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Registering the right domain name

Written by: Paul Lock

Article Overview: Tips on how to get good names and save money

Registering the right domain name

HOW TO GET A STRONG ONLINE IDENTITY
(Or how I blundered and beat the domain hucksters!)

You may have read about the so called ‘entrepreneurs’ who make money by registering every domain name they can. They sell the names to genuine businesses at a vast profit – it’s perfectly legal but the politest word that springs to mind to describe these people is ‘hucksters’.

You may also have heard that you should register your name with every possible suffix like co.uk, .com, .net so that competitors don’t steal your traffic.

The truth is that there’s plenty of scope to get a good online identity and you probably don’t need every suffix available. Even better, you can outflank the hucksters and get better search engine results with this little known technique.

Let’s take my business name: Incise Communications Ltd. My website business address is www.incisecomms.co.uk. Unfortunately, www.incise.co.uk had been taken when I registered. Even worse, incisecomms doesn’t describe accurately what I do and is not a readable word.

Why’s that important?

Because search engine ‘robots’ read and recognise proper words. If your name is one that they can associate with keywords their visitors use, your site will get better search engine positions in some engines.

How did I get round my own naming blunder?

I registered www.net-marketing-help-4u.com and that’s the domain name I use to promote my mini-site about search engine marketing.

So if the name you’d prefer is already registered, try submitting it with a hyphen or two between the words. You may well find that it’s available and a better search engine option too.

You can do this at www.tucows.com or www.ukreg.com .

BUT - make sure your keywords are in the root of your domain, not the stem! For example, if your main keyword phrase is "cell phones" try to get a domain name such as "cell-phones.com" instead of "mobileuk.com/cell-phones.com." Some search engines will penalise sites with keywords in the stem.


HOW MANY SUFFIXES?

By suffixes we mean .com, co.uk, .net, .org and so on.

Why is this important? Well, the last thing you want is a competitor stealing a .com, .net etc version of your name. You could lose a lot of business.

But you could easily go overboard and register tens, even hundreds of domain variations.

So, before you break the bank, how likely are you to need different suffixes?

The first factor to consider is your geographic area of trading. If you’re operating in an international market with $multi-million online sales, you should protect your online identity and register the different options for each country in which you trade.

But if you’re operating regionally and your name is not particularly descriptive, then going beyond co.uk, .com and perhaps .net is probably a waste of money.

Certainly, if you plan to sell internationally or even just the US, you should register .com as well as co.uk.

REGISTER AT THE BEST PRICES

And don’t get ripped off. There are lots of sharks out there who’ll charge you too much for a registration. You can do it yourself at www.ukreg.com and many other sites.

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Related Forum Posts
Making money with Obama.me - I posted here last week about the .me domain suffix and how you can makle money with it. A member of another forum i belong to register the domain and he is about to resell it. As of wiring this the domain is worth $921. If obama become the president of America, the domain might worth thousands of dollars.
Re: Domain name sugestion - Dear Aneilly I did some training on domain names. SBI recommends a domain name that scores well on search engines. Using key words that identify your product or service in your domain name will drive free traffic to your site.
Re: How Much Is Your Website Worth? - Good question! I don't know if anybody has traded sites at values suggested by dnscoop. According to the blurb on dnscoop, the value is based on several factors, including: Links, Traffic (Alexa), age of the domain, site category, domain keyword popularity, and overall occurrences of the domain name on the web. They also have a forum where domain names are traded, but I couldn't work out whether people were basing their prices on dnscoop valuations...
Domain name sugestion - Hi. I 'm asking for some ideas. I need a name for a new domain. The domain will be used to provide technical support to specific software users.
Re: how do I get started with Wordpress blog? - [quote="christew":39gpwahc] If you put it off you risk: - weakening your brand as your site name will change when you do finally move to your own domain. - forfeit full control of your site and content while not on your own domain. Its rare but hosted wordpress platforms have been known to delete or lose content. - Mess up search engine rankings when you finally do the domain switch. If your site is busy this can represent thousands in lost revenue.[/quote:39gpwahc] I think the problem is not buying a domain and hosting but setting up the site with the chosen design on Wordpress. I think she needs to outsource the process because cannot handle this by herself and this costs more than $20.


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