Domain Name Purchasing – What’s In A Domain Name And Why Should You Be Concerned?
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Domain name purchasing is one of the most important aspects of Internet marketing. By far, almost no other action that you may take, to increase your online business, will be as important as a strategically chosen and placed domain name. Okay so you’re probably wondering…what exactly is a domain name? Quite simply a domain name is the name, prefixed by either http:// or www. , that a given user will type in to find your site on the information highway (world wide web).
Technically speaking a domain name has an Internet Protocol (IP) address associated with it. You purchase this domain name from what is known as a domain registrar. Domain name servers interpret the written domain name (http://example.com) as numeric characters associated with the IP address (32 bit binary code comprised of electrical “1″ and “0″) and store this information to answer queries on inter-networking data devices. In the background of the Internet, basically, things are working to allow users to find your site…at this particular level.
On another level search engine spiders need various information to store your domain in their respective search engines. Depending on your particular business and/or niche, you want to make the job easier on the search engines to associate your domain to its related content. You also want to make it easier for people to find your business and be able to remember the name, so as to type it into a search engine or website address bar. The idea, then , is to keep your domain name relatively simple and easy to remember. Uniqueness is the key! Some would say to not include dashes, but this is based off of older research and may/may not apply to your particular type of business.
There was a time when companies who are very major now, got in early on the internet boom and picked up all the three-letter-domain names (think CNN). Nowadays it may be relatively hard to come up with a three-letter domain name that isn’t already taken. How do you find out if a particular domain name is already taken? More importantly, if you do happen to find a domain name that suites you, how does one go about making an informed purchase? There are many registrars and domain hosting services out there, but I can only give you what I have tried and had success with. No fluff or exaggerations here…only proven methods.
NameCheap is one such registrar that comes to mind when one would like to get the best for his/her money. They have excellent customer support service and also have “whois” block functionality. Whois block is a service that blocks your personal information from anyone trying to find out who owns a particular website. I would recommend this service to anyone. They have also started a hosting service as well.
Godaddy is also another excellent registrar service that offers a variety of registration platforms for domain name purchasing. The have a very clean user-interface as well as great packaging options. Have a website that you’ve already purchased, but want to get rid of? Godaddy has services that enable you to earn the best price for the selling of your domain.
Tips for both of these services? NEVER go directly to each site. Go to the Google search engine and type in each, seperately, and wait for the results. Once the results are shown, there will usually be a sponsored ad at the very top of the Google search results. This is a coupon type function for each company and will allow for cheaper purchasing of domain names.
Another service, used to decrease the price of your domain purchase, would be the online coupon site Retailmenot. With thousands of online business offering coupons to some of your favorite services, its natural to think that companies like NameCheap would be amongst those offering great discounts. When you go to purchase your domains with NameCheap, you can also enter in various coupon codes to lesson the amount of money that you have to pay for your purchase.
Some of the discounts, at first glance, may not seem like much. When you start to get up there in the number of websites that you are hosting, however, every little bit does count. I hope this advice will help to lesson the load on your wallet. It’s helped me greatly (smiles).
Okay so now you have a domain name, but need somewhere to host it. Where to? While Godaddy and NameCheap may offer these services, you have to do research on what all comes with the hosting service. A lot of my online marketing buddies are familiar with a hosting software called cPanel. What cPanel does is give one leverage to host websites very effectively. With software scripts for forum creation, WordPress blog Creation and various other software tools, I would recommend a hosting provider that has cPanel. Although there are other formats out there, cPanel has me hooked!
To you continued success,
Eric Nathaniel Jones
Looking for a domain hosting provider that comes equipped with cPanel? Try Hostgator Hosting to discover what it can do for your online business.
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Tagged with: dns • domain name • domain name servers • internet boom • internet marketing • internet protocol • letter domain names • level search • nicch • niche • queries • search engines spiders • servers • uniqueness • world wide web
Filed under: Domain Name Purchasing
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