. This can be important, if only to keep the .net version of your name away from competitors.
2. The most important part of domain registration is probably the choice of keywords to use in that domain name.
The main keyword or keyword phrase you hope to optimize for the entire site should be made part of the domain name if at all possible. The most popular search engines seem to give greater weight to keyword rich domain names, and these types of domain names should rank higher in searches on Google, Yahoo, etc.
3. The domain name should be kept as short as possible. The reason for this is easy enough to understand – a shorter domain name will be much easier to remember than a longer one. Would you rather remember the domain registration name for jewelry.com or myownpersonaljewelrystore.com?
4. In most cases it is best to not use your company name in the domain registration name unless it contains the keywords you wish to optimize. Using your company name as your domain name will certainly increase your rankings in searches for that name, but until your company name is known, no one will be searching for it yet.
5. It is important to avoid infringing on trademarks or copyrights when creating a domain registration name. Most commercial companies, private organizations and non-profit agencies have their company names, and variations of their company name, trademarked, and company lawyers are becoming increasingly aggressive at enforcing those trademarks and copyrights.
It may be tempting to use a well known brand name as part of your domain registration name, but resist that temptation. It will ultimately create hassles your new business does not need.
