Registering a Domain Name
Usually you register your domain either at your web hosting company or at a separate registrar. Sometimes it can be more useful to register at a registrar instead of your web hosting company, that way your can separate your domains from your web hosting services. One drawback in doing this is that you will have to additionally configure your domain’s dns servers.
One of the most popular and reliable registrar today is godaddy.com. There you can register your domain name, as well as use some other very useful domain services. There are lots of top-level domains (TLD’s) at the moment. A top-level domain is the last part of an domain name, that is, the letters which follow the final dot of any domain name. For example, in the domain name www.website.tld, the top-level domain is .tld. The most popular is .com, but the are many others. A .com domain is usually the best to go for, because that’s the name people usually associate with the web. This is my recommended list of TLD’s to consider:
* .com – The classic TLD for any site anywhere in the world. It is used by all kinds of website’s, even though it was initially intended for commercial website’s only. Virtually all the good .com domains are already taken.
* .net – This should be your second in the list domain to consider when registering. It is a very popular one, it can be used by any sort of website, even though it was initially intended only for internet related website’s
* .biz .info .org. These domains are intended for business, informational and non profit website’s respectively. They have much greater availability that of .com or .net, but lack the prestige of a .com or .net tld. However, you may be able to get exactly the domain name you want.
* .us .co.uk .ca .de .fr … This are country specific domain names. A country TLD is a great way to target those people living in a particular country, but not good if you’re reaching out for a global audience. Domain names tend to be more readily available.
* .ws .nu .co .bz .tk .cc This domains should be avoided. They are all country specific TLD’s marketed as alternatives to .com. However they cannot compete with .com or .net domains. They are mainly used by second class and warez website’s.
Your domain name should be a compound word made up of two or more individual words related to your site. Two words is easier to remember, one word is ideal, but only if you can get it. For example: if you want to sell cars you can be reasonably assured that cars.com will be already registered, so try a name like carsauction.com, carsworld.com, cheapcars.com … There’s a good chance that one of these will be free. Getting the “cars” keyword into the domain name may or may not give the site a boost in search engine terms. Generally speaking, highly competitive keywords tend to get filtered out by search engines.
Next, you will want to check domain name availability. Simply going to your browser and the domain name will generally tell you nothing as most domains aren’t developed (they don’t yet have a site associated with them). Instead you should use a whois lookup. A good website that offers a whois lookup is whois.net. There you can find out if a domain name is free. You could also see lot’s of useful information about already registered domains, like when they expire and which web hosting company they are mapped to.
Sometimes good domain names become available at eBay in their Domain Names or Website’s For Sale category. It’s tricky to find good names amongst all of the useless domains out there, and buying anything at auction requires practice and caution. An undeveloped domain name with some decent listings can be had for under $100. You can also get a fully developed website along with the domain, but such website’s are extremely costly. If a site or domain name is being sold with claims that it’s long established or has traffic you will need to check. You can use the alexa.com website for that, it provides a detailed listing about website traffic.