Importance of A Domain Name

14 Dec Importance of A Domain Name

If you are planning to hire a web agency to design your personal or business website, you should seriously consider registering your own domain name first.

A domain name is a name like esample.com or example.in, Which you can use to refer to your website. Note that you don’t have a company or organization to register a domain name. And an individual person can buy it for personal use.

Why You Must Have A Domain Name

There are a number of good reasons for having a domain name: Few of them I am describing here

• If you are running a business, a domain name gives you credibility. Few professional people will not be willing to do business with a company that does not have its own domain name with professional web appearance.
• If you are running a personal blog and wants to generate money via good sponsors (advertisers) for your website or Google Adsense account, a domain name is usually helpful. Advertiser and Adsense account never allow to publish adds on subdomains or at deep links.
• If you get a domain name that describes your company’s business or name, people can remember the name easily and can return to your site without having to consult their documents. In fact, if you get a good name that describes your product or service, you might even get people who were trying their luck by typing “www.yourproductname.com” in their browser. So we suggest you do research on possible keywords before buying a domain name for your personal or professional use.
• If you ever change your web host, your domain name remains with you. Your regular visitors or customers who knew your site name as www.example .com would not have to be informed about a change of web address (also known as “URL”). They would simply type your domain name and they’d be brought to your site which is hosted now on a new web host.

Registration Overview

Registering a domain name involves registering the name you want with an organization called ICANN through a domain name registrar. For example, if you choose a name like “example.com”, you will have to go to a domain registrar, pay a registration fee that costs around US$10 to US$35 for that name. That will give you the right to the name for a year, and you will have to renew it annually for (usually) the same amount per annum. You also can get a domain for long-term (5 to 10 year).

We prefer you to register a domain name directly from a domain registrar rather than through any web host. Few web host registers a domain name under their own brand name rather than you. If you are willing to buy web hosting through a hosting provider company, you must buy a first domain name from a domain registrar company.

Registering a domain name via registrar, they allow you to make sure that you are registered as the owner, the administrative and technical contacts.

Being the owner is vital — if someone else places himself as the owner (such as your web host), he can always decide to charge you some exorbitant fee for the use of the name later.

The various other contacts are less vital, but may still play important roles, depending on your registrar. For example, for some registrars, the administrative contact’s approval is required before a domain name is transferred out of a web host (or at least, it used to be). If he/she cannot be contacted, the technical contact is used.

Domain names disappear extremely fast. Many people claim that all the good domain names are gone. I doubt that — but it is probably true that most good domain names that are descriptive of products and services have been taken. If you want a domain name for your site, I suggest you act now or face the anguish of having lost that name later. After all, US$10 (more or less) for a year’s ownership of the name is pretty cheap when you realize that you’re cornering a good name for your website.

Step By Step Instructions

If you want to register a domain name, here’s what you need to do.

1. Think of a few good keyword for your domain name which suits your business. If it possible for you, hire a SEO consultant which can suggest you best keywords for the domain name. So it can generate traffic to your website easily.
2. Think about at least 5 best options for the domain name. It won’t do to think of only one — it might already be taken (it probably is!).
3. You will need either a credit card or a PayPal account to pay for the domain. This is a requirement of most if not all registrars. It will allow you to claim and get the domain name immediately on application. So carry your credit card detail with you at the time of buy domain name.
4. If you already have a web host, obtain from them the names of their primary and secondary nameservers. This information can usually be obtained from their FAQs or other documentation on their site, usually under a category like “domain name” or “DNS” or “domain name transfer” and the like. If you can’t find it, email them. You’ll need the information to point your domain name to your website after you buy your domain. Don’t worry if you don’t have a web host yet. Just read on.
5. If you do not have a web host, you can allow the registrar to park your domain name at a temporary website specially set up for you. This way you can quickly secure your domain name before it’s too late and still take your time to set up the other aspects of your site. As far as I can tell, most registrars (or probably all) automatically park your domain by default whether you ask them to or not, so if this is your situation, you probably don’t have to do anything special to get it done. Some of those registrars also provide you with a free email address at your own domain name while it is parked at their site, likesales@example.com (where “example.com” is your domain).

List of Domain Name Registrars

There are numerous domain name registrars. Some of the reputed registrars are listed below.

• GoDaddy.com This extremely popular registrar (possibly the biggest today) offers .com domain names. They have a web interface to manage your domains, free web redirection (where people who visit your domain will get transferred to another web address of your choice), free starter web page, free parked page or free “for sale” page, and an optional private domain registration where your domain is registered in the name of a proxy company. They offer various domain extensions (.in, .co.in, .info , .Biz, .net, .tv, .us , .org etc)
• NameCheap.com NameCheap, despite the name, is not the cheapest domain registrar on the block, but they are easy to use and set up. They do some upselling, but most of the sales process is focused on getting you your domain quickly.
• Network Solutions Network Solutions is one of the oldest domain registrars. They have been around a long time and many companies prefer them simply because their business model is not aiming at the lowest cost market. They are very expensive, however
• BigRock.com India’s #1 Domain Registration & Web hosting company offers a plethora of specialized web services including domain registration, web hosting, email hosting etc.