Domain Name - get it right

Domain Name - get it right

When Internet started years ago, Domain Name was even free. This lead to a story of one getting million dollars with a free domain name registered. However, another sad story is the most valuable sex.com. Stolen and made millions before ordered by court to return to the original owner, disappeared for years to avoid millions of compensation, then recently caught.

The very first step of any Internet planning is the Domain Name. There is confusion due to the excess of information, some carelessly offered.

If you have not registered a Domain Name yet, it is certain that you have trouble to get a good one. As mentioned a few years ago, almost every meaningful Domain Name has been registered. There are quite a lot of companies getting many good Domain Names for profit. If you have no other choice and the price is acceptable, it is still worth to get.

How to find the best Domain Name for your business?

The best Domain Name is one that is easy to read and type.

If your company is famous or at least with certain number of existing customers, it is your company name that will be the best choice.

We may have to give up simple names because of availability. This problem has been taken seriously and that is why we have many top-level domains (TLDs), .net, .tv, .uk etc.

However, we do not think these new domains can be compared with the original '.com'. Let's see a simple test. If someone told you that his/her website is 'SOMESITE', what will you type if you want to see this site? Certainly, you would type www.SOMESITE.com. The case is easily proved.

Of course, regional domains are for local customers. It is certain that some people outside America prefer to avoid .com that is too American.

For those who shall aim at international market or audience, it is still better to choose '.com'.

We may face the hard choice of giving up our company names or the best one that fit our business. Just take our subsidiary website, www.t-photo.com, as example. The hyphen is used because someone else has registered the 'tphoto'. Fortunately, the hyphen and the dot (used for sub-domain) are readily accepted by most. The sub-domain for the www.t-photo.com is www.english.t-photo.com.

Remember that in general, the minimum character for the label (head portion before the dot) is 3 and the maximum is 63. For some other TLDs, the minimum may be 4 or 5.

Basing on the latest checking, the world's longest domain name is http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.com/ .

If you want more information about Domain Name, please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name

As mentioned earlier, the most valuable domain name is sex.com. Basically, the name is attractive to many millions. It is easy to remember, or simply embedded in our mind.

Of course, if a website is great, a nonsense name still sells. Google and Yahoo are great examples. Now Google shares the same status as Xerox. Google something means searching, just like xerox means photocopying.

However, if we are not so famous, it is better to choose a domain name that would be easy to promote, that is, easy to read and type. Any shortcoming may require extra marketing effort.

Protection must be considered before register

Except for famous corporations or celebrities, all website names are valueless in the beginning. Just like our website, we believe that it cannot be sold for a dollar. But the value of your website name may surge once it is successful. Remember the sex.com has been stolen and the owner suffered loss and had to spend money and effort to get it back.

The registration fee is small in compare with the total cost of building, maintaining and promoting a site. So do not be so smart to look for low cost registration. It is always better to find the top one. My domain names are registered with Networksolution.

Never let others to handle for you. Some hosting companies offer free domain name registration. Never accept that and never take it as part of benefit. It will cost you a lot in the future because there will be lots of reason to change the hosting.

Well, let's summarize as follow:

1. It must not be too long so that it is easy to type.

2. It must be easy to read and remember.

3. The best for business is still .com, unless the target is localization outside America.

4. Hurry up, otherwise we may need to use longer name.

5. Choose the top Domain Name registrar and you must handle the registration directly. It is very simple.