A website requires two things: Hosting and Domain. Host, more particularly, Host Server is the place where your website and all its contents are located. The domain name, however, is the address to your website.
A domain name is like a house's address. Since it is like the direction to the website, it needs to be concise and easy to remember. Just as the house's address should be impeccable, the address to the website should be unambiguous too so that one may easily find the way your website. Therefore, the more economical they are, more convenient to remember.
There are few primordial considerations that one should take before buying a domain name. Firstly, the domain should be pertinent to the website and should be able to give the gist of the website in few words. Moreover, the theme of the website, should be manifest in the domain name.
For example, if the website is about cars then the domain name should be something like car-repair, car-parts, motorsplace etc. This not only gives a general view of the domain to the visitors, but also makes it more targeted by the search engine spiders.
Secondly, the domain name should be unique. Something that would make the visitors easily recall the website's name and not confuse it with some other websites. For example, www.wheelsonroad.com or www.bigwheels.com would be suitable and distinct names for a website. Thirdly, economy is the key to success.
The domain name should be as economical as possible. Long and wordy domain names are deprecated by the visitors. For instance, domain names such as www.buycars.com, www.cars-on-sale.com are preferred over other names such as rentandbuyacar.com etc. Sometimes, it is advantageous to buy domain names similar to your domain name. Once, your website is popular and creates a "brand", then having similar domain names to your website protects your domain name and makes sure you get your targeted hits.
So if your domain name has hyphens, then also register the one that has no hyphen. Or if your domain name has a word that can be spelt in different ways, then register the domain with alternative spelling as well. Sometimes, words are commonly misspelt. For example, words like grammar, is mostly erroneously spelt as "grammer". In such cases, it is safe to register both the domain names. The benefit of the multiple domains is that it makes sure that you get your deserved quota of the visitor traffic!
Now the next step: Which type of domain name to buy? Which one would be more suitable for my business? To answer that question we have to examine the types of domains. Domain names can be of two type: Country extension domain names (www.mydomain.com.us ) and global domain names(www.mydomain.com).
Global domain names are used when one's business aims at the global market. The country domain names are necessary when local representation is stronger. It is important to note that both domain names have different registration process with different settings. The available types of domain names are:
1. .Com
2. .Net
3. .Org
4. .Info
5. .tv
6. .mobi
7. .biz
The purchase of the domain name is depended on two factors: Your need and the price of the domain. But the touchstone for most businesses would not involve cost but the need for certain type of domain. In fact, most businesses would buy all the available extensions due to the relative insignificant cost.
But for the tyros, the costs do matter. If money is a significant consideration, then one should invest in only one domain name. Once the business has grown, only then you should invest some of the profits into buying other extensions. Generally, .com, net, .biz and org are of the same cost. .Info is comparatively much cheaper than the rest.
The price of .mobi is a little less than the .com group. Whereas .tv is an exclusive domain name and is much more expensive. Most people prefer .com because it is the most popular one and hence easier to remember. However, in certain cases, .net suits the domain name much better and people choose that. Sometimes, there is an offer when buying one domain name reduces the prices of the other domain name extensions. Such offers are available at Go Daddy .
Once you have decided which domain name extension you want, you may now proceed to the next step of buying the domain name. Most domain names are sold on yearly bases and need to be renewed after a year. The best prices are offered at the following websites.
1. GoDaddy
2. NameCheap
3. Domain Delivery
4. Interland
5. Rackshack
6. Dot You
However, it is always safe to read their policy to see if they are in accord with your requirements. For example, GoDaddy does not provide mulitple domain support on single accounts. So if you are looking for having separate sites using the same hosting, then it is not possible with Go Daddy. Normally a domain costs around 10 USD per year.
The payment would have to be made through PayPal or a Credit or the Debit Card. They are required to be renewed on yearly bases and if not renewed, then one can lose the domain name. Therefore, you should renew the website before hand, just in case you forget the deadline. Sometimes people buy multiple domain names to increase their traffic.
Multiple domains mean that one website had several urls. For example, www.yourdomainname.com and www.youdomainname.org lead to the same website. When registering multiple domains, the costs might increase dramatically. Hence, it is always advisable to do a cost-benefit analysis before registering additional domains.
Considerations such as cost of the additional domain to the cost of profit earned due to more traffic would be necessary. Make sure, that you set a target for the cost you are willing to pay for the domains. Sometimes, multiple domain costs exceed the profit and may cause some loss to the business.
Here are few precautions that you should follow while purchasing a domain name. Make sure, you follow them or otherwise you would face problems after you have made the purchase. Firstly, take care of the legal aspects of the purchase of the domain name. Make sure that your domain name does not infringe the copyrights of some other entity.
For example, websites like googlenoobs.com or disneytoys.com might sound beneficial to you but they have the copyright issue of existing businesses. Therefore, avoid buying such domain names. Secondly, one should look up for the age of the website, in other words, the history of the website. Make sure that the domain name was never in association with pornography, racism or similar issues. If it has such a history, do not buy it. It will cause trouble in the future.
Thirdly, after the purchase of the domain name, secure your domain name by locking it. This denies the domain transfer offers and secures the site, as the domain's setting needs to be changed manually. Moreover, the domain's password should contain random alphabets, lower and uppercase, and numbers. Because, if someone, unfortunately, gains access to the domain name then he can transfer the domain name to himself. Also remember, to renew you website in advance. Once expired, it is on offer for anyone to buy.
Moreover, always purchase the domain names in your own name. Many of the reputable hosts offer domain services where the domain name is automatically placed in the name of the customer. But if you are not sure that your host is doing that then purchase the domain from a third party and change DNS numbers and point them to your host.
Now the final step, go to any of the websites mentioned above and buy the domain. You would need to make the payment through credit card, paypal or the debitcard. After that, link the domain to your website. There are two ways of linking the domain name to your website. One would be domain name redirection, which is discussed below. The other, more common, way is to link it to your website hosting provider by setting the DNS numbers. In case you are looking for a redirect to your site, you can either do a manual redirect or server side scription, that is, the automatic direction.
Manual link direct involves asking the vistor to go to the new website by following a link provided on the old website. For example, mydomain.com would ask the visitor to click on a link that would take them to newdomain.com. However, this is a rudimentary way of doing it. Most websites do it only in case of the visitors browser does not support automatic redirect. So, if you have changed domains, you can use domain redirection.
Most of the times, the hosts charges some money for providing domain redirection, so one might want to keep that in mind before changing domains. Once you have linked the domain to your website, now your site is functional and ready to be explored! Good luck with your new domain.