Introduction

A good domain name is a major part of any online venture. This guide will take you through your options, from selection to tips on getting the most out of your domain. You’ll also discover some cool tricks and shortcuts for using your new domain name, and what to do when you can’t get one to suit your business.

A Short History of the Domain Name

Back in the early days of the internet, before it was made widespread, users would have connected to the server using the Internet Protocol or IP address, that looked like:

97.15.6.190

The internet was first used by the army engineers, scientists, computer buffs and librarians. There were no home PCs or speedy laptops, and the only available software was called ‘Telnet’, a command line user interface for accessing servers. It involved complex commands and graphically looked very basic, and had green text with a black background.

All computers connected to the internet have an IP address as well as websites. In fact servers are computers also. Now this was ok for techies to use the IP address, but for a server address to make sense to the normal guy, something had to be done. So along came the web browser. The first invented was called NCSA Mosaic, from which Internet explorer was derived in 1994.

So the website IP address is mapped to a domain name via a database system called DNS – more on that later. This gave businesses and individuals a way to market themselves globally, and make their website accessible to all, without being confused by IP addresses and all that techie stuff. Google hadn’t been invented until 1997, so to access a website, you had to enter the domain name URL into the browser address bar, rather than search for it.

The Domain Name Goldrush Phenomenon

So around 1996, many savvy entrepreneurs jumped on the internet bandwagon and set out to make their millions. Back then, all you had to do was select a good domain name, choose a niche, set up your site with merchant payment facilities and viola! You’re earning a fortune. There were very few that knew how to set up a good website back then, and everyone was on a slow 56k dialup connection.

So the solution then to quick internet cash was to flip domain names. So everyone went mad and bought up all the one – two word domains available and some made millions overnight – business.com went for $7.5 million in 1999. In those days, domain name length was limited, but nowadays you can have a domain name of any length. So again around 2003 when longer domain names and new extensions became available from registrars, the gold rush repeated itself and lasted about a year. Most of the good three to four word domains were bought up to be resold.

Selecting Your Domain Name

So with all this talk of all the good domains being taken, what does one do to get a good one that relates to the site content or business? Having a short domain name just makes it easier to remember, but not essential. It’s more important to use your top keyword for your market. So do some quick market research. Use the free Google keyword research tool, and choose the one with the highest searches. Next go to a domain name suggestion site and enter your keywords and you’ll get a list of all the available ones. The suggestion site I use is domainsbot.com but there are many others you can use also.

.com, .net, .org or .info?

So you’ve got your eye on a good domain, but which extension should you choose? Always go for the .com if it’s available because it’s the default used by web browsers. But if it’s not available, the second best is .net, then ,org. These are the top three, but over the past few years, more have became available, such as .info, .tv, and country specific ones like .co.uk and .co.us. I advise only to use those ones if your business is only serving your home country.

Here’s what each one stands for:

.com – company
.net – network
.org – organisation
.info – information
.co.uk – country – United Kingdom
.co.us – country – United States

If you can’t get the one you want in all one word, the solution is to use dashes between each word, like

keyword1-word2-word3.com.

Where to Buy From

So now you’ve found a suitable domain name that’s available, you do not have to buy it from the same site that suggested it. Instead shop around. It’s likely that you’ll find a cheaper price for the same domain elsewhere.

Your Domain Provider Company Can’t Hold You Hostage

Just because you purchased your domain name from the hosting company doesn’t mean you have to host you site with them. The same applies when you wish to move your website to a new host. So again, shop around for the best deal. Then all you have to do is set up your domain to point to your hosting server account using Domain Name Servers or DNS, which is the worlds largest database of re-directs to IP addresses.

Final Tips

What to do When You can’t get a Good Short Keyword Domain

Let’s say you’ve purchased your business domain, but your business name does not have any of your top keywords. The solution to this is to make folders in your website root directory named after your root directory, and each folder with an index.html page containing your keywords also, like this

mybusiness.com/web-design/

Capital letters in Domain Names

So lets say your domain name is mydomain.com It will still work if you type this all in uppercase – MYDOMAIN.COM, but hear this – if you have a web page folder other than the root folder on your site like mydomain.com/contactus, the ‘contactus’ part MUST be exact case. So if you named your contact page ‘ContactUs’, you must type your URL exactly, like:
mydomain.com/ContactUs. So the main domain can be any case, and all other html files and folders exact case.

Domain Name Shortcuts – http or not http?

Your domain name is also known as the URL or ‘Universal Resource Locater’. Now back in the early days of web browsers, you had to type the whole shebang. Like:

http://www.aphexpublishing.com

Nowadays, nearly all browsers automatically add in the http and www. , so you don’t have to type it. All you need now is something like this:

mysite.com

Also, if you’ve already visited a site in Internet Explorer, to access the site again quickly, simply type the first two or three letters of the domain in your browser address bar, and a list will appear – simply click on the domain then. Great if it’s a long URL and you haven’t bookmarked the site.

Thanks for reading.

Neil Harland – Author.

Author Bio: Neil also provides free software development services for small business projects. Visit http://www.codewareonline.com

Category: Internet
Keywords: domain names,domain flipping,domain hosting,domain name registration,domain name selection