Domain Name Propagation for Small Business Owners

This is all too common to business owners that start up their website. Most think that they have been had by their hosting provider or their site is down. Before calling tech support you might want to know about domain propagation.

Consider this scenario:

You register your domain name let's say mybusiness.com, paid for it and you now own it. You then buy a webhosting package from a webhosting company. After they verify your payment, they (the hosting company) will usually send you an email with your account information such as logon name, passwords, disk quota etc. You now check your browser to check your mybusiness.com website.... but nothing pops up.

4 hours passed... you check your website.. still nothing. You might see a message saying "No website configured for this address". Now you are irritated.. You call tech support. They say that your domain name has not propagated fully yet. I have experienced that before. The thought of your new website... all that stuff. Here's what the tech support meant, your domain may not have propagated or "spread" over the Internet yet.

Domain propagation is "routine" when it comes to webhosting. See, the Internet is composed of millions of computers interlinked together, handled by Internet Service Providers. When you register a domain name, your registrar sends the information to the Internet Service Providers announcing that your domain exists.

Considering that there are millions of computers and thousands of ISPs plus the long hop that the information takes, it is common that you have you to wait 1 or 2 days max before your domain name is announced to all ISPs.

So that's it. If you just bought a webhosting package and set the correct nameservers, wait a maximum of 2 days before your domain name propagates fully across the Internet.

Domain Names: My Personal Approach

Domain names have always been crucial to your businesses success. After all if your customers can't find you how can they buy from you. I believe the first domain name you should purchase is your own name. It can be used in so many ways. If you are proud of your business you will want your name to be directly associated with it. Such as Bill Gates and Microsoft. Owning your own name may come in handy someday for business or maybe even just for personal use.

The way that I approach domain names for my websites is, maybe, a little out there. I like to find a name that stops my viewers in there tracks. I want something that will stick in their minds even after they have finished reading the article or email or whatever form they viewed the domain name in. It has to be unique and flashy. Maybe a little over the top. I approach my domain name purchasing like this for two reasons.

1. I don't feel that my domain name will hurt my business if the product is there. I feel that the substance is still more important than the pitch.

2. It's different, on the edge. I like that. If it sticks in my viewers mind for just a little while. I know they will remember it. That is what I want.

So the next time you a thinking about buying a domain name and it seems like everything under the sun is taken that vaguely represents your business. Try thinking a little off base. Try associating words that go with your business that maybe don't really work together. Try writing down all the words that represent your business. Look at them, pick a couple and merge them together to form a new word. See if it sounds different. See if it sticks in your head. Is it something you think your viewers may remember because it is so unique? If so give it a shot. You can always go back and get another domain name. Play with it have fun. That is my approach to life and business.

Don't Let Your Domain Names Expire

Realistically, most “good” .com domain names are already taken. If your definition of “good” means single word, easy to remember names, then you’re probably already aware that these names will be extremely hard to find and will cost you quite a bit of cash. But, on the other hand, two and three word names are still available for the low cost of registering a new domain name with a registrar. You may also be interested in knowing that a good .com domain name can have dashes in it. So see what’s available and if you find a good one get it, point it at a website to get around cybersquatting, and continue looking for others. After all domain names are the real-estate of the future.

Here’s another good tip for domain owners. If you are thinking about expiring any of your domain names, don’t. There are people looking to buy them, and places you can list them for sale. Some places, such as sedo.com, allow you to post your domain name or website for free, but have so many clients selling, your domain name may take a long time to sell or be displayed. There are websites which will post your domain name if it’s a really good one, but they are broker-based and will receive a portion of your sale. If your domain name is mediocre at best and you are thinking of letting it expire, along with your website content, there are also places on the internet who will buy it all. So instead of giving up the time you’ve spent working on your website, the yearly renewal for the domain name, and any investments you may have made in marketing and design, think about selling first.

Domain portfolios will be as common as stock portfolios in the near future. There are domain owners who manage hundreds and hundreds of domains, with hopes to one day sell them for a large return. These domain portfolio managers will sit and wait for domains to expire and buy them up to add to their listings.

You may want to use a free domain name appraisal service, but be warned, you’ll either get a outrageously high amount quoted back to you, or a ridiculously low amount. But think of it as two ends of a spectrum and then try to get a price somewhere in the middle. If you think you have a really good domain name, you may want to contact a broker or pay to have it appraised. Remember, fair market value is determined by the amount someone will actually pay for your name.

Face it, with the scarcity of domain names, and the rising price of obtaining a top-notch name, any domain you own may be worth 10 times what you paid for it. Keep it, or sell it, but don’t just let it expire without trying to get a return on your investment. Look for “cash-for-domain-names” type websites which will allow brokers to bid on your name. You may get 5, 10 or even a few hundred dollars for a name you thought about expiring. Why not take the chance and see.

Domain Name Pointing Basics for Small Business Owners

When you are having trouble accessing your new website, don't call tech support yet. It may be a simple domain pointing problem. After registering your domain name, the next step you must make is to make sure that you point your domain name to the nameservers of your host. The nameserver is usually denoted by NS1.yourhost.com and NS2.yourhost.com - the NS part is simply the acronym for NameServer.

After you successfully bought a webhosting account, your webhosting provider will usually send you an email containing all the important information regarding your account - they will also include the NameServers to which you must point your domain name to.

What if I forgot to point the domain to the nameserver, what will happen?

In case you got too excited and forgot to point your domain name, the worst thing that could happen is that your website will not be found. A business website that cannot be found... hmm.. That's money going down the drain.

If you forgot to point your domain, your email address in that domain e.g. yourname@yournewdomain.com won't work because, well, they can't be found.

You do not need to worry however, pointing your domain to your host's nameservers is easy. You simply logon to your domain account and pick the modify domain command and substitute it with values that your host has given you... then wait 2 days max (domain propagation)

There you have it, keep your cool if you cannot access or find your new website, you may have just gotten too excited and forgot to point your domain to your hosts nameservers.

Keywords in Domain Names - Good or Bad?

Some Affiliate Marketers stress when trying to find a good domain name with their exact keywords in it. All this stress is caused by the incorrect assumption that using keywords in the domain name will get instant recognition by the Search Engines.

It has now been determined that putting keywords in your Domain Name does not directly help increase your search engine ranking. Search engines concentrate more on what is in the body of your pages, not on your Domain Name.

Don't get me wrong. Choosing a keyword related Domain Name is still important. The main purpose is to control how others link back to your site. This is especially important when doing affiliate marketing.

When someone decides to link to your site, the easiest thing for them to do is to copy the URL of your web site and use it as the Anchor Text for the link. If that name means nothing, you may not get any clicks, or PageRank help, from the link.

Going back to the Search Engine ranking, when Google ranks sites, one of the things it looks for is how many inbound links are pointing back to your page. You will get a better rank if the links are high quality and related to what your site is about.

If you are an affiliate marketer selling an electronic product, it is not going to do you any good to get links back from sites that are selling beauty items.

For example, you might think a good name for an affiliate site would be Upsell. Trying to tell people to make sure to remember to upsell when marketing affiliate products. However, when someone places a link on their site, they are going to just link back to Upsell.

So, if you were web-surfing and ran across that link, how likely would you be to click on it? What the heck is an upsell? I might be afraid it was something that was going to cost ME more.

Needless to say, that might be a poor choice for a domain name. You would need to do a lot of marketing to get people to identify with your name and remember it. Possibly "Affiliate Upsell" would have been a better choice. At least I know that applies to me as an affiliate.

As you can see, not using at least one keyword in the domain name just makes things harder. When you ask for a link back, you need to ask the other site owner to put in descriptive anchor text; some will, others don’t want to bother.

And that’s why choosing your Domain Name carefully will help you in the long run. It's not just for search engine ranking; it's for valuable link recognition to your site.