Domain Name
Domain Name Extensions
When you decide to build a Website you must choose a Domain Name. i.e. the address that will allow your visitors to find and access your Website or Blog.
Your Website will be accessed on the Internet by using an address called Uniform Resource Locator or URL.
For example my blog has the url: http://www.bestwebsitedesignblog,com
The url consists of many parts or elements as follows:
http: – This identifies the protocol used to publish and view the website pages i.e the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
www. – This is a prefix which identifies the hostname for the web server.
bestwebsitedesignblog is the second level name of my site
com is the top level domain name or TLD
Choosing the top level domain name
There are different types of top level domain names, but the most popular are .com, .net and .org. Some top level domain names such as .info are usually cheaper than the previous ones, but it is usually easier to get good Google ranks if you use the .com, .net or .org top level domains.
Some top level domain name are country specific and might be useful if your website audience comes from a specific country.. Some country specific domain names are:
.co.uk
.us
.it
.de
.fr
Choosing the second level domain name
The second level domain name might be the name of your company if you have a business or your personal name.
However if you target a specific market or niche, it might be better to use a name that includes the main keyword used by people who are looking for information or products in that market or niche.
The use of a good keyword in your domain name will help your site to achieve a higher ranking from the Search Engines such as Google.The Search Engine will identify your domain as relevant for a search keyword. Moreover it will be easier for people to identify the company/website is about.
A good tactic might be to combine your company name with a keyword. For instance MarkJoinerPlumbingServices.com will be more useful than MarkJoiner.com to somebody who is looking for a plumber. .
A useful tool that will help you to find good keyword based domain names is:
==> Domain Samurai.
Registering a Domain Name
When you have found a suitable domain name, you must check if it is available, because somebody else might already registered it.
There are domain registration companies that will allow you to check the availability of a domain and to register it.
