You may very well be under the impression that you are the sole owner of your domain name. Are you absolutely sure that you are? Your domain name should be yours alone and it is extremely important to your business.

It is very important that you know as much as possible about your domain. You should know exactly where it is registered. You should also know who it is registered with. The sad truth is that many people don’t know anything about their domain at all.

What is a domain name?

Your domain name is the most important identifier of your website. If you don’t have a domain name, people will not be able to find all of the great content that you are publishing on the Internet. Your content is at the heart of your business. A good analogy is if someone were to steal the number off of  your house. If that were to happen, in order to ensure that you were protected from that occurring again, you would install an alarm or take some other protective measure that would deter anyone from doing that to you.

When it comes to your domain, the concept is the same. If you bought your domain name and took care of registering it yourself through a hosting company, such as GoDaddy or HostGator, you can feel secure in the fact that no harm will come to it and that nobody can touch it. In that case, there is a guarantee that only you own your domain. If anyone else tries to touch your domain, the hosting company will send you a warning, alerting you to the fact.

On the other hand, if you didn’t go that route and you got someone else to set up your web presence (they promised you that they would take care of everything), there is a very good possibility that when they registered your domain, they supplied the hosting company with their business information instead of yours. What commonly occurs after that is that they make you a prisoner to their web hosting company. If you hire someone whose prices sound too good to be true, they will probably take advantage of you in some other way—maybe through the hosting of your domain. The expenses surrounding hosting your domain should not be expensive at all. If you are quoted a high price, something is wrong.

The reality is that the domain name belongs to the person whose information is in WHOIS (a searchable database that is maintained by the registrar that contains information about domain names as well as the contacts that are associated with them). It doesn’t matter who actually paid for the domain. Anyone who wants to know can contact WHOIS and request information about any domain name, which server the domain name is on, where it is registered, and even when it will expire and thus become available to someone else to buy.

Here are some tips to ensure that only you are the registered, legal owner of all of your domain names.

• Only buy your domain name from a hosting provider if you are sure that your domain name will be placed in WHOIS.
   
• Beware of people who offer you a free domain name with their hosting package.
   
• Always check out your domain name on WHOIS before you purchase a website.
   
• Check out the legitimacy by searching for them on WHOIS. Search for the date of creation of the domain. This will let you know how long that particular company has been in business under that domain. 
   
• Register your domain for a longer period of time rather than a shorter one, if possible.

Conclusion

Having a domain over which you have absolutely no control because someone else has done everything for you and has given all of their business information to the hosting company instead of your information is very dangerous. Never allow anyone else to take control over what is yours. If you find that you are in that situation, try to get out of it as soon as possible. Even if it means that you will need to register a new name with one of the reliable and legitimate hosting companies, do it. It will definitely be worth it to be able to have the control.

Just to reiterate, regarding your rights, if you are paying money for your web presence, make sure that you own the website, own the domain, own the copyright, own the analytics data, own all other data, own the content, and are able to move the contents to any hosting company of your choosing whenever  you like.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.

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2. Picking an Intriguing Name for Your Startup
3. Planning Your Website Design

Before you build your business website, there are many things to consider, including laying out the plans ahead of time. You must have a clear plan so that your website will be successful at drawing traffic to you.

The following questions are important for you to incorporate into your website plans and if you can answer those questions, your website will be effective and will generate a high volume of traffic and bring in more business.

• What is your website all about? When visitors come to your website, the first thing that they will be asking is what the purpose of your website is. Your homepage must explain the benefits, the purpose of your website, and the products and/or services that you are offering very clearly.
   
• What are you hoping to achieve with your business? It is not enough of a motivation to say that the goal of your business is to get rich. It has to be about more than that. A more effective way to answer that question is to say that you want to achieve enough financial freedom so that you can improve the quality of your life otherwise.
   
• Do you have a marketing plan? If you are serious about your online business being successful and profitable, you will need a business plan. The best way to promote your website is by generating a great deal of content on a frequent and regular basis and syndicating the content to social media channels and business directories.
   
• Who is your competition? During the course of your market research, you should also make it a point of finding out against whom you are competing. Find out what types of things they are offering on their website and figure out how you can make your website stand out.
   
• Who is your target customer? This is very important because if you have the right target customers, you will become successful in your business. If you don’t choose your customers wisely, you will not succeed. The customers should believe in your offerings as much as you do and you want them not only to buy once from you but to keep coming back for more.
   
• Which kinds of products and/or services are you selling? Before you design your website, you should do extensive research on how marketable your products and/or services are. You can use Google Keyword Tool (which won’t cost you any money) to learn how many searches your main keywords receive each month. If you don’t find any searches, it means that there is not a great deal of demand and probably not worth marketing. However, if you are in a very competitive market, it might be hard to distinguish yourself from your competition.
   
• How many products will you sell from your website? The number of products that you plan to sell on your website will determine how many pages your website has. If you are selling a small number of products or services, you will probably only need a handful of pages. On the other hand, if you are selling a large number of products and/or services, you will need a website that that has a database so that you can store and manage all of the items and services.
   
• What types of payments will you accept? If you intend to accept credit card payments online, you will need a shopping cart, payment gateway, merchant account and SSL (secure socket layer) to make sure that the transactions are secure. That means that you will also have monthly fees and processing fees each time a customer buys anything from your website.

  Another option, which is less expensive, is the Paypal shopping cart. With Paypal, all you will need to do is pay a minimal processing fee, which will take care of everything at once.
   

• Webhosting Plan: You will need to have your website hosted on a server so that it will be available online. Choose a hosting plan that has enough space for all of your files and a bandwidth that can receive a high volume of visitors every month. When you start with the hosting plan, make sure that there is flexibility for you to upgrade when you need to in the future.
   
• Maintenance of your website: If you know the answer to this before you design your website, you will know which software to use to build the website. If your website is small and simple, you can use a software product like Dreamweaver. If, on the other hand, your website has many pages, you might want to seriously consider a content management system (CMS) like WordPress. It will allow numerous items to be stored in a database. You will be able to manage the website (edit, add and delete items) if you log into the administration area.
   
• Website statistics: You should find out if your web host has website statistics. If it doesn’t, you need to create a Google Analytics account and add the code to your website pages. This will allow you to track how many daily, monthly, and yearly visitors you get, where they come from, and what keywords are being used to find your websites in the search engines.

Conclusion

All of the tips that have been discussed here should be under serious consideration before you have your website designed and built. If you follow the advice given here, you will avoid problems and you will have a much greater chance of growing your business and becoming more and more successful.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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When it comes to choosing website names, people are plagued with questions like: Should I use my Company Name? Should I choose a name that will get lots of direct requests? Should I register my name with dashes or without? Should I get a dot-com or a dot-net? Indeed you may wish to register more than one name. Choosing a Domain Name – Domain Names Choice
With thousands of new domain names being registered each month in the United States alone, choosing a domain name is one of the most important aspects of your business strategy. When it comes to choosing a domain name, people are plagued with questions like: Should I use my Company Name? Should I choose a name that will get lots of direct requests? Should I register my domain with dashes or without? Should I get a dot-com or a dot-net? Indeed you may wish to register more than one domain name. Here we will endeavor to discuss the pros and cons of registering different types of domain names.

Should I use my Company Name or Brand Name for my Domain?
If you have an established company that is well known and respected, (even if only locally so) then you should register your company name as your domain name. This will make it easier for people who are already familiar with your business to remember your web site address.

If you are a new business starting out exclusively on the Internet or without an established name, then finding a catchy domain name is an ideal way to start branding your company. You can choose a domain name which is short and easily remembered by visitors and prospective clients who will be coming into contact with your company’s advertising.

What makes an effective domain name?
A name that is easily memorized, or recalled and is not too long will be an effective domain name. The longer the domain name is the more likely it is that your customers may make errors when typing the name into the browser. The domain name can be either your company’s trading name or as is becoming popular now, a name to reflect your products or services e.g. (if you sell air conditioners then airconditioners.com would be suitable). Choose a domain name that will look professional on company literature and fit in with your company’s corporate identity.

Should I choose a keyword rich domain name?
Effective keyword rich domain names can help to brand your site. When purchasing a domain name, perhaps you should take into consideration the buying of a key word rich domain which will communicate to your customers the types of products or services you provide. It is now widely believed that a keyword-rich domain name may provide a slight advantage to a website’s search engine rankings. One of the reasons why keyword rich domains are sometimes recommended is becausemany of the search engines use "links" as a factor when deciding waht keywords most appertain ti your specific website. The most common anchor text that will be used when linking to your site is your domain name and the anchor text is of vital importance to search engine rankings.

Can I register more than one domain name for a single web site?
Yes, you can have as many domain names as you like and use them all as aliases for the same site. We can even arrange for a domain name to point to a particular page on the website. Provided your domain name is registered with us there are no additional charges for domain aliases. You are allowed to have as many aliases as you like. We make domain name registration easy for you!

Should I choose a domain name that will get lots of direct requests?
Firstly we should define a direct request. A direct request is where you type the domain name of the site you want to visit directly into your browser, rather than following a link from a search engine or another site.

Yes you should choose to register a domain name that will get lots of direct requests. And naturally if you have an established brand or company you should also register your company name as a domain name.

Should I register my domain name with dashes, hyphens or without?
If you can afford to, then register both permutations. E.G. my-domain.com and mydomain.com. Generally you should be guided by what is easier to read. For Example: "bicycle-engineers.com" is easy to read but bicycleengineers.com is more difficult to read because of the double ‘e’ that appears when you join the two words. If your name contains more than one word and putting the words together would create a double letter, (particularly double vowels,) then consider separating them with a dash so that the domain name can be read more easily.

Hyphens do help to clarify a domain name that has more than one word in it. Hyphens are "read" as a space by some search engines. If you separate the keywords in your domain name with hyphens, the search engines will be able to read them more easily and your page could rank a little higher on relevance. If you are going to register a domain name that is hyphenated it could also benefit you to register the name as un-hyphenated – the theory being that some of your potential visitors may forget that your name has hyphens incorporated and type the unhyphenated name into either the search engine or their browser. If you have registered both permutations – then you will of course catch all your potemtial site visitors

Should I get a dot-com or a .net?
Dot-com domains are very popular and usually it is advisable to register both the dot-com and the dot.net if they are both available.

You are not limited to the standard 3 extension anymore, there are many other extensions to choose from. Here follows a little detail about some of these.

Generic Domains – Not Regionally Specific

Which extension should I choose?
Generally it’s advisable to get a Generic (None regionally specific) Domain as they are the most prevalent. However, if you only trade locally or nationally a good fall back is always your local country level domain.

How many Domain name variations should I register? e.g. .com .net
You should buy as many variations of your domain name as possible, to prevent competitors following in your footsteps.

Use different domain names – websites in order to target specific niche audiences.
Operating multiple niche websites can work better than having a broad range in one store It is possible that your business may grow into different areas of interest, or even change tack altogether. For this reason, it may be an idea not to make your domain name too specific to one area of your expertise.

Spelling Mistakes for Domain Names
Some people register the same domain but include common spelling mistakes and typing errors in order to capture as large an audience as possible.

Do I Need a Separate Website for every Domain Name I register?
You don’t need a separate website for each domain name that you register. Your web host provider can asssist you in arranging that several domain names are easily be forwarded to the same website. If this is done in the correct way – there will be no detriment to your web sites rankings in the search engines. One domain name is your primary domain.

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