Register or buy a domain name for your company, a complete guide.
How to secure a good domain name for your business.
If you’re still not convinced that your business should have a website, frankly, you should. Supposedly, he’s already convinced of this, since everyone around him, even the local dry cleaner has a website these days, it seems. Well, all websites start with a domain name, and getting a good one, and without getting scammed, is a must. That’s how:
First understand the difference between buying a domain name and buying web hosting. The domain name is your address to access your website, you need to get hosting to go with it, but there’s a lot more to be said about the domain name purchase itself. Hosting is the actual space where your website is stored, and is usually purchased with the domain name, although you can certainly purchase a domain name without having to obtain hosting. I will not discuss hosting here.
Domain names being very limited as there is only one with whatever name you want suggests that you should purchase the name immediately, even before you are ready to build your website, at least you will have reserved the name for yourself.
When making the decision to purchase a domain name for your business website, don’t rule out the possibility of obtaining more than one domain name. Names can be had on the cheap these days, under twenty bucks at all major domain registrars for an annual renewal.
Where to start:
Start by securing your exact business name, preferably in .com format, and do what you can to get it to some extent. If you are a pizza restaurant called Rick’s Pizza then surely you should check the availability of RicksPizza.com, this can be done with a WHOIS lookup – whois.net is good. But if someone owns it and asks $8,000 for it, they probably don’t see how to justify the price. The domain owner will be especially demanding if he knows how badly you need the name, so if you make an offer he thinks about how to do it. More on that in a moment. But if getting your dream domain is not an option due to price, you can try a different TLD, domain ending, like RicksPizza.net, RicksPizza.biz. However, Dotcom is better, so it is recommended that you try adding a word to the .com version instead, such as -OrderRicksPizza.com etc.
Some general advice for “domain raiding” of a name, point to the following:
- Try to keep your name short: names can be up to 63 characters long, and yours shouldn’t be anywhere near that.
- Be descriptive: Use relevant keywords if it makes sense, like “BuyMensPants.com,” for example, if you’re a clothing designer.
- Be catchy: If you want to come up with a meaningless name, try a web 2.0 name generator like: Dotomator.com. This worked for major Joomla and Drupal startups, for example.
- Avoid trademarks in your name, as you don’t need the responsibility.
- Avoid hyphens in the name, unless you are doing business in Germany, where they prefer this!
- Avoid numeric digits in the domain, this is confusing when people hear the domain name, say over the radio, and assume that “5-0” was “FiveZero”.
- Make sure it’s a name you don’t have to spell for people. Flickr.com, for example, has had that problem since day one, talked about on the radio, for example, no one knows it’s missing the “e”.
- Consider misspellings: If your business is popular enough, or especially if you have a popular misspelling in your name, record different variations of how your name might be spelled. Note as a very common example that googel.com links to Google.com because they recognized the lost traffic they would otherwise have received from people who can’t spell “Google”.
You may want to consider buying more than one domain to take advantage of domain forwarding, where one domain points to another. So again if you are “Ricks Pizza” don’t just get “RicksPizza.com” maybe you get “OrderHotPizza.com” too. People can type such terms into a search engine or even directly into the URL bar, and it would be highly beneficial to have those particular names forwarded to your main website. Web registrars, where you register your name, can certainly help you with that.
The most important tip for securing a domain is to make sure the domain name has auto-renewal, otherwise you may lose your domain to a public auction and have to pay a lot to get your own name back, don’t let this happen. you keeping your name locked on your registrar, and with an auto-renewal set and a healthy credit card on file.
Although it’s not necessary, consider getting your domain name in other extensions as well (TLDs, as they’re called), but like anything else, don’t overdo it. If you are a multinational company called Widget co. then shop for other ccTLDs, or country code top-level domains, like widget.co.uk, widget.ca, widget.com.mx. There are numerous ccTLDs, many of which make no sense to anyone and all have different rules and regulations for obtaining them. There is a good list of them available here: http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db
Understanding subdomains and when to register additional names – If your business has significant subcategories, you can usually get a free subdomain. For example, in: this.example.com “this” is the subdomain. On a similar note, if your business is constantly creating new products or services, consider registering the domain name for these things as well and forwarding that name to the appropriate section on your main website. It would be like McRib.com owned by McDonald’s® and forwarding you to their home page. This way, you own the electronic real estate of something without the risk of someone else taking it.
Using domain tools to help you find a good name:
- DomainGroovy.com: It’s a great place to start as it offers the most comprehensive guide I know of for searching domains like availability search, random word generation, keyword tools, brand name generators and more.
- NameNinja.com– Quickly search for domains that contain popular search terms. Perfect for finding your next keyword-rich domain.
- dropwatch.com: Browse domains that expire by date.
- DomainsBot.com: Another good domain name generator.
Actually buying the name, when you find the one you want.
If you have performed a WHOIS lookup and your domain name is available, you may be the first person to register it; otherwise you will have to buy it from someone on the secondary market. But for a name available to register, I recommend any of the following:
- GoDaddy.com
- cheapname
- Name
- 1 and 1
- gandhi
All of these are great (read: good customer service), affordable, and well-suited to getting web hosting to go along with their name.
Be warned, when you register a domain name it can be a confusing process, largely due to all the upsells the registrar will offer you (I’m looking at you GoDaddy), but the good news is that you don’t need almost nothing from that. The only thing I would recommend is that if you think you need it, you should buy privacy protection. Anyone who registers a domain name has their information listed publicly in the “WHOIS” database, unless they purchase privacy protection.
Negotiate for a name in the aftermarket:
If your name wasn’t available, don’t give up hope. You can still contact the owner directly through a WHOIS lookup, or by searching on a domain name aftermarket site like YumDomains.com, Sedo.com, or GoDaddy.com. Always contact the domain owner and ask if your domain name is for sale. However, under no circumstances make an offer. The first person to name a price in a negotiation is the loser as they say.
If possible, hide your identity when negotiating the purchase of a domain name, as who you are can sometimes drive up the price. If Apple® needed to buy a domain name for one of their new products, you better believe that they won’t send you an email from your own address, they’ll get a non-descript email address to ask you to impersonate a regular user. . Joseph.
Be aware of domain name values and avoid getting scammed – While there are general guidelines for the value of a domain name, it’s highly subjective, and anyone who sells you your domain name will likely make as much money as possible for her, making you offers that make it difficult for you. Although a full explanation of domain valuation is beyond the scope of this article, some key valuation metrics include: domain length (the shorter the better), keywords, existing traffic, especially write traffic (traffic that gets a name without SEO or advertising), and even brandability.
Another good way to get an idea of domain name valuations is to simply literally browse the market for what they are looking for, this can be done by visiting Dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm where many secondary market domain sales are posted every week .
Tie up some loose ends after buying your first domain name:
It is recommended that whether or not you buy your name as an initial registration, or on the secondary market, that you set the domain for an automatic renewal as I mentioned, that the name is locked in the control panel, as names are stolen. and lastly, if you are concerned, purchase privacy protection to protect your personal information.
Name listing for sale after purchase:
This may seem counterintuitive, but after you’ve made your purchase, consider putting your domain name up for sale immediately on a domain name broker site like YumDomains or Sedo at a huge markup. Even though you need your business name, you can list it so high it will be worth selling right away, and you can get a different name for your business. Always know your time outlook for your business to guide the decision to make such a decision, but you never know who may need your domain name so badly that they are willing to pay literally ten times what you would for that outcome.
by Brad Hines
