My Mini News Section.
[17.04.09] - Tech Talk : Domain names
Welcome to the first in a detailed series of articles talking about the internet, online services and the particulars of owning your own website.
In this article we will be talking domain names, which are unique names given to web addresses / locations on the internet, take www.dwhitewebdesign.com for example. Did you know that when using an internet browser such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox you can type a domain name with or without the "www."?
When you decide you are going to have a website created, the FIRST thing you should think about is your domain name! When choosing a name keep in mind; size matters. Now, short domain names will be harder to find because of their advantages such as being easier to recall and makes spelling mistakes less likely when typing.
Common words are best but the majority of these have been used up so you should look for unusual names or combinations of general names which rhyme and sound right together. Take www.visitcamposol.com for example, that’s quite easy to remember. Bear in mind your business name, services and products can be used in the domain name as they can be used as keywords, this can help your search engine positioning (this will be covered in the next few articles). If you can obtain your actual business/company name (or something similar) that’s even better; then there will be no confusion when searching for your website online.
There has been an explosion of new style domain names that are increasing day by day. Words that we never would have spoken such as: Google.Com, Twitter.Com and Ebay.Com are now common in the online e-marketplace.
One important point you should take into consideration when choosing a domain name, is, try to avoid selecting a name where someone has one similar already online, if you do then some people may end up on their website rather than yours by mistake.
One last thing (if possible), try and aim for the .COM version of a website address. Why? Well it's the most popular and we live "in the dot com era", if you are unable to obtain the .COM then don’t worry, you can choose from .net /.es /.biz etc...
Daniel White