Domain Names – Securing Your Piece Of The Internet Real Estate Landscape

Domain names are to the Internet what an address is to a city. If you want to locate a particular house or any other type of building, you would identify it by its street address, city, state, and zip code. Similarly, in order to locate a particular website on the Internet, you would identify it by its domain name. From the very beginning, ever since the inception of the Internet, through the present day, the domain name gold rush continues, as people are competing to acquire the most popular, the most catchy, the most easy-to-remember domain names.  While the real estate market may have crashed in the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century, the hunt for the hottest domain names continues to thrive, underscoring the value of the Internet real estate landscape.

Owning Your Own Domain Name Rather Than Using Someone Else’s

If you want to promote your website on the Internet, if you want to establish your website’s credibility, if you want people to remember your website and come back to it, and to develop loyal visitors, you absolutely MUST have your own domain name. Yes, it may cost you a few dollars per year to register a domain name, but it is well worth the cost in terms of marketing alone. Piggy-backing off of a free web hosting provider’s domain name has only one thing going for it: It is free. But you are just another webpage on THEIR website, and you have to play by THEIR rules. People will remember you as www.abc.com. They will not remember you as www.xyz.com/abc.

Registering A Domain Name Is Not Just For Technical Geeks Anymore

A long time ago, registering a domain name may have been a complicated process that only technical, computer-savvy Internet geeks could understand how to do. But today, with the massive explosion of hundreds of millions of websites on the Internet, anyone can register their own domain name, quickly, easily, and painlessly, within a matter of minutes.

First Steps: Choosing A Domain Registrar

A long time ago, there was only one company, InterNIC (later acquired by Network Solutions), that handled all domain registrations across the world. But soon that changed, allowing for competition in the free market. You now have a choice among numerous domain registrars through whom you can register your domain name.

So how do you choose from among different registrars? There are a number of different factors:
- Different registrars charge different prices for domain registration.
- Different registrars will offer a number of add on services, such as email addresses or web hosting.

Ultimately, though, all registrars accomplish exactly the same thing: registering your domain name into the Internet’s master domain name database.

Some examples of popular domain registrars include Dynadot, GoDaddy, and 1and1.

Finding An Available Domain Name

The next step is to find a domain name that is available and which is not already taken by someone else. That is easy to do. Every domain registrar offers a search feature that lets you type in a domain name, and it will tell you whether that domain name is already taken or not.

Choosing The Right Domain Name

Even though the vast majority of one-word or two-word, and even three-word domain names are already taken by others, there are still an infinite number of domain names available for you to buy. The possibilities are subject only to the limitations of your creativity and imagination.

One thing you will need to take into consideration is what you want your top level domain to be. The top level domain, or TLD for short, refers to the part of the domain name that comes after the “dot”, such as “.com”, “.net”, “.org”, “.us”, or “.info”. There are no restrictions on what you can and can’t do with a website in any of these domains, although which one you choose should reflect on the nature of the website to the extent possible.

What you choose for your domain name should be something catchy, clever, and easy to remember. While you should try to find a domain name that is relevant to the topic or theme of your website, it isn’t always necessary.

The important thing is that the domain name should be something that sticks in peoples’ heads as you strive to build your website’s identity and reputation online. You should avoid domain names that are too long and too wordy. And there is a difference in opinion among many marketing experts as to whether or not you should register a domain that has hyphens in it.

Ranking Your Domain Name In The Search Engines

Choose your domain name wisely. If you want your website to be easily found in the search engines, and you want it to show up in the top 5 results in Google, Yahoo, or Bing, then you want the content of your website to relate to the domain name as much as possible. A website about dogs shouldn’t have a domain name that is about goldfish, for example. It should be something related to dogs. And if you want to give your website a boost in the search engines, then you should make sure that the content in your website contains the words that comprise your domain name. So if your domain name is “mypetrover.com”, you want the phrase “my pet Rover” to show up a few times within the content of your website, and the content of your website should be closely tied to the theme of a dog named Rover. This will help it rank well in the search engines.

Once you make your selection, making a domain name purchase is no different than making any other online purchase. You provide your personal (or your business) contact information and you pay for the domain name, and then it becomes your property!

Internet Privacy

Some domain registrars offer a privacy option, to keep your contact information private. Otherwise, if you do not choose this option, to anonymize your contact information, then it will be publicly viewable by everyone on the Internet. Anyone will be able to look up your domain name and see that you are the owner. Opting to make your information private will protect you from spammers and unwanted solicitations.

Getting Your Domain Name Set up

Once you have completed your domain name purchase, it will point to a default, generic web page. This is called “parking” your domain name. Once you are ready to develop a website for your domain name, simply follow the instructions provided by the registrar on how to “point” the domain name to the address of your web host, which may or may not be with the same company.

Ready to make your domain name purchase today?