Websites for Service Professionals/Consultants- Part 4 Choosing a Domain and Hosting Provider One of the most common questions I get asked is do I really need my own domain name? For any type of business site then simple answer is Yes! What is the Best Domain Name There are several choices you will have to make when deciding on your domain name. In order to understand these choices you need to understand the basic structure of a domain name. The domain name is really: mywebsite.com and not www.mywebsite.com. Typing either in a browser address bar will usually result in the same thing. The first stage; in choosing a domain name, is deciding on the Top Level Domain Name, or as you commonly see it written - TLD. This involves deciding on whether you will use a generic or non geographic TLD like .com, .net ...or a geographic TLD like .uk, .de. When choosing a TLD you will be choosing from existing standard names. You cannot make up your own TLDs. For businesses the most obvious choice and the preferred one is a .com domain name. However alternatives like .biz,.net or .org are often used if the .com name is already taken. If you do not need to attract customers from outside your own country or you are offering something country specific then a geographic domain name is the best choice. For example a Website specialising in products for the UK market would use an .uk TLD. Second Level Names For Geographic TLDs If you use a geographic domain name like .uk then an extra level is added. So instead of a domain name of the form: 2.1 (e.g. ibm.com you have the form 3.2.1 (e.g. ibm.co.uk) For a geographic TLD like .uk then the second level represents an area. The most common second level UK name is .co.uk (the Because they are fixed, the combinations .co.uk or .ac.uk etc are usually treated as a single level. So if you were asked for the TLD for ibm.co.uk then many would say .co.uk and not .uk. However way you look at it, it is a matter of choosing a name from an existing pool of assigned names. You cannot make up your own name. For your service business site you would always choose .co.uk. In summary for a UK service business you will be choosing between .co.uk and .com. If in any doubt choose a .com. Second Level Names The final stage of choosing a suitable website domain name is choosing the actual website domain name or what is commonly called the second level domain name. Although (as explained above) it is only the Second Level for Non Geographic TLDs. For geographic TLDs it is actually the third level. At this level we are making up our own name, and not choosing from an existing name pool. There are three main name types to choose from: The idea of a branded name is that the name becomes synonymous with the product or service. The name itself may be meaningless (Google, Yahoo) or may even have other meanings (Apple, Macintosh, Apricot, Orange), and may even be an acronym (IBM, UPS), but because of branding it becomes strongly associated with a particular product or service. Brandable Domain Names tend to be short and simple. They also tend to be the preserve of the big companies or the small companies that plan on being big. To establish your domain name as a branded domain name requires a huge marketing effort or a lot of luck. The problem with a branded domain name is that if it doesn't make it, it becomes meaningless. For example: Image I had a domain name registration company and wanted to use the brand name Lemons. The idea is that when someone saw the name lemons they would not only associate the name with the fruit, but with domain name related services. Now imagine someone goes to Google and types in "cheap domain names" and Google returned: Which one would they click on?..... I think the answer is obvious. This is especially true if you are thinking of using PPC for marketing your site. After the headline the website url is the biggest factor in determining the CTR (click trough rate). A url containing one or more of the search phrases that the person typed in the search box has, in general, a higher CTR (Click through Rate). Brandable names are something that you have to be very careful about using especially in very competitive markets. If you are thinking along these lines then you may want to consider some professional marketing advice. An Existing Company or Personal Name This is a very common choice for offline businesses moving into an Internet presence. If your existing established removal company is called F Smith and Sons then it makes sense to use it for or as part of the domain name. For example you could use the domain names: I think you would agree that, although the second two names are longer, they do convey more meaning to anyone who sees the name for the first time. They are also easy for existing customers to associate with, as they include the company name, which they are already familiar with. In fact if you look at many existing businesses they already use this principle. How often have you seen shops/businesses with signs like: Keyword based domain names are basically names constructed from keywords used to describe your product or service. If your business sold computers, then computers would be a keyword. Keyword based domain names are probably the most common choice for websites, especially for businesses that operate mainly on the Internet. The idea behind keyword based names is that when someone does a web search they do a search based on keywords. These keywords describe what they are looking for. Therefore if they see a site with a domain which contains some or all of those keywords they are more likely to click on the link. In essence when you look at a keyword based domain name you should know immediately what the company/website is about. For example when you look at these domain names: www.low-fat-diets.com, www.cheap-domain-names.com, www.build-your-website.co.uk. You immediately form an impression on the website associate with that domain name. Domain Names with Dashes and Underscores Some search engines will give you a higher ranking if you include your keywords in the Website domain name. That apart if your domain name contains keywords then the searcher instantly sees it as relevant and is more likely to select it form the results. So a website like this one on building a website would include the keywords building or build, website etc in the domain name. Following this logic here are some alternative domain names for this site. I choose number 1... build-your-website because all search engines treat the dashes as spaces and see the name as composing of three distinct words-build, your and Website. However that was 4 years ago. Today I would choose option 3 i.e. do delimiters. All of the main search engines are capable of splitting the name into 3 distinct words without the use of any delimiting characters. Short or Long Domain Names? Does Size Matter? There is no doubt that short names tend to be easy to remember. The problem is most short names are already gone. However long domain names aren't really a problem if you main source of traffic is from search engines, newsletters, email etc. This is because the person never actually types in the domain name, they simply click a link. If you were running an offline campaign in a newspaper or mail shot and expecting the person to read your website address and then type it into a browser, then the shorter the name the better. Otherwise, I don't see much of a problem with long names. Having said that, still try to keep them as short as possible while still being meaningful. Valid Domain Names To be valid, a domain name must not be larger than 67 characters including the extension (e.g. .com, .net, .org, etc.). Valid characters are 0-9, a-z and the dash "-". The domain name cannot start or end with a dash and is not case sensitive. Registering A Domain Name You will need to register the domain name with the Internet authorities to use it. All hosting companies offer domain name registration and most include a domain name as part of the hosting package. Therefore don't register the domain name until you have chosen your hosting provider. Choosing a Website Hosting Provider For a service business website you will require: In general, hosting providers provide several service package levels e.g. The basic package is all you should need as most include the site hosting and a blog (Wordpress). Now some hosting providers also come with an autoresponder. However in the main this is simply a single message responder which is not what you need. You need an autoresponder service that can deliver newsletters and courses. If they have a newsletter tool you may want to try that but my experience is that it is better to go for a professional server like Getresponse or Aweber. (see Autoresponder review). There are many Website Hosting Providers, here are a few that you may wish to consider. Note1: Site build-it may appear at first glance to be expensive in comparison to the others. It is however a complete package complete with newsletter tool which is adequate for most needs. It is the solution I would recommend to those who are not so technical and wish to concentrate on their business and not website building. However if you are a UK service business Sitesell doesn't offer a .uk domain name and is hosted in Canada. This means that you may not rank so highly in the UK search results as a UK domain name with hosting in the UK. Therefore, even though I'm a big SBI fan I would recommend that if your market is UK based then you should chose a UK hosting provider ( a .com domain name is OK though). Note2: 1and1 UK is the provider for this site is German based but is treated as if it it were UK based (it probably uses UK IP addresses). In Part 5 we will be looking at Building the site
Firstly a domain name consists of three elements separated by dots. The elements (using
as an example name) are:
UK equivalent to .com). Other choices are available like:
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Websites for Service Professionals/Consultants- Part 4
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