Domain name registration

In this section we are going to consider why domain name registration is more important than most people think, consider the merits of free domain name and web site hosting services and answer the often asked question of "Where do I go to register a domain name?".

Search engines REALLY like URLs that are saturated with keywords!
- SEO Expert, Derek Gehl of IMC

Although search engines are becoming more sophisticated all the time they are not human...yet. They look for keywords that will tell them what your site is all about and assist them in correctly indexing your site.

There are many factors that search engines take into consideration when indexing a website and one of them is the domain name of the site. This makes domain name registration an important topic to consider. It may be a very small component in the greater scheme of things but every little bit helps, as most successful webmasters can attest to.

If your site concept is all about a topic such as butterflies it will certainly be a good idea to include it in your domain name. It ads to the relevance of the site as far as the search engines are concerned.

The second point to remember for a successful domain name registration is that the domain name should be easy to remember.

 It should be easy to pronounce, short and relevant to your site concept
 

Make it easy for people to remember your domain name. I have often in the past come across a very interesting website but when I want to visit it again a couple of days later I simply cannot remember the domain name any longer.

Tip: What I do at the moment is keep a list of good websites. Everytime I come across a useful site I write down the domain name of the site with a short site description. I save this file on my desktop under the name "Good Resources". However, most people will not go through all this trouble...

A common mistake some people make as far as domain name registration is concerned, is to take an existing name that is already registered and add a word or a couple of words to it.

For example, you want to build a site about starting a home business. You go to whois.net and find out "home business dot com" is not available. Next you try "home based business"...not available. Next "best home based business"...not available. Eventually you end up registering a site called: "Best start at home based business today".

What is the problem?

Furthermore, "beststartathomebasedbusinesstoday", when you register it as one word, really starts to look like a dog's breakfast! Not ideal for domain name registration...

The next point to consider for a successful domain name registration is the TLD (Top Level Domain) extension, e.g. .com .net .org. .biz, etc.

There are so many TLD's to choose from. However, I strongly advise you to always go for a dot com domain name registration. If you really feel strongly about a certain domain name and the dot com has already been taken then go for the dot net (second only to dot com) TLD.

What should you do if the dot net is also unavailable for domain name registration? Choose another domain name. 

Remember that even if you manage to register the dot net domain name of your choice you will still lose a lot of visitors that type in the dot com TLD.

Most people are so used to dot com domain names that they automatically type .com after the domain name. I have on many occasions made the mistake of typing .com after a domain name and then thinking that I have typed in the wrong domain name just to find out later that I typed in the wrong TLD. Remember this when considering domain name registration...

You may get away with a dot net TLD if the dot com TLD belongs to an unrelated site. However, if the dot com TLD belongs to your number one competitor you are in trouble!

As far as the other TLD's are concerned, I would ignore them as possible options worth considering. They are not ideal for domain name registration.

There is one exception though and that is country specific TLD's. 

In South Africa, the country TLD is dot co dot za (.co.za). Unlike the USA where dot com is the dominant TLD, even compared to the USA's country TLD (.us), most South Africans will automatically type .co.za instead of .com when searching for a site.

Country domains such as .co.uk (for United Kingdom) is certainly as important, if not even more important in the UK, than a .com domain name registration.

Depending on your specific country, you may find that your country TLD is more than sufficient for domain name registration, especially if you are not interested in international visitors or customers.

However, if you have an international focus you should certainly focus on a dot com domain name registration. 

English is English. Right? Wrong. In many English speaking countries it is normal for the same words to be spelled differently. Examples include:

- Center (US) and Centre (UK)
- Program (US) and Programme (UK)  
- Neighbor (US) and Neighbour (UK)

In fact, there is a very long list of such words...

My advice?

Register both and simply redirect the one domain name to point to your main domain name. (It is very easy to do and your domain name registrar can certainly help you if you are not sure how to do it)

For example, when I registered www.money-maker-advice.com I realized that "advise" is also a perfectly good word and that some people (such as people from non-English speaking countries) can easily make the mistake of typing "advise" instead of "advice".

The domain name registration solution was easy. I registered both, e.g. money-maker-advice and money-maker-advise. My main domain name is money-maker-advice but if you type money-maker-advise you will automatically be redirected to my main site.

6. To register with or without dashes?

Many webmasters feel very strongly that only domain names without dashes should be considered for domain name registration. I do not agree.

It is easier for search engines to read (make sense of) long domain names with dashes than without dashes.
 

Putting search engines aside for one moment, what is really important as far as domain name registration is concerned is your site visitors.

What reads easier and looks more professional: makemoremoneyonline or make-more-money-online? You decide.

It is a good idea to use dashes when a name is longer than two words. Eg. MakeMoney looks fine. I think it even looks better than Make-Money. However, Make-Money-Today looks better than MakeMoneyToday.

As a matter of interest, I applied the above concept in the domain name registration of www.money-maker-advice.com - I registered it with and without dashes. If you click on www.moneymakeradvice.com you will be
redirected to www.money-maker-advice.com

By the way, if you are thinking of using the above domain name registration technique yourself, be careful. First make sure that you are not infringing on a trademark. It you do you can end up in some very hot water! 
 
7. What to do when in doubt.


8. What if your domain name is not available?

For a successful domain name registration you obviously first need to find the right domain. But what if your domain name has already been taken?

Once again, the easiest solution is simply to look for another domain name.

If you feel strongly about it you can try the following:

Type in the domain url in your browser and see if the domain name you are looking for has already been turned into a website. If it has you can email the webmaster and ask him or her if he or she is prepared to sell you the domain name. Give a price indication.

It is always possible that the webmaster is not interested in continuing with the website in the future. If there is no contact form or email address on the website, try a whois search - Simply go to whois.net 

Your chances are much better if there is no website yet. Many people buy a domain name thinking they will use it to build a website but never get around to actually building it. In this case you have a better chance.

Here are some techniques that may help:

Go to whois.net and find out when the domain name is due to expire. If the current domain name owner has not done anything with the domain name it is possible he or she will not renew it.

If the name is due to expire within a short period of time you can contact pool.com or snapnames.com to "catch" the name when it "drops".
 

Note: When a domain name expires the current owner can still renew it for a certain period after the expiry date before it becomes available. I will not go into the details here as it is not relevant to this section.

Both pool.com and snapnames.com are excellent companies to use. They are the best in my opinion. They will charge you something like USD 60 if they catch the domain name but will not charge you anything if they are unsuccessful with the domain name registration.

It is also possible that the current owner is already trying to sell the domain name. Do a search on auction sites such as eBay. The two most popular domain name auction sites are afternic.com and sedo.com

9. When to consider domain name auctions?

If you lack imagination coming up with an original domain name or simply want to see what is available on the open market, domain name auction sites such as afternic.com and sedo.com are excellent resource sites.

Sedo alone has more than 6 million domain names listed. Yes, MILLION!

Buying a domain name on an auction site can be quite expensive. One exception is eBay where you can buy a domain name for under USD 1. However, eBay has a limited number of domain names on offer and it must be a really bad domain name if it cannot even fetch USD 10 on eBay...

10. Only buy a name once you are sure about your site concept.

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I just started out was buying many different domain names because I thought I could use them in the future. Not very clever.

Some of my regular readers will know by now that I highly recommend Sitesell if you are serious about building a great content website. When you join Sitesell you go through a ten day course before you actually start building your website, and, domain name registration is actually one of the last things you do. With good reason...

I am often surprised how many people are searching the internet looking for a free domain name and website hosting.

Fact: Domain name registration is not a free process. Domain names are not sold by domain name registrars at 100% profit margins. Many of them, such as Godaddy (Number One domain name registrar on the net), offer very competitive prices and only make a very small profit margin on every domain name sale.
 

What does happen sometimes though is that some registrars make some special offers such as "free domain name and website hosting" where you can get a free domain name subject to buying something else from them.

In many cases a free domain name and website hosting actually means an add-on domain such as registrar.my_domain where your domain is actually part of the registrar's domain name. In other words, you do not get your own unique stand-alone domain name at all. Not very professional...

Personally, I only use one domain name registrar, namely Godaddy. They are the number one domain name registrar on the net. I find them highly cost competitive and you get many free services, such as email, when you buy a domain name from them.

In fact, most expert internet marketers recommend Godaddy and I think that even 70% plus of all domain names sold on eBay are registered with them. I have been using them for a couple of years and cannot find any fault with them.

Trust this will answer your question: "Where do I register a domain name?"
There are obviously many other registrars as well but I cannot really comment on them as I do not know them that well.

O.K. That concludes a rather long section on domain name registration, free domain name and website hosting, and letting you know where do I go to register a domain name. Trust it was useful.

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