Best
Practices Guide About Domain Names
Best Practices Guide About Domain Names
Domain names are the first step in implementing your Internet marketing
business plan. Domain name represents your brand. Many people know
very well the importance of brand in the "offline" but
even those can make mistakes in their Internet brand management.
Domain name is the first step in successful Internet brand management.
Choosing a domain name
It is not easy to register a good domain name (especially dot com),
these days. According to domain name statistics on the most popular
web site for whois searches Whois Source there are more than 57
million active generic top level domains registered as of September,
2005. Majority of these domain names are .com names. You can view
this statistics if you visit http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/
It is sure that you can't register a classy one-word domain name
but with a little knowledge and appropriate services you can find
a decent one, especially if you are not interested only in .com
names. Useful site for finding decent domains is above mentioned
Whois Source - http://www.whois.sc There you will find a free service
that will give you 20 domain suggestions based on your keyword.
Also, on the Internet you can find software that focus on domain
names. Using free software Domain Name Analyzer you can make a list
of domain names and this software will check availability of all
included domains so you won't have to check one-by-one which is
time-consuming. Also this program will give you useful suggestions.
Another useful thing in find decent domain names is using expired
domain name or back-ordering services. Using the first service you
will get the list of expired domain names where you can find some
really nice names with a little luck. However, it is not easy because
many people use those services and some companies have special infrastructure
that check availability of certain domain names every second and
register them.
You will have better chance to get your desired domain using back-ordering
services. These services will monitor for domains you want to register
and once they expire they will make register them on your behalf.
Popular services are SnapNames.com and Pool.com.
It is recommended that your domain name be short, catchy, brandable
and most important - easy to remember! You can register a domain
name that has no obvious connections with your business but that
is cool. Then you will have to invest more money in branding. With
good domain name you will save thousand and thousand dollars in
advertising, especially in TV advertising. If you are an email marketer
domains are also very important because getting email subscribers
without well designed web site is not recommended.
It is recommended that the name of your domain be the same like
your email newsletter name. You can make "teaser" articles
in your email newsletter so that your readers will have to visit
your web site in order to read complete articles and vice-versa.
You can put "teaser" articles on your web site and require
that people subscribe to your email newsletter to read complete
articles.
Also, in order to find out popularity of certain keyword combinations
you can use keyword suggestion services. We can recommend you these
services:
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox
Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
You can use Google, enter your keyword combination and see how
much results you will get.
If you are in process of registering a domain name we can suggest
you these two great companies:
Go Daddy - http://www.godaddy.com
Namecheap - http://www.namecheap.com
Internet brand management
We will take our company Infacta, Ltd. as an example. Infacta is
Ireland-based company so it is logical that we registered www.infacta.ie.
However, although we are Ireland-based company we focus globally.
This can prove the fact that we have clients in more than 130 countries
world-wide. So, it is also logical that we have a domain name in
.com extension, too.
Dot com domain name is considered as a global domain name for companies.
Many people think that it is enough to have 2 domain names, but
not people at Infacta. For successful Internet brand management
it is not enough. Beside, .ie and .com domains, Infacta owns domains
in all major generic top level domain extensions (gtld) like .net,
.org and .info. This is to prevent people or companies to use other
Infacta name in other extensions that can confuse our customers
and make harm to our brand.
Beside that, we registered domain names for our award-winning products
GroupMail and GroupMetrics in different domain extensions and for
upcoming Messaging Times website, as well. Other famous companies
have literally hundred and even thousand domains in their portfolio
for each country where they have a presence and for their services.
That is called a professional brand management.
There is also one more thing that can show how serious one company
is regarding their domain names and Internet presence, in general.
That is domain expiration date. Domain names expire. After that
(preferably before that) date domain owners have to renew them.
When you make whois inquiry about certain domain name, for example
at www.whois.sc , beside registrant info you will see an expiration
date.
Imagine that you want to see an expiration date of your email marketing
software company and you see that the expiration date is the next
year or even this year. This doesn't sound promising if you want
a reliable business partner that will be in the business in the
next 10 years, too, that you can count on.
It is not only important because of whois searches and credibility,
it is important because of search engines. Google gives better placement
for companies that have domains registered for longer period. It
is a sure indicator that it is a stable business and that they won't
go anywhere. Infacta domain name www.infacta.com expires in 2011.
There are some services that can help you in Internet brand management,
to monitor that someone else is not using your trademarked names.
One of those companies that offer brand monitoring services is NameProtect,
Inc. at http://www.nameprotect.com Also, it is highly recommended
that before you register your domain name to visit http://www.uspto.gov
to check if your name that you want to register has been trademarked
to avoid possible problem and law suits later. USPTO is official
web site of the United States Government for patents and trademarks.
Here you can also register your patent, trademark or service mark.
If your company's name has a good, generic name and you want to
register a domain, it is most likely that the .com domain will be
taken. Sometimes, it is good choice to buy it from the actual owner.
Also, you can buy domain names that are highly connected with your
products and services and that will help you in Internet marketing.
The most popular web sites for buying/selling domain names are:
Sedo - http://www.sedo.com
Great Domains - http://www.greatdomains.com
Afternic - http://www.afternic.com
About the Author Dejan Bizinger is a
Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services
company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group
Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and
Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information
visit: http://www.infacta.com
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