Friday, June 29, 2007

Quick Domain Names - 7 Best Ways to Domain Names

Your domain name is virtually your online identity. This is how online users know you. So your domain name must be unique and keyword rich. Choosing your domain name is one of the crucial steps in starting your online business. These steps will make it easier for you to choose your domain name:

1. Ideally, your domain name must be short but concise. Combination of 2-3 words is the best way to go since online users generally remember short domain names.

2. Optimize your domain name with the most relevant keywords that define your products and services so search engines can easily find you.

3. Use your product name. If you are selling laptop or PC, it is better to include these on your domain name. It will make your domain name easy to remember.

4. Avoid double letters on your domain name as they create confusion to online users. Avoid using words that have the same last and first letters. For example; Carl Laundry.

5. Choose domain name that has .com instead of .net, .sg, .US. Online users are very used to using .com when they are searching for web pages. Using other extension can kill your traffic.

6. Create alternate web sites to get more domain names. If you are selling pre-owned laptop, you can register a domain name qualitylaptop.com. To make sure that your competitors will not use your site's popularity, register qualitylaptop.net, qualitylaptop.biz, etc.

7. Use your full name. If you are popular in your field, you can use your full name as your domain name. Oprah.com, britneryspears.com, parishilton.com, etc. surely makes traffic because they are easy to remember.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

How To Register Domain Names

Sooner or later, most web users will decide they want to own their own domain name. Whether you want to own a domain name for an online web business, for a hobby site, or to 'reserve' your personal name or the name of a child, you need to find out how you actually go about getting the name you want.

So, how to register domain names – in simple terms, what do you have to do?

The process is very easy. You will have to be prepared to pay from about $8 to $20 a year to 'own' a domain – this is the ongoing registration fee, so that you are recorded as the owner and as the contact person for the domain. This applies to all kinds of domain names, whether they are .com, .net, .info or any other.

You can do this at an online domain registration service – we will recommend the best one to use below. What you should not do is sign up with a hosting service which includes a 'free' domain name of your choice as part of its service. If the hosting service goes out of business in the future, getting control of your domain name may be difficult or impossible. Hosting services, outside of a handful of well-known companies, are notoriously unreliable and short lived, and some can be outright scams, and you don’t need to take the risk of them controlling your domain name. We know this from painful personal experience.

So if you want to set up a web site, keep this clear: you should register your web address first, as a completely separate process from setting up your web hosting.

At the online domain registration service, you will first type in the domain you want to use. Usually there is a prominent 'Start a domain search' or similar field to use for this. If the domain is already taken, you will see this immediately. If it is not taken, then you can register it yourself. Double check at this point that the domain is spelled exactly as you want it. You will have to register as a new customer, then give your name, address and phone details, and pay the annual fee for the domain using your credit card or PayPal account.

That’s it! You have registered a domain name, and you can either do nothing more (the domain is simply 'parked' by the domain service, and anyone who types the URL into a browser will see it is taken), or you can set up hosting to use the domain name for a new web site. When you buy a hosting package, you will simply replace the Name Server URLs that came with the domain with the new ones that your hosting service will give you. This is all explained, both by the domain registration service and by the hosting service. It usually takes about a day before your new domain name can be used for a new web site.

A good domain registration service, as well as making it easy to register the domain names you want, will also offer additional features like automatic renewals, a way to bid on other domains you might want which are already taken (if they become free), private registration, bulk purchasing deals, and more.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

How To Register Domain Names

Sooner or later, most web users will decide they want to own their own domain name. Whether you want to own a domain name for an online web business, for a hobby site, or to 'reserve' your personal name or the name of a child, you need to find out how you actually go about getting the name you want.

So, how to register domain names – in simple terms, what do you have to do?

The process is very easy. You will have to be prepared to pay from about $8 to $20 a year to 'own' a domain – this is the ongoing registration fee, so that you are recorded as the owner and as the contact person for the domain. This applies to all kinds of domain names, whether they are .com, .net, .info or any other.

You can do this at an online domain registration service – we will recommend the best one to use below. What you should not do is sign up with a hosting service which includes a 'free' domain name of your choice as part of its service. If the hosting service goes out of business in the future, getting control of your domain name may be difficult or impossible. Hosting services, outside of a handful of well-known companies, are notoriously unreliable and short lived, and some can be outright scams, and you don’t need to take the risk of them controlling your domain name. We know this from painful personal experience.

So if you want to set up a web site, keep this clear: you should register your web address first, as a completely separate process from setting up your web hosting.

At the online domain registration service, you will first type in the domain you want to use. Usually there is a prominent 'Start a domain search' or similar field to use for this. If the domain is already taken, you will see this immediately. If it is not taken, then you can register it yourself. Double check at this point that the domain is spelled exactly as you want it. You will have to register as a new customer, then give your name, address and phone details, and pay the annual fee for the domain using your credit card or PayPal account.

That’s it! You have registered a domain name, and you can either do nothing more (the domain is simply 'parked' by the domain service, and anyone who types the URL into a browser will see it is taken), or you can set up hosting to use the domain name for a new web site. When you buy a hosting package, you will simply replace the Name Server URLs that came with the domain with the new ones that your hosting service will give you. This is all explained, both by the domain registration service and by the hosting service. It usually takes about a day before your new domain name can be used for a new web site.

A good domain registration service, as well as making it easy to register the domain names you want, will also offer additional features like automatic renewals, a way to bid on other domains you might want which are already taken (if they become free), private registration, bulk purchasing deals, and more.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Everyone Needs An Internet Presence And Domain Name

Whatever business it is that you intend to start, it is very important to have a presence on the Internet. Just having a presence is not sufficient; you should choose the best domain name as this plays a vital part in the success of your business.

To get an idea of the best domain name for your business, consider the present URLs of most websites. They usually have these points in common; they give the reader an idea of the content of the website, and the number of characters used in the name is limited. So keep these two points in mind when choosing the perfect domain name for your website.

Most of the best domain names give the potential visitor an idea of what the website is about, without actually clicking on the link. For example, icici. Almost everyone knows that icici is a bank, and a URL with these letters symbolize that the present site is associated with icici. This is the effect the domain name should cultivate.

When a visitor visits a site, the site with a domain name that has relevance to the product of the website gets more visits. On visiting a site for sports articles, and a visitor has a choice between ‘sportsworld.com’ and ‘mynameisjohn.com’; it is more than likely that the first website will be clicked on. This is because the first name gives a better interpretation of what the website is about, and thus saves time in finding the required site.

It is very important to make your domain name short and sweet. This is because shorter domain names call for less typing of the surfers and lesser recall for remembering the location of the site. However it is not that easy to acquire a short domain name as most of the short domain names have already been taken. So you will need to do some thinking and use some ideas to create a domain name that is short and sweet, and associated with your content. You may have to spend some time getting the right name, however, it pays off in the long run.

It is better if you can come up with a domain name that is ‘catchy’ or ‘cute’. This may take some time and effort, but it will help lock your site’s location in the minds of the potential customer. This is a trick all advertisers too have been employing in their television, radio and billboard ads for a long time to come. So a good domain name creates the same effect as it does in an ad jingle; it remains in your head for some time. So if you can think of a domain name that is catchy, short and cute; while pointing to your content, then you would have got the best of both the worlds! And with a catchy domain name, you will get customers who can never seem to get your dot com out of their head unlike other sites, where they seem to forget the name of the site.

So don’t ignore the importance that lies in choosing the right domain name for your website as it is an important step in your business building plan. The domain name may not give the difference between failure and success, but it sure promises money in the bank.