Choosing a Domain Name

Second to your niche, choosing a domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make in building your blog. Essentially, a domain name is your address on the internet. Not only will a good domain name help the search engines find you more easily, it will draw more traffic too.

Basics

Anyone can register a domain name.

You can register a domain name up to 67 characters.

You can register a name for up to 10 years in advance.

Look for

Choose unique name

Choose a dot com extension. Most internet users assume domain names are a dot com.

If you have a business, try registering your actual business name.

After you register your business name, try to get one or more generic names that describe your business.

Use keywords that describe your business. Try not to use more than two or three keywords. Using more than three key words can damage the search engine results. The longer your name, the more likelihood customers will misspell it. Furthermore, your email address will be longer too.

To protect your domain name, you may want to register for .net and .org.
If the domain name you want is already registered, you might want to try buying it from the owner. Sometimes the owner may not have a website attached to it yet. You can find the name of the owner at www.allwhois.com.

Domain names are also sold on the secondary market. Check out www.GreatNames.com or www.Afternic.com.

Look for a short name that is easy to spell.

If you’re having problems coming up with a name, a thesaurus may help you think of words.

Avoid

Hyphens

Slashes

Numbers

Abbreviations

Names too long

Don’t use a sub domain. Sub domain names make you look less professional, cheap, and unwilling to invest anything in your business. Customers expect a business to have a top-level domain name. By using a sub domain, you can lose 50% of your customer base. Secondly, if your subdomain isn’t relative to the top domain level, your site will be harder for the search engines to find, categorize, and index. If your site isn’t indexed, no one will be able find it, and there will be no traffic. It will also be harder to build backlinks for your site which is critical in obtaining a higher search engine rank page.

Domain Name Availability
Before you try registering your domain, check to see if it is available. Typing the url in a search engine is not good enough. The name may be registered but not showing online. You can find out whether the name is available on any online web host server or domain registry site.

Conclusion
Since a domain name is so important, take your time choosing a name. . Not only does the domain name give you a home on the web, it helps internet users find your site, and draw traffic, it can also develop a brand for your business. Brands diffentiate your website from another website. Strive to develop a name that is unique, simple, keyword rich, and easy to remember. Your effort will pay off in the end.

A good name, like good will, is attained by many actions and may be lost by one. - Author Unknown

Definitions

Niche: A narrowly, focused topic

Domain: A group of computers on a web hosting site.

Domain name: A domain’s address on the internet or url.

Subdomain: A domain that is part of a larger domain.

Traffic: The number of visitors in a given amount of time.

Backlink: A one-way link pointing to your site from another site.

Search engine rank page (SERP): The page you come up on in search engine results.

Brand: A name, sign, or symbol that a consumer associates his overall perception of a product or service.

Blogs: Paid Hosting Services vs. Free Hosting Services

Before your blog can be viewed worldwide, you need to decide whether you are going to use a free blogging host service or a paid blogging host service. Although there are advantages and disadvantages to both, the biggest decision factor will be your blog’s goal. If your blog is a personal blog for family and friends, a free blogging host will probably be adequate. However, if you are planning to monetize your blog or use it to promote a business, a paid blogging host might be better.

When trying to make a decision, there are certain factors you should consider. Here is a list of the advantages and disadvantages of a paid hosting service.

Advantages

• Some people think blogs hosted with a free sevice do look as professional.


• Like businesses, blogs can have a brand too. A brand is a name, sign, or symbol that a consumer associates with his or her overall impression of a product or service. Consequently, it helps a consumer distinguish one company‘s product or service from another company‘s product or service. A blog’s logo, appearance, name, content, and url all help to develop brand. Since a paid service offers a greater degree of customization, it can help build brand more easily. Furthermore, your blog’s name is usually a sub domain of the free hosting company. This makes it harder to develop brand and for your customer to remember your url.


• There is greater control with a paid hosting service. First, free hosting services limit your ability to monetize your blog whereas with paid services the sky is limit. For instance, the free Wordpress does not allow any monetization. Blogger limits it to Adsense. Hubpages allows Adsense, Kontrera, and the opportunities to be an Ebay and Amazon affiliate. However, you only receive 60% of your Adsense profits in exchange for the free hosting platform. Therefore, using a free hosting service can greatly affect your ability to make money with your blog.


• There is greater flexibility with a paid hosting service. You can add more plug-ins.


• There is usually better support with a paid hosting service.


• With free hosting services, there may be a limit in disc space. Therefore you may not be able to add any new content after a certain point.


• With a free hosting service, there may be a limit in bandwith. If your site is too popular, it may be shut down.


• Most free hosting services don’t offer domain based email accounts.


Disadvantages

• You have to pay for a hosting service and the domain.


• Paid hosting services are not as easy to setup and use. You need a knowledge of html in order to customize your blog. Therefore, free hosting services are easier to use.


If you want to monetize your blog, I think the advantages of a paid hosting service far outweigh a free hosting service. With a paid hosting service, you have greater control and more flexibility. Therefore, unless you are certain you don’t want to monetize your blog, I think it is easier to go with a paid hosting service from the beginning.

You get what you pay for - Gabriel Biel

Definitions

Adsense: A contextual advertising program ran by Google.

Blogger: A free blog hosting site owned by Google.

Domain: A unique url that identifies a website.

Bandwith: The speed at which data transfers over a connection in a given time expressed as bps or bits per second.

Affiliate: An advertising program that rewards websites for each customer purchases.

Kontrera: A form of contextual advertising that shows a textbox ad when a keyword is clicked on.

Url: An internet address for a website.