Domain Name Registration - How To Get Your Domain Online

Your domain name registration is the act of making your ownership of a web site official. Your domain name is simply a combination of characters but it has several important purposes.

1. It is the address people will use to find you online.
2. It helps to create your online identity.
3. It helps search engines determine the relevancy of your site to particular keywords.

With your domain name registration, you are reserving the right to use it for your own purposes. You do not have to have the domain hosted nor are you duty bound to put up a website just because you register it. You may simply have an idea that you may want to use it for in the future.

One place I have found to research website names is a program called "Namerazor". It allows you to put in multiple phrases and can search all the registries telling you whether the domains are registered or not. This neat little utility sits on your desktop and dreams up name all day long. And, if you want to check the availability of domains, NameRazor will link up to the Internet and check for you. Go to this domain and take a look.

Search engines can be time consuming to work with, and they are not for the impatient. But, with perseverance, they can yield significant results and deliver years of pretty much free, highly targeted advertising.

Once you have a domain of course, you will want to think about hosting it somewhere. As you will understand there are thousands of entities who would be happy to host your site for you. I use several, but the one I would recommend is wwKiosk. They keep up to date with the latest hosting scripts and, probably most important, their support is excellent.

You've likely seen website names ending in .tv, .biz, .info and many other names.

If your goal is to run a profitable business online then only one type of domain is right for you.

You must have a dot.com!

Search engines are thought to give better treatment to dot.com domains.

The general public has been exposed to dot.com domains and immediately recognizes it as an Internet address.

Ask yourself -- what do you think of when you think of a domain? One ending in dot.com I'll bet!

The bottom line is this --

If you don't use a dot.com you could be losing potential customers!

There is a caveat though.

Search engines will give you a ranking boost if your site reflects your most important keyword. If the dot.com with that particular keyword has gone, but the dot.biz still exists, there is a trade off that you need to consider.

You can now register a domain with up to 67 characters, but many people fail to make use of dashes when naming them.

Search engines are known to love domains saturated with keywords and you can now load a dot.com site with keywords relating to your website that are separated by dashes and get a boost in your search engine rankings.

I learnt this little trick along with many other great search engine positioning tips and tricks by using software called "Web Position Gold" - you can get a free trial of this software here and see how much better you can do with your own search engine rankings.

To find out more about locating keywords that people are actually searching for online see this page I wrote all about keyword research.

Once you've identified domains you would like to register, you'll find there's no shortage of companies willing to register them for you. This is one area that's been exploited online with companies charging up to $60 or more just to register. They're making 500% plus profit minimum at that price -- it's a scandal!

Some unscrupulous companies even include "small print" that means you can't transfer it to a new registrar without paying a "release" fee -- they'll make life very difficult for you because they know when it's time to be renewed they stand to lose the massive profits they're making.

I register all my domains with a company called "Go Daddy". It must be the cheapest place online at just $8.95 a year -- that's an incredible deal. You can read all about their registration service at http://www.godaddy.com.

There is an up to date news desk on the subject of domain name registration here as well. It is an excellent domain name resource because it is updated daily.