One of the most important decisions you'll make when setting up an Internet presence is your domain name (@yourcompany.com). Thanks to over-funded bubble companies in the 1990s, just about every good domain name is already taken. These startups used automated scripts to buy up domain names by systematically merging every possible combination of popular words (simply by using a dictionary file within the script).
Your domain name should be as short as possible and easy to remember, and you want to anticipate ahead of time what mistakes your customers might make when trying to enter in your web address. Imagine the scenario where you have two seconds to give your web address to a news reporter. Will the audience remember what you said? Do you have to explain that it has dashes or is spelled "creatively?"
The DNS hosting company easyDNS has an entertaining rant about poor domain names.
Usually, it is best to stick with a domain name ending in .com and avoid the second tier domains, such as .us, .info, and others. If you are a nonprofit organization, then ending in .org can create a "warm and fuzzy" feeling for your potential donors. If you are providing technology services, then .net can be a good choice, but be aware of who is using your same domain name but with .com at the end, since some of your potential customers will no doubt mistakenly visit the .com site with the same name.
The easiest way to find out what domain names are available is to visit the Network Solutions web site, go to the Search for Domains box, and start typing away. Don't be surprised if your first 100 tries are already taken. When you find a domain name you like that is available, it's like winning the lottery!
If you don't mind spending a few hundred dollars (or more!) on your domain name, then you might want to check out aftermarket sites like BuyDomains.com. Once in a while, you'll find just what you are looking for for a couple hundred bucks. For a corporation, this may be no big deal. For a startup or hobbyist, this may be cost prohibitive.
Many aftermarket sellers may be more greedy and ask for thousands of dollars in order to get the domain name you want. I recommend not spending too much for your domain name, since other factors will be far more important to the success of your site. These factors include the quality of your content, your ranking within search engine results, and your overall ability to market your site.
Once you find the domain name you want, I recommend that you also buy similar domain names in anticipation of typos from your customers. For example, I recently helped my fifth grade son create his first web site, a video game review web site. The first domain names we looked for were names such as kidreviews dot com and kidreview dot com. These were of course taken, so we settled on CarsonReviews.com (his name is Carson). Since his name is not terribly common, we were actually very lucky to get such a short and simple domain name.
Now the obvious typos that we have to anticipate will be the result of users forgetting which parts of the domain name are singular vs. plural. Was that Carson or Carson's? Review or Reviews? So we ideally need to purchase not only carsonreviews.com, but also carsonreview.com, carsonsreviews [dot] com, and carsonsreview.com. If we had lots of money, we would also buy the same domain names ending in .net and .org to further protect the brand. But this is just a fifth grader's web site, so we'll risk the competition from copycat .net and .org sites.
We got lucky that 3 of the 4 domain names were available, and only one of those names was already taken. So unfortunately, his visitors that type carsonsreviews dot com will go to an unrelated advertisement site, but at least carsonsreview.com and carsonreview.com will both successsfully redirect to carsonreviews.com.
Warning: redirecting several different domain names to the same site is technically very easy to do but will almost certainly result in your site being removed from Google's search index. Having multiple sites with the same content is a search engine sin, according to Google, and you will be removed from Google's index! It won't happen right away; it typically takes a few weeks for Google to detect this and nuke your site. There is an easy, Google-friendly way to prevent this nightmare from happening, and I will explain in a separate blog post about search engine optimization. Subscribe to e-mail updates to receive an alert when new articles are published, so that you can find out how to safely have multiple domain names point to the same content, while keeping Google happy with you (you don't want to upset the Google).
If you are technically savvy, I will give you the short answer now that your other domain names must include a 301 redirect in order to keep Google happy. For example, going to CarsonReview.com needs to redirect to CarsonReviews.com in a Google-friendly way. This is done via a simple PHP script that issues the HTTP 301 header, followed by the redirect:
<?phpIf the above solution stresses you out, then there are simpler solutions, such as a simple HTML page for the other domains that has users click on a link to go to the correct page. But this approach, too, can make Google cranky, since the content value of your redirect page is so poor (no offense). The trick is to instruct Google not to crawl or index these redirect pages, so it won't get bent out of shape about any duplicate content or poor content. This will be discussed further in my blog post about search engine optimization (subscribe via e-mail to get that post when it is published).
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.carsonreviews.com/");
exit;
?>
Now that you've identified the domain names to register (purchase), the next decision is which registrar (domain registration company) to use.
For novices, it is probably simplest and safest just to register your domain with Network Solutions. You'll pay a bit more (perhaps around $30/year per domain name), but you shouldn't have to worry about Network Solutions going out of business. But I wouldn't necessarily buy any add-on services from Network Solutions, as you may find more compelling solutions from different providers.
Another good option is easyDNS, who can also provide your DNS hosting. I will write a separate blog post about DNS hosting (subscribe to e-mail updates to receive an alert when new articles are published), and I'll cover the pros and cons of various DNS hosting solutions.
You'll find that just about every vendor you encounter, including those offering web hosting, e-mail hosting, and DNS hosting, and even your local computer guy, will likely have the ability to register your domain name for you. And it's likely inexpensive, perhaps under $10 per year. But be aware of the fine print that may result in that vendor actually owning your domain name, resulting in vendor lock-in. Or if that vendor goes out of business, you may be forced to unexpectedly come up with a new domain name. This presents many problems.
Be careful not to register your domain name with a registrar that is not financially sound. I have seen customers almost lose their domain name, since their registrar went into bankruptcy, and the vendor was not responsive in authorizing a domain name transfer to a different company.
I prefer to keep my domain registrations, DNS hosting, web hosting, and e-mail hosting all with separate providers, in order to keep everything as portable as possible, and in order to avoid any vendor lock-in. But for novice users, this adds complexity of now having to deal with multiple accounts, multiple renewals, etc.
Finally, once you register your domain name, be aware that you will start getting sneaky junk mail (both postal mail and e-mail) that reminds you to renew your domain name registration by sending a payment with the enclosed invoice. It may look legitimate, but it is likely a third party reseller with which you have no relationship, and you should normally just recycle these mailings. If you look closely, you should find fine print stating that this is a solicitation. Remember where you registered your domain name, and only renew with that company (unless you have decided to transfer your domain to a different registrar).
Now that you have registered your domain name, the next step is to set up DNS service. DNS is the technology that allows you to give customers a friendly web site name, such as yourcomany.com, instead of a numeric IP address, such as 74.125.53.100. Without DNS, you'd have to tell your customers, "Hey, check out our web site at http://74.125.53.100!" Indeed, 74.125.53.100 is one of the IP addresses hosting Google, so clicking http://74.125.53.100 should take you to Google. But don't you prefer to just type google.com?
DNS enables other critical services, too, such as the ability to receive e-mail. You want to be joe@yourcompany.com, not joe@74.125.53.100, right?
Stay tuned to http://blog.brianguy.com for a blog post about setting up DNS. I'll cover DNS topics for both novices and geeks, in case you want to run your own DNS server(s) in your garage (I've done this; it's pretty fun - if you're a geek).
Happy domain name hunting,
Brian
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