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Once upon a time, having a website was considered to be fancy and websites were a luxury. However, today it is necessary to own a website. Most businesses today have websites. Many people relate to business because of their websites.

Having a website today is a compulsory thing. The first step to owning a website is registering a domain name. This may seem like an easy task but there are certain things that you need to take care of while doing so.

1. Cover the bases: If you are registering a domain name, then it makes sense to register as many extensions of that name as you can. For example, if you register only mybusinessdomain.com, there could be some other company that registers mybusinessdomain.org. This could lead to serious competition that could have been avoided if you had registered all the extensions.

2. Park them together: If you have a name with different extensions or if you register many names at once, then it makes sense to park them together with just one service provider. This will make it easy to organize and control them.

3. Don’t get tied down: If there is only one domain name extension available for the name you want, then it means that the other extensions are already booked. This means that your website is not the only one with that name. Hence, it makes sense to look for other variations of that name rather than just registering the one name extension that is available.

4. Cast the net wide: While registering, it is good to think what you would be doing in the future. Would you be only doing what you are doing now or would you like to expand your business as well. Do not choose a name that defines your business too narrowly. This will make it difficult to expand your business with the same name in the future.

5. Keep it short: Keeping the domain name short will make it easier for people to recall it and there will be lesser chances of people misspelling it.

6. Do not use hyphens unless it is necessary. While remembering your domain name, people will not remember the spelling along with the hyphen and this could affect the name and the business.

7. Keywords are important but that does not mean that you fill your domain name with keywords. Having a keyword will not ensure that your website will start ranking among search engines. It makes sense to have keywords only if the keyword reflects your business. However, websites can also do well if there are no keywords in the domain name.

8. You can use letters, numbers and dashes. However, you cannot use special characters like #, $, ^ etc. You can use capital letters as well.

9. Avoid names with established brand names. This could lead to trademark issues and put you in trouble.

10. Always keep your website updated. If your contact information changes, make sure to update the same on the website. Also remember the renewal dates of your domain name and renew it on time.

By: Tanya A Smith

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domain names

Domain names identify unique web sites and email addresses. They are also referred to as “URLs”. The specification includes entire domain structure in host.site.domain.name format. “Site” refers to sub-domain, “domain” refers to second-level domain, and “name” refers to top-level domain. The host is a computer, router, or workstation that uses a protocol of Internet Protocol family to transport hypertext documents across Internet. Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP) is an example.

The World Wide Web is the sub-domain, and is a hypertext-based client/server model for finding and accessing resources on the Internet. It is a computer network consisting of a collection of Internet sites featuring information through text format, graphics format, sound and animation form. Users access these sites through hypertext transfer protocol. Domain names link to web sites on the World Wide Web.

A second-level domain represents an actual domain, which is the company or the owner’s name, and is unique. Top-level domain (TLD) is the end part the web address, such as .com, .net, or .org. Also called the “”extension”", it indicates the core activity of the organization. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) currently classifies top-level domains in three types: country code, generic, and special domain names. Country-code top-level domains such as .in, .uk, .ca, and .fa end with two-letter extension. A particular class of organizations uses generic top-level domains. The third is the infrastructure top-level domain.

Computers record or identify websites numerically with IP addresses. Since it’s difficult to remember IP addresses, a system called Domain Name system (DNS) was created to translate IP addresses to domain names. Domain names are not case-sensitive.

To build a successful online business, it is essential to own a domain name. It increases a website’s visibility. Customers or targeted prospects can locate the company online and reach out for its services. A highly relevant domain would establish credibility and professionalism.

By: Richard Romando

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