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