What’s in a name? In a word: Everything!

Choosing an appropriate domain name for your web site is one of the first and most critical decisions you’ll have to make on the road to Internet success.

What Makes A Great Domain Name?

Is it punchy, sticks in the mind, is short and fits your product/service? Does it begin with a letter closer to the beginning of the alphabet, instead of towards the end? If so, and it’s not taken, you may have a winner!

However, with more than 60,000 new domain names being registered each month, many of the short, memorable, two-word names have already been snapped up. But don’t despair: there are other ways to win at the domain game.

Expired or ‘On-Hold’ Domain Names

Every day, domain names come up for renewal. And every day, the owners let them slip away. Why? Either they’ve gone out of business, or simply forget to renew. You can use free web sites to monitor these domains, and you may get lucky. As a bonus, your new name may come with built-in traffic!

Just be aware: many people are actively searching for good domain names to buy and sell, at a profit. For example, one domain, http://www.business.com, sold for millions! So be warned: if you see a name you want, don’t wait - grab it.

I’ve successfully used lists posted on the following two sites: http://deleteddomains.com and http://www.dailyexpireddomains.com. You’ll soon notice that some names are available immediately, while some are ‘on hold.’

Technically, once expired, all names are available. However those that have expired within the past 45 to 60 days are in a grace period. Prior owners are given the chance to make good on their debt. If they don’t, and the grace period expires, the name is ‘deleted’ from the master domain registry. It is then available for purchase by others.

The date of expiration is posted. If your dream name is ‘on hold,’ you’ll need to pay close attention to the lists. When the one you want is finally free, buy it quick.

Expired domain names can be purchased at any domain registration site. I continue to prefer http://www.godaddy.com, since buying a name through them for a year still costs under $10.

Once you’ve bought the domain, immediately make an appointment with yourself for one month BEFORE the domain expires, to renew. Don’t forget and have your business name slip away!

One last tip: Reserve your own name as a domain. For example, I’ve reserved http://www.paulamorrow.com. Even though you may never actually use it as a web site, this at least insures that no one else will either! Take your name off the market.

The Great Suffix Debate

As more and more people come online, and the stronger names are taken off the market, there will be more ’suffixes’ added to expand registration options. Currently, the following endings are available: .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .ws, and .us. With more to come.

If at all possible, choose a domain name ending in .com (’dot-com’). This is still the most widely recognized ending, and the most popular. When typing in a domain name, people will still, by default, try .com first. The next popular ending after .com is .net — but always try for a .com name, if at all possible.

As you make this very important decision choose well because, if you’re successful, you’ll be living with it for a very long time.

About the Author
Paula Morrow heads http://www.idealmarketingcorp.com. She
specializes in public relations, information marketing and creating cashflow systems. Her newsletter, IDEALProfits, is now read in 12
countries. Subscribe and receive 5 BONUS ebooks worth $149!
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Anyone who has been marketing on the Internet for a while knows that without good, targeted traffic generating sales for you, you are dead in the water. No traffic, no sales, no money.
Let’s talk about domain names. Many marketers out there who want to put something up on the web simply log on to their favorite domain register and start looking at what domain names might be available. After registering their catchy domain name, voila, another site is born on the Internet!
There is a better way to register your new domain: choose a soon-to-expire domain that’s already been around, got abandoned, has backlinks on the major search engines and “used” to have a good amount of traffic when it was alive and kicking. For whatever reason, its owner abandoned the site, went out of business, checked out or forgot to re-register it.
I like to grab domain names before they expire for the simple reason that they risk a smaller chance of having their PR zeroed out by Google after expiration. Sometimes you can get away with “expired” domains without losing all the links that are still pointing to them. However, soon-to-expire domains seem to work best. Ideally, you will want domain names that are Dmoz or Yahoo listed. These can be as good as gold.
Make sure you do some background checking on the domain you intend to acquire so you know what the site’s original content was all about. Use http://www.archive.org to research the site’s history. For an expired domain, all you do is re-activate it under your name and take advantage of previous “bookmarks” and traffic originating from sites that linked to that domain. Sure beats a brand new domain with nothing but a wish and HTML appended to it.
Why start from scratch with a new domain name and optimized site that might take 6-8 months to get anywhere near the top of the Search Results? Some SEO experts say that Google’s indexing and ranking algorithms consider the age of your domain as a form of age-filtering function. So it makes sense to purchase a domain name that’s been past this 6-8 months age filter.
Google seems to like stability and time on the market. So, choose a domain name accordingly. If you have a domain that’s been around for a long time, it shows Google that your site has stability and is unlikely to be a temporary, throw away site, possibly designed for spamming purposes such as mass-generated doorway pages.
Reference: http://www.rightclickwebs.com/seo/google-aging.php
After you’ve nabbed a soon-to-expire domain name, add the best “focused” content and keyword phrases to represent your new site. Also put the best keywords on your Title tag. Try to stay away from obscure domain names. Find names that are easy to remember. Keep the theme of your new site and target audience the same as what was previously on your new domain.
About the Author
Mario Giordani writes about different topics of interest. He can be reached at http://bravotraffic.com/ You may use this article as long as it is unchanged and all links are active.
TechTags Plugin [ niche domains | unique domains | domains on sale | used domains ]

I have to be honest. So far, I have not really had any difficulty getting clients of ours to get their own domain. In fact, in many cases, they already had a domain. But I have heard of others having to describe the benefits of having your own domain.

First off, let’s start out with a question. What is a domain? When we’re talking about a domain, we’re actually talking about what is technically a top-level domain (TLD). In Google’s website, the TLD is google . com. In hometown.aol.com/catspawpress/Dzine.html, the TLD is aol.com.

So when I say that as a business or organization, you should have your own domain, I’m really saying you should have your own top-level domain.

Let’s go through some of the reasons now that you should have your own domain:

1. It demonstrates permanency. Regardless of the nature of your business, having a site hosted by AngelFire or AOL or any of the free hosts makes web surfers cringe. If you’re not willing to spring for the domain name, are you really going to be around that long?

It’s the same thing as having a permanent office. Whether it’s actually true or not, it causes people to attribute more permanency to your business.

2. It’s affordable. Really affordable. If you bought a website address in the late 90’s or so, you had to pay $75 or more per year for a domain. While this was still reasonable for many organizations, for smaller businesses, it simply wasn’t worth the money.

Now, however, domains can be purchased for much less. As little as $7 a year, in fact. Some places charge a little bit more for the convenience of having your domain name and hosting with the same company, but it’s still a fraction of what it used to be. (And I’ve found having the domain name and hosting with the same company is well worth the few extra dollars.)

3. You can use the domain for your email address. Let’s face it, webdesigner165768 @ yahoo.com (not a real address) does not look nearly as professional as tim @ tandswebdesign . com. And while free web based email is certainly useful for many things, it should not be used for businesses. To a certain degree, this goes back to the issue of perceived permanency.

In fact, there is more permanency in that your email address will never have to change. Even if you switch hosts, your domain name stays the same.

4. It’s easier to remember. www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7116 is a lot harder to remember than something like www.google.com

5. It will rank a lot higher in search engines. A lot higher.

6. No one else can claim it. I’ve talked to a realtor who had this problem. Another realtor in her area actually had the same name as her, and purchased a domain with that name. The realtor I spoke with lost several clients who mistakenly went to the other realtor, then ended up just using her.

Even if you’re not quite ready to get a website, you should go ahead and buy a domain for your business. It’s really easy to do, and you can “park” your domain. This means a temporary page will be displayed that says something like “website coming soon.” Then, at least no one else can stake their claim on it.

About the author:

Tim is the owner and senior web designer at T&S Web Design. His company has developed and maintained website for dozens of small businesses and organizations. Tim also maintains a blog with free website advice for small business owners, GetASiteOnline.com.
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