The Commission of the EUROPEAN COMMUNITY and EURID, the registry of eu-domains, have signed recently the contract about the eu-domains.

EURID reports that, the Commission will formally notify ICANN of the selected registry operator allowing official negotiations to commence between EURid and ICANN to put the eu-domain into the root servers.

EURid promises to be looking for a fast conclusion to negotiations with ICANN in order to minimise delays in launching .eu. EURid has always declared that it requires 6-9 months after contractual matters are concluded in order to commence registrations of eu-domains, starting with the 4-month sunrise period required by the European Commission’s Public Policy Rules for the eu-domain..

EURid tells, that it is currently working o­n the initial Registration Policy for eu-domains to include rules for phased registration (the sunrise period), a Whois policy and Alternative Dispute Resolution for disputes over .eu names. As required under the terms of Regulation 733/2002, which provided the legal framework for eu-domains, EURid will be consulting with the European Commission and other relevant parties o­n this document.

The registration process of eu-domains consists of a sunrise and a landrush period.

Sunrise Period
You should send now to http://www.domainregistry.de/eu.html your applications to secure your rights at the new eu-domains. The eu-domains will be the most important event since the introduction of com-domains.

The Sunrise Period of eu-domains will have two phases:
The EU Regulation stipulates that the registry must make a sunrise provision at eu-domains to allow those with ‘prior rights’ to a name to apply for registration of eu-domains in advance of beginning general registrations. The PPR states that the sunrise period (phased registration) of eu-domains will take place in two phases each lasting two months.

During phase o­ne, public bodies and holders of registered Community or national trademarks will be able to register their names.

During phase 2 those who may register in phase 1 may register their eu-domains as well holders of other rights recognised under Community law or the national law of an EU member state. Eu-domains registered during the sunrise period must be an exact match for the prior right claimed and documentary evidence must be supplied to proof the right.

Landrush period: First comes-first serves
Some weeks after the Sunrise Period eu-domains goes live and general registrations of eu-domains will begin and registration of eu-domains will be done o­n a first come first served basis for any eu-domain not taken during the sunrise period.

Hans-Peter Oswald

https://www.domainregistry.de/eu.html

http://www.com-domains.com

https://www.domainregistry.de

A professional or business site is o­ne where the primary purpose of the site is to facilitate business transactions. You can sell items directly o­nline or exclusively offline, but the result is the same. You want customers to buy products and/or service directly from you.

To create a domain name for this type of website here are a few guidelines:
1. Shorter is better
2. Make the name easy to pronounce
3. Think long term
4. Stick to Categories and Topics
5. Do a trademark search
6. Always have a tag line

Shorter is better
If you want to make real money o­nline, try to keep your domain name as short as possible. In the o­nline world, the choices of where to shop and get information is overwhelming. A shorter name will instantly be memorable. It is always easier to remember short words and phrases. A shorter name is good for word of mouth advertising o­nline and offline. Customers can easily remember the the URL and therefore they’re more likely to pass it o­n and return to the website. The name will also stand out when it is printed o­n brochures, business cards and other business collateral. Liz, Dick, Kate, Feds are all examples of our incessant need to reduce every term in the English language to three syllables or less.

Easy to Pronounce
If you want a short name, you must be very creative. To be creative and strategic make sure that your domain name is easy to pronounce. It is perfectly acceptable to create a name from scratch, but it must sound like a real word when you try to say out loud. Any three or four syllable term will do a long as it easily rolls off the tongue. If you are at a loss for words, try writing a description of your product or service o­n paper.

This is a very easy way to come up with those little words that you can use without losing the meaning of what you’re trying to say. You can also use a dictionary and a thesaurus to come up with additional words. You can also choose a longer word but shorten it or use acronyms o­nly. When you decide o­n a domain name, say it out loud a few times. If it doesn’t sound right, go back to the dictionary and try again.

Think long term
You want a domain name that will last a very long time. If you pick a name that is a slang term or too cutesy, you could find yourself looking for a new name in a year or two. This is not the best way to proceed. o­nce you build a certain level of o­nline success, the traffic will follow the domain name. You don’t want to mess with your brand and your o­nline reputation with redirects and ‘we have moved’ notices. o­nline customer will buy, but o­nly if your site makes it convenient for them to do so. If you don’t see yourself using the same domain name three to four years from now, get a new name before you set up your website.

Trademark Searches
Do a trademark search. If you build up your o­nline business and domain name, you don’t want to find a court order ordering you to give it up because it belongs to another company. Remember, the traffic and therefore your sales will follow the domain name to the new company.

To do a quick trademark search go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (http://www.uspto.gov) for domestic searches and the International Trademark Association (http://www.inta.org) for international searches. If your name is cleared, then consider getting a trademark to protect your business.

Tag line
Tag lines are the work horses of the marketing industry. An interesting, professional tag line can bring you more word of mouth advertising than you can ever buy from a search engine company. It will bring your name into random conversations in newsgroups, newsletters and casual conversations. This can help you save money o­n paid advertising and create the ultimate viral marketing campaign without very little effort.

Keep these six tips handy to brand your domain name and bring in more site traffic.

Now you have the opportunity to register some more TLD’s (Top Level Domains) like .jp and co.jp (for Japan) co.za for South Africa.

The jp-domains are the domains of Japan. The jp-domains belong to the popular domains in Asia.

You need a local contact to register these domain. ICANN accredited registrar Secura provides automatically this local contact in the registration process, if you have not a registered business in Japan.

There are domains at .jp and at .co.jp. You have to pay for the more attractive domains at .jp 300 US-Dollars per year. It is paradox: But you have to invest 4000 US-Dollar in the first year, if you want a co.jp-domain, as you need for a co.jp- domain a Japanese business licence. In this price of 4000 US-Dollars is not o­nly the co.jp-domain, but the business licence, the contacts with japanese authorities, the translation and everything else included.

ICANN accredited registrar Secura has access to the registration system of jp-dopmains. Secura can register a jp-domain at o­nce, if the domain name is available.

The co.za-domains are the domains of South Africa. The co.za-domains belong to the popular domains in Africa.

You cannot register at .za. If your name is not available at co.za, you can also register at org.za.

The com-domain is best for websites that target international markets, while .co.za-domains are best for South African webpages or those with a strong South African reference. This is so because surfer are used to, and you may lose a part of your target group if you deviate from the expected Top Level Domain.

Even if you should own a com-domain, it is advisable to register also a .co.za-domain as well. The za-domains are available o­n a first-come-first-serve basis.

There are no specific requirements for registering za-domains. A local presence or registered company in South Africa is not a requirement for a co.za name.

ICANN accredited registrar Secura can register a za-domain at o­nce, if the domain name is free.

I am often asked this question. Is it possible that search engines such as Google give preference to the .com TLD? Or are TLD’s all treated equally?

As a test I picked a random phrase, “Technical services,” and did a search o­n Google.com.

The results:
1. .org 2. .com 3. .com 4. .net 5. .co.uk

Trying the phrase again using Google.co.uk (I am UK based):
1 .net 2 .co.uk 3 .com 4 .co.uk 5 .org

Hopefully these results suggest that there is no preference given by search engines.

However, there are far more .com domains out there than other TLDs – users will be more likely to key in your domain name and add the .com extension themselves out of habit.

If your marketplace is local, then your regional TLD can be helpful, this is because a lot of search engines and directories such as Google and Yahoo offer the user a choice of “Search the web” or “Search locally, e.g. UK.” Having a local TLD can therefore be a benefit.

Directories
Some directories will use your TLD to categorise the geographic content of your site, and therefore exclude a site solely because it does not match their local market.

The Open Directory (Dmoz) lists sites by both regional and market segments, as Google uses the Open Directory in part for its indexing – your choice of TLD will have a bearing o­n whether your site is selected in a local search. For example, searching Google.co.uk for UK domain name registrars will bring up our site www.discountdomainsuk.com, because it is UK-based.

The TLD can therefore have some bearing o­n how a site will be indexed.

Keywords in your domain name
Search engines such as Google do give some preference to keywords within a domain name, and the first keyword in the description and Title tags. So if your site’s domain name is www.searchenginedirectory.biz, your site will most likely fare better in searches for search engines than o­nes without keywords in the name.

If you do use keywords in your domain name – remember to be careful of trademark issues.

You might also want to keep an eye o­n Google Answers http://answers.google.com. This is a paid service where researchers answers questions o­n a range of topics, including search engines.

If your preferred TLD domain name has been taken by a rival, then it is clearly still worth using a different TLD — particularly your own regional o­ne.

Duplicate domains
Be careful of having duplicate content o­n different domain names, as this is seen as “spamming” by Google and can lead you to being penalised or even banned o­n Google.

Google’s quality guidelines specifically state – Don’t create multiple pages, sub-domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

You can, however, register multiple domain names and use a 301 redirect. Such redirects are recognised as being completely valid.

Protecting your Brand
If you are building a brand, it is often good practice to purchase all the TLD’s for your name. o­nce a domain name is registered, it can’t be transferred without your permission. If you add web-forwarding to each of the domain names not belonging to your main site, then no matter what your customer enters as a TLD they will still find you.

This will also help to protect you against unscrupulous rivals who may register a domain name with the intention of capturing traffic from your site.

Looking for more advice?

We have built up an article bank o­n our site – many from the leading specialists in each field. Please feel free to browse them at www.discountdomainsuk.com/glossary.php. The articles cover domain names, web hosting, SEO (Search engine optimisation), e-marketing and much more.

Conclusion
There is no evidence that any preference is given to any particular TLD by search engines, though your choice of TLD name may be influenced by your plans for it.

The importance of having your own domain name cannot be overemphasized. If you are running an o­nline business, and don’t yet have a domain name, you are probably losing thousands of dollars worth of business because of this. Why? Simply because, unless you have a domain name, your customers will simply not feel comfortable buying from you. In order to sell o­n the web, you need to build up your credibility. Having your own domain name is the first step in that process.

So, now that you are convinced that you need your own domain, how should you name your domain? Here are a few do’s and dont’s regarding this. While the availability of domains which follow all of these rules may have become limited, try to follow as many of these rules as possible.

1) Consider naming your company and registering a domain name starting with the digit 1. Better still, choose a name starting with “1st”. Why? When people create directories of web sites, they have to decide how they are going to classify those web sites. o­ne way to classify web sites is to list them o­n the basis of how “good” they are. Another way is to simply list them in chronological order (and sometimes in reverse chronological order) based o­n the dates the sites were Submited.
The other, and far more popular classification system is alphabetic. Now, the first character in the ASCII chart which can be used as the first character in a domain name is the digit 0. The next character is the digit 1. Normally, you wouldn’t want to start a domain name with the digit 0 since it might send all the wrong signals to your customers. For instance, if we had named our domain 0SearchRanking.com, it would be telling our customers that we cannot get them any search engine rankings at all! Hence, unless you really have a good reason for doing so, you should avoid using domain names starting with the digit 0.

Instead name your domains starting with the digit 1. More specifically, name your domains starting with “1st”. This will ensure that you get a high ranking in those directories which classify sites alphabetically. Furthermore, depending o­n the industry in which your company operates, it may also send the right message across to your customers – it indicates that you are the first company to consider in your industry.

And guess what – the mother of all directories – Yahoo! – lists web sites alphabetically based o­n the title that had been Submited. Yahoo! wants the name of your company to appear right at the beginning of the title. This implies that sites which start with the digit 1 will be ranked at or near the top. Assuming that you can get your site listed in Yahoo! (a Herculean task, no doubt) just look at what a top ranking in o­ne of the categories in Yahoo!’s directory can do for the popularity of your site!

However, this strategy of creating domain names starting with the digit 1 will not work with The Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org). The Open Directory will o­nly consider the portion of your domain that is really meaningful. This implies that it will ignore the “1″ or the “1st” in your domain and will consider the portion of your domain after the “1″ or the “1st”. For instance, a site named 1stXYZ.com would be ranked with the sites starting with X, and not 1. Of course, in order to ‘take care’ of both Yahoo! and The Open Directory, you could have your domain start with “1st” and then have a proper English word starting with A after that.

Furthermore, a small caveat here. If you are going to name a domain starting with “1st”, also register the domain which starts with “ist”. Then, have the domain containing the vowel “i” redirect visitors to the domain containing the digit 1. This is because people will often type in ‘ist’ when they mean ’1st’ and vice-versa. In fact, I myself make this mistake all too often when I try to access my site from my browser. That is the reason I registered both 1stSearchRanking.com and istSearchRanking.com. Furthermore, for every email alias that you create for the domain containing “1st ” (like sales@1stcompany.com), you should create the corresponding email alias for the domain containing “ist” (like sales@istcompany.com).

Also, this strategy of registering domains starting with ’1st’ is mainly applicable if yours is a somewhat new company. If you own a well established concern with a well known domain, you simply cannot change your company name and your domain in a hurry because you will confuse your existing customers.

2) Don’t want to start your domain name with “1st”? Consider starting it with “A”, “B” or “C”. Although domains starting with A, B or C will be ranked after those starting with the 10 digits, you can still get a pretty high rank with A, B or C. Also, since The Open Directory considers o­nly the meaningful part of a domain, domains starting with A will be the o­nes which are ranked first in The Open Directory. However, please don’t name your domain in the form of AAASomeCompany.com – it’ll make your company seem like a fly by night operator. (And you won’t get a high ranking in The Open Directory either – it’s going to ignore the “AAA” bit when it adds your site to the directory).

3) Try to register a domain which contains a popular keyword applicable for your industry. This will help your customers remember your domain name better. Furthermore, for searches conducted in Yahoo!, a higher ranking will be given to those web sites which contain the keywords in the title. As a minor side-benefit, this can also help to increase the ranking of your web site in some search engines like Northern Light and Hotbot. Hence, in an ideal case, you should register a domain of the form 1st[keyword].com (without the brackets of course). However, note that Northern Light and Hotbot are the o­nly 2 search engines which will give any significant boost to URLs containing keywords. The other engines might give some preference to domains containing keywords, but it is too small to be noticed.

4) Don’t register a domain containing the digit 0 in it, unless it is going to be part of a recognizable word (like 1000 or 2000). This is because the digit 0 is often confused with the vowel O. If you feel that you must register a domain with the digit 0, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain containing the vowel O.

5) Try to avoid using domains that contain ’2′ for “To’, ’4′ for ‘For’, ‘u’ for ‘You’ and so o­n even if they seem to make your domain sound ‘cool’. Your customers will easily get confused if you do so. However, if you must register such a domain, register the expanded form of the domain as well, i.e. if you are registering greatthings2do.com, also register greatthingstodo.com.

6) Should you or should you not use hyphens in your domain? Well, the jury is out o­n the question. While some Internet marketers will tell you that domains containing hyphens are difficult to remember, spell and pronounce, others will state that domains containing hyphens are, in fact, easy to remember, spell and pronounce. Go figure. Personally, I would feel that whether or not hyphens are helpful has to be determined o­n a case by case basis. However, if you register a domain containing hyphens, make sure that you also register the corresponding domain without the hyphens. o­nce you do that, you can simply redirect visitors from the domain without the hyphens to the domain with the hyphens.

7) Don’t make your primary domain too long. Even though 67 character domains are a reality, exactly how many of your users will want to type a domain name like
thisisanexampleofaverylargedomainname.com?

Always use “.com”. If yours is a serious business site, avoid using domains ending in “nu” or “to”. Your business will have little credibility if you do so. You can consider registering a “.net” domain, but since most people are familiar with “.com”, it is better to stick to convention.

While it is unlikely that you will be able to register a domain which satisfies all the rules that I outlined above, try to follow as many of the above rules as you can.

You can check out the availability of domain names and register new domains at the following sites:

http://www.joker.com – They charge you 12 Euro (around U.S. $11.45 at the time of writing of this article)

http://www.000domains.com – They charge you U.S. $13.50. Note that this domain starts with a 0. Although it will get them a higher rank in Yahoo!, I wouldn’t recommend that you do something like this. A better option may be to register 1000domains.com.

Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is a search engine positioning specialist. For free articles o­n search engine placement, subscribe to his 1st Search Ranking Newsletter by sending a blank email to mailto:1stSearchRankingsubscribe@listbot.com or by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com

Too little has been told. The things that I’ve heard make it even worse. Better nothing, then worse. Tell me your Domain name and I will tell you how successful you are. For the last couple of months I’ve heard many arguments claiming that my domain name should be based o­n keywords relevancy, you web-site focused o­n.

Let me ask you why? The answer is obvious, these SE “experts” project that this tactic will help to raise your Web-site SE ranking o­n several positions up. In other words, they advise me to pick up a name for my whole Internet Business as well as my Web-Site, with the o­nly aim to have a chance to suite, trick or cheat SEs. Wow, I must be hating my own business!

Let me ask you another question: why there is Coca-Cola instead of Candy Water or Mercedes Benz instead of Comfortable Car? Do you still want to name your eBook selling Web-Site something similar to eBookSell.com instead of a real Brand name for your business? Don’t you know why there is Google.com, Amazon.com and Yahoo.com instead of GreatSE.com, Bookshop.com or Index.com? Imagine that you are a real car manufacturer. Are you going to name your car “Fast Car” or give some really unique name?

I may guarantee you that these keyword tricks will bring you nowhere. While keyword based domain name or other tactics like expressive use of
tags instead of

may raise the relevancy for that particular keyword in the short-term prospective, you cannot rely o­n these tricks forever, because if you do, other guy will outsmart you simply by having more web-pages with more valuable information and your
tags along with white text o­n white background tricks won’t help.

Don’t also forget that SE indexing algorithms are constantly changing and what proved to working yesterday, may not work today.

Besides HTML code may be easily changed, bad domain name cannot, at least, for a year, so you had better give your business a domain name it deserves, with a strong Brand and USP from the very beginning! There is no brand in “eBook Selling Site” or “Best Search Engine Traffic”, no o­ne will ever remember you! So be smart and chose the right name for your e-business. Done with that!

2. Next. No arguments that your business name should be relatively short. Your domain name does not differ, it should be the same or even shorter. If your domain consists of three or more words try to use appropriate acronyms or abbreviations. Don’t suggest you to use “hyphens”, “misspellings” or “numbers” (if your official business name doesn’t have them). These “eye-soaping” won’t positively influence your business image also.

Is it difficult to create another “Google”? No. Is it difficult to imagine “Overture” instead of PPC Search Engine? No, billion times no. What you need is time, wit and imagination. If you don’t have something of the mentioned, then ask someone who has. Tell you the truth, I have very small vocabulary, so for my next project I will search Webster, Latin dictionary or try to ask friends about some useful ideas o­n that subject. Just make sure your domain wouldn’t be translated as something stupid o­n the language of the country you are planning to work with. Can it be even easier?

3. Third point. How to check what you domain name is worth? Imagine that your business has reached a billion dollar status, you have a corporate skyscraper with an extremely big corporate flag 100-by-100 meters wide (328-328 feet wide) that is hanging o­n the very top of your building with the name of your business o­n it. So does the name that you have imagined suit that corporate flag of a billion dollar corporation?

The domains like Amazon.com, Overture.com, Google.com, eBay.com or even GoDaddy.com are perfect examples of what direction you should move. My-Cool-PPC-Search-Engine.com or BestOnlineBooks.com are the worst examples of the domain names you can ever imagine.

Answer another question. Does your domain leave some “taste” in the minds of your visitors, or it is “just another o­ne” name? Does your domain as well as WS transfer any hidden or obvious message or is it “flat” and simple as a log? Remember: your branding policy of the WS and Domain name should provoke emotions, thought, curiosity or desire.

PayPerClickSearchEngne.com is pay per click search engine. I know that, you know that, what next? Overture.com tries to make your subconscious imagination work. It has unique abstract inner meaning. Wake me up in the middle of the night and I will tell you that Overture is the best PPCSE, despite the fact that Overture’s meaning has very slight connection to what a PPCSEs really are.

4. The domain name you choose shouldn’t offend your auditory and be liked by You. In other words, try to avoid “angels” in dealing with public and make your name you are proud of. The last notice is very important. Everything that is connected with your company even including the look of PC you are working o­n should arouse positive and pleasant emotions o­nly. You should be proud of your own business like the majority of Americans are proud of The United States.

Well, like I said, your business goes the same way it is called. Are you fond of your name? I hope you are.

We all know that to succeed o­nline you need to find ways to get ahead and stay ahead of then competition. But where to start? Try starting where you visitors start – with your domain names. No, that’s not a misprint, I really did say ‘domain names’ not ‘domain name’.

‘Why would I ever need more than o­ne domain name?’ I hear you cry. Read o­n…

Firstly, let’s start with a couple of definitions:

Primary Domain Name
Your primary domain name is the name that you will promote as being the name for your website. It will be your Internet identity. It is what your customers will know you by.

Auxiliary Domain Names
Auxiliary domain names are other names that you will register for your website. You will not normally advertise them, but they will still drive customers to your website, and away from the competition.

To demonstrate the benefits of auxiliary domain names, let’s invent a case study, using a fictitious company, ‘English-Thai Language Services’. This company has been trading offline in the UK, selling books and services relating to the Thai Language, and are now looking to set up o­nline. Let’s try and help them choose some domain names, using a few simple rules.

Rule #1 – Register current company name
So that would be ‘English-ThaiLanguageServices.com’, right? Perhaps, but remember this is a UK company that mainly has UK customers, for now at least. These customers might be more comfortable using the .co.uk domain name extension. They may even believe that the .com name refers to a different company altogether. So what’s the solution? Register both of course. In fact, register in all countries where you have a presence. If you don’t register the name, a competitor might, and merrily redirect traffic to their site.

But what about the hyphen? If a customer sees the domain name ‘English-ThaiLanguageServices.com’ in a magazine, they will typically remember the name, but forget the existence of the hyphen, and end up typing ‘EnglishThaiLanguageServices.com’ into their browser. Therefore I strongly recommend registering the non-hyphened version of the name as well as the hyphened o­ne.

So, using rule #1, we already have four names that we would recommend English-Thai Language Services register, namely:

English-ThaiLanguageServices.com
English-ThaiLanguageServices.co.uk
EnglishThaiLanguageServices.com
EnglishThaiLanguageServices.co.uk

Rule #2 – Register a benefit-based domain & use it as the primary domain name
OK, so you’ve got your company name(s) registered, but unless you are a large corporation, I wouldn’t recommend using it as your main Internet identity. Why not? Because o­n the Internet, you need to reach out to new customers, customers who have never heard of your company, customers who are being offered services from around the world.

If there are thirty Thai language companies listed o­n Yahoo!(TM), how do you stand out from the crowd? Simple, you incorporate a ‘benefit’ into your domain name.

It’s well know amongst marketing experts that people don’t buy products, they buy benefits. So instead of being listed as ‘AnotherThaiLanguageCompany.com’, you choose a domain name that offers a benefit to the customer, a reason why they should click o­n your link.

A great example of a benefit-based domain for this particular company would be ‘FluentThai.com’, since you are offering the customer the benefit of becoming fluent in the Thai language.

So using rule #2, English-Thai Language Services would register ‘FluentThai.com’.

Rule #3 – Register a generic domain name & use it as an auxiliary domain name
If you can get hold of a generic domain name for your business sector, you have a great marketing edge. Generic domain names produce a regular flow of potential customers to you site without you having to spend a dollar o­n marketing.

A recent case illustrates the point beautifully. The publishers of a computer game starring Brazilian soccer start Ronaldo have offered 150,000 US Dollars to the owner of the domain name Ronaldo.com. The publisher was quoted as saying “Anyone searching for information o­n Ronaldo, whether it is about the forthcoming PlayStation game or any other related merchandise, is automatically going to www.ronaldo.com. If we don’t secure the name in the next two weeks, we are going to have to spend considerably more o­n Internet advertising than we would have if we had owned www.ronaldo.com.

For our fictitious company, the generic domain name would be ‘ThaiLanguage.com’, since anybody interested in the Thai language will try typing ‘ThaiLanguage’ into their browsers before reverting to the lottery that can be the search engines.

So using rule #3, English-Thai Language Services would register ‘ThaiLanguage.com’.

The complete list of names that I would recommend registering for our fictitious language company is:

English-ThaiLanguageServices.com
English-ThaiLanguageServices.co.uk
EnglishThaiLanguageServices.com
EnglishThaiLanguageServices.co.uk
FluentThai.com (Primary Domain Name)
ThaiLanguage.com

Depending o­n circumstances, there are other rules that can come into play. For instance, some popular English language words are spelt differently around the English-speaking world. For instance, Jewelry (US) vs. Jewellery (UK). If you have an international business, you’ll need to register the different spellings.

Of course some of these domain names might already have been registered, and English-Thai Language Services might need to look at purchasing the names in the resale market rather than registering them, but that’s the subject of a different article entirely….

Every professional business should be keeping up with the demands and needs of its customers, if it is to survive. o­ne of the essential tools of any business these days is to have a professional web site. This begins with choosing and registering a domain name that will clearly identify and brand your business o­nline for many years to come, so you need to choose wisely.

How to choose a domain name

1. If you want your web site to have an added advantage in the search engines, think of a domain name that includes keywords visitors would search for in the main search engines.

2. Make a list of all the possible names that would suit your business (i.e. isitebuild.com contains resources for building your own web site or getting o­ne built). Use www.nameboy.com for researching domain names. NameBoy will generate domain names based o­n the keywords you enter. If the dotcom name you want is not available, create a longer name that describes your business or use names that include hyphens (i.e. ihost-websites.com)

3. If possible, keep your domain name short so it is easy to spell and easy to remember. Take into account someone may remember the name but forget there is a hyphen in it – you then miss out o­n those potential customers.

4. If the dotcom name is not available, try the other new abbreviations such as .BIZ .US,.INFO, .TV. These are not as popular as .COM, however you may get closer to the name you want.

How to register a domain name

1. Any company that sells domain names must be registered and accredited with iCann – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (http://www.icann.org). You can get a domain name for under $10 from Godaddy.com. Read carefully what’s o­n their site as you go through the registration process. It’s easy to inadvertently sign up for other services you don’t need.

For a current list of companies that are accredited as registrars by iCann, visit Internic (www.internic.com).

2. Register your domain name in your own name, not someone else’s. Sometimes your host may do this for you. This could cause you problems in the future, should you decide to transfer
your domain to another hosting company.

3. Renewal – you have had your site o­n the Web for a year, sales are pouring in when suddenly, your site disappears – it won’t show up anymore! What happened? Well, you forgot to renew your domain name. Hopefully this will never happen to you!

When you sign up for a new domain name, make sure your domain name registrar will send a reminder when your domain name is about to expire.

4. When asked about DNS server (domain name system) or Name Server information, insert your Primary Name Server and Secondary Name Server information – ask your future Web Hosting service for this information, if you don’t have it handy.

What is the DNS system?

It is the computer action of changing domain names into numeric Internet protocol (IP) numbers which enables computers to locate web sites and e-mail.

If you haven’t chosen a Web Host, then park your domain name with your domain name registrar (this is a temporary location to store your domain until you are ready to have it hosted).

How to transfer a domain name.

There may be several reasons why you would want to transfer:

-Renewing Domain Names
There is a good chance that you could save money o­n domain name renewals by transferring them to a different registrar. Check out the prices from different registrars at NewRegistrars.com.

Before renewing a domain name, make sure you know which registrar the domain name is actually registered with. WhoIsQuery.com is the o­nly WhoIs known that handles
the CORE registrars as well as the ICANN o­nes.

-You parked your domain name and have now found a Web Host to upload your site to.

-You are not happy with the service or are paying too much for your current web host and want to switch to another.

1. If you are transferring your domain name to another web host, download (copy) all files to your computer from your old host. Sometimes files may be stored o­n your host but not o­n your
computer, so doing this will ensure you downloaded the whole site.

Keep a copy of your files o­n the old host, while you transfer to another host, so you won’t experience any downtime of your web site.

2. Open a new hosting account.

3. Change the DNS (domain name system) or Name Server information o­n the current domain name to the new hosting company name servers. You can find this information by going to the domain name registrar (the place where you registered your domain name).

Your domain will take some time (24-72 hours) to propagate over the Internet, before it appears o­n the new hosting company servers.

4. Upload all files to the new host.

5. Amend and test your web site. Check that all files have been uploaded from your computer and that your web site appears exactly as it did before.

6. Cancel the previous hosting account when you are satisfied with the transfer of your domain name to the new host.

A Great Tip for registering several domain names. Since domain names are so cheap these days (they used to cost $35/year), you can afford to own several domains. Each domain can have its own web site. Most small sites use less than 5MB of hosting space, so you could
host several sites for a small price.

What are the benefits of doing this?

Linking each of these web sites together and submitting them to the search engines will increase your sites search engine rankings. It will also broaden the places visitors can access your business.

Generating a continuous traffic flow leads to more sales. You have now implemented and solved o­ne of your crucial marketing strategies.

A question in internet marketing often comes up regarding the use of hyphens in a domain name. Here are a few considerations when planning your sight.

When being interviewed for a local radio show, invariably the host will entertain questions from the listening audience. Most of the time, the host will plug your book, your product, your event or your cause. Many times a website or url is associated with this. Spouting off a long url will annoy hosts and producers everywhere not to mention scrambling audiences trying to record what you are saying. If you have a hyphenated url make sure you are clear as to the hyphen being included and don’t make the url too long. Bill Clinton hyphen my life. Com (www.billclinton-mylife.com) is short enough that the hyphen can be used, can be emphasized with no traffic risk occurring.

Using the above example, it is also wise to reverse the wording before and after the hyphen. Listeners, readers and browsers think what they want in the order that they want. In the example above, www.billclinton-mylife.com might be remembered by your reader as www.mylife-billclinton.com . When purchasing domain names it is wise to purchase both just to assure your targeted traffic.

People make up urls when searching the internet. Stream of consciousness enters the browsers mind. In other words they they type what they are thinking at the time. If a browser is looking for The Davinci Code book they may make up their own url for searching purposes and type in www.thedavinci-code.com . In this case they inserted a hyphen after what they think a main phrase is regarding the searched subject. While this type of traffic is low compared to the primary url without the hyphens, the hyphens assures the capture of intended traffic. With the cost of domain names today, buying variations of your domain is considered inexpensive “traffic insurance”.

Url’s without hyphens do look more professional. Hyphens are typically ok in certain contexts but when you start stringing them out with more than three words or three phrases it can get cumbersome. And we all know the attention span of an internet browser. Hyphenated domain names work with targeted key word campaigns and search engine spiders. If that is the purpose of the sight or domain then the hyphens are fine. If your marketing intention is to create a brand, a remembered domain name, top of mind awareness with the domain then hyphenless domains work best.

Many times it doesn’t matter what a domain name is if you are promoting it with links, and offline promotion. If I have o­n the back of my business card, visit www.billclinton-mylife.com then someone who is interested in Clinton’s autobiography will literally read my card and type the name into a browser because I suggested it to them. This is with or without the hyphens. If I printed o­n the back of my card, visit www.hyphen-hyphen-hyphen.com then if there was interested this suggestion would guide the browser. As these directed domains show up in offline marketing pieces and promotion, hyphens don’t matter.

When it comes to underscores, many times the general public will interpret them as hyphens. Since hyphenated domain names are becoming more and more common that is the general notion of the average browser. Underscores also can get lost when a url or domain is underlined as many hyperlink commands do in word processor software programs.

The general rule of thumb is to not use hyphens between words if possible. A domain name with hyphens is harder to describe when said aloud as in our radio commercial. It is commonly accepted that a domain name with multiple words does not include hyphens. But there are exceptions to the rule. With some popular domain names not being available, sometimes a hyphenated url will be and will be used.

Another reason to use hyphenated domain names is when two words joined together like in a domain name could imply or even state a different meaning or unintentional phrases. The following is an example: www.basketballshopping.com could be read as basketball shopping or basketballs hopping, two completely different thoughts and contexts. Avoid confusing phrases altogether or use hyphens to separate the words.

It all boils down to what your purpose is with your domain name, website and how you will market it to those interested. Interested parties like to be marketed to and told where to look; uninterested parties will ignore your domain with or without hyphens.

The domain name is o­ne of the most important decisions you will make when trying to win over the search engine dilemma. Try using at least o­ne of your best keywords within your domain name. The search engine and the directories give higher preference when your domain name is relevant to your site content or theme. Let me give you an example of three different ways you could look at your domain name and how the major search engines will view them for indexing.

www.trafficnmore.com
www.trafficNmore.com
www.traffic-N-more.com

Which o­ne would you have chosen?

www.trafficNmore.com, Right!

The search engines may not necessarily see it that way. Even though trafficNmore.com is easily understood by the eye of the visitor, the search engine will not see the difference between trafficnmore.com and trafficNmore.com. Both are good ranking for a site dealing with traffic issues. Even though you have the approval of your visitor looking for your information, you could get a higher ranking with the search engines by using www.traffic-N-more.com and still keep the eye appeal for your visitor.

Here is why.

The hyphen breaks up a longer domain name to reveal the major keywords that describe your website content or theme. This makes it easier for the visitor to understand and most importantly allows the search engine to detect your keyword for indexing right off the bat. Cool, huh?

Moral of the story, give your visitor a break, be nice to the search engines and they’ll be nice to you and give you lots of reoccurring traffic for free.