- Research available URL names
- Register your domain name
- Consider multiple domain names
- Work with a hosting company to make active
Register Your Domain Name
|
|
Obtaining your own "dot-com" or web address is an important step to reinforce your presence in the marketplace. You will use this name on many of your communications and what you choose could help build brand identity for your company. A "URL" (Uniform Resource Locator) is the formal name for the address. For example, www.att.com is the URL for AT&T.
There used to be one company that handled all domain registration for the world. This company maintains a database that tells web surfers which host computer (server) is associated with any given address.
While Network Solutions (now a part of Verisign) no longer holds the monopoly for issuing the web addresses, they are still the dominant company in this field. They charge a fee per year (typically bill you for two years up front) and the fee is around $35 a year. (I have seen special offers of $29 a year too). The cost may be lower depending on how many years you prepay. You may want to shop around for a cheaper registration rate if you are registering many names at once.
To check and see what domain names are still available, you can visit Verisign and type in your proposed name near step one. They will respond and if your name is not available, you will see other similar names that are available. Keep trying and you will find an available name. You can add words like company, inc, and many others to come up with an open name.
While "com" is by far the most widely used extension, there are a few others such as org, tv, net, biz, and net. I highly recommend sticking with "com" since that is so well known. I also tend to like small names that require less typing. Avoid any characters that could be confusing such as underscore in the name.
You may also want to consider registering additional URLs at the same time. For example you could register "plumbingexpert" in addition to your company's name. The advantage of this is that you can feature separate content on a different front page and by having multiple domain names, you have a better chance of being found in the search engines.
This cost to register your domain names is independent from the cost you will incur to have someone "host" your web pages. While you could connect a server to the internet and host your own web site, I would highly recommend paying a company the relatively modest fee and let them worry about keeping your web site up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
©2002 Track Marketing Group, Inc. - All Rights Reserved.