Getting a Great Domain Name

If you are familiar with working online, it’s a good idea to purchase a domain name for your website(s). Choosing the right domain name, if you done properly, is one of the main factors of getting your website to rank high in the major search engines. A good domain name is easy to remember, and potentially gives your website better chances to rank higher compared to other less valuable names. On contrary, a poorly chosen domain name will not do you any good whatsoever.

The fundamentals of Domain Name Registration

The first step you have to take is come up with a meaningful domain name to register. Don’t even consider getting a single dictionary word domain name; they’re all registered by now. Instead, find dual-word combinations. If you’re setting up a personal website, try out your name prior to anything else.

Don’t get too fancy in spelling when choosing a domain name for registration, or try using 2s, 4s and 8s to stand for their sounds. You may try the number 1, though; sometimes that works. You can also try the titles of products you are going to sell, or a description of the content your site offers: Findlovetoday, Burgerkingdom, Cutepuppies. Memorable name is always better; memorable and short is best, but extremely difficult to find.

Compose a  few dozen names suitable for your site, and test each of them for availability. Do not purchase a domain for which the .com extension is already taken, but the .info or the .net are vacant. Domain names with those extensions are not at all as valuable as the .com ones. On the other hand, if you choose the .com and you anticipate the website to be profitable or face a strong competition, it’s a good idea to register the other extensions as well. Registering a domain name is not too expensive, and if you buy domains in bulk you can get a substantial discount too.

The .UK TLD Extension

What has been said so far does not imply you should look only for .com. If you have a business based in the United Kingdom, you can greatly benefit with a .uk domain name, which UK visitors are likely to look at prior to anything else for UK-specific products and services.

If you feel that most of your income will come from British consumers who know that your business is in the UK, the .uk extension could be a better option than the .com; and if your customers are quite pro-Britain, the .uk extension is definitely a better choice.

If you are lucky enough to find both extensions for your chosen domain available, and if you run a UK company, it’s definitely worth to get them both!

Buying a .uk domain also gives your online business an instant geographic identity, which in turn may be vital in developing online relationships – where trust is a decisive factor. Having a .UK domain, you are quite likely to attract UK customers.

Finally, we should mention that the .UK domains market is one of the most rapidly growing and profitable registration niches on the internet.

Tips for Registering Domain Name

Get a website ready to operate under your domain name as soon as possible after buying it, and submit it to the search engines without delay. The search engines usually take time to get a new site indexed, and your domain becomes valuable only after the search engines find and index the website.

It’s also possible to have more than one domain pointing at the same website. For examples, if you have purchased a number of extensions for your domain name (as in the aforementioned .uk-.com combination), you can set up a site under one domain name and redirect all traffic from the others domains to the main website. This is known as web traffic forwarding and has been employed for many years. It may be as easy as parking your domain name with a hosting provider and adding a line of code on the relevant page, or as difficult as using another website for their web forwarding services.

After you register a domain name and start bringing traffic to the site, contact your registrar to renew the domain for many years before the renewal is due. It is amazingly easy to forget to prolong your domain registration on time, and if somebody else snatch it up and registers it, you will lose years of hard work on that domain.

By choosing a memorable domain name, you will it easy for people and other webmasters remember it when building their links to your website with the right anchor text – a vital element of SEO.

Final tip: don’t think only about the cost when buying a domain name from a registrar – think also about the quality of their services. While you should not be paying too much, it is indeed better to be on the safe side buy going with the more reputable registrars. Then you can be assured that should any problems come up, they will be taken care of promptly and efficiently.