Best Practices Guide
About Domain Names
By Dejan Bizinger
Domain names are the
first step in implementing your Internet marketing business
plan. Domain name represents your brand. Many people know
very well the importance of brand in the "offline" but even
those can make mistakes in their Internet brand management.
Domain name is the first step in successful Internet brand
management.
Choosing a domain name
It is not easy to register a good domain name (especially
dot com), these days. According to domain name statistics on
the most popular web site for whois searches Whois Source
there are more than 57 million active generic top level
domains registered as of September, 2005. Majority of these
domain names are .com names. You can view this statistics if
you visit http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/
It is sure that you can't register a classy one-word domain
name but with a little knowledge and appropriate services
you can find a decent one, especially if you are not
interested only in .com names. Useful site for finding
decent domains is above mentioned Whois Source - http://www.whois.sc
There you will find a free service that will give you 20
domain suggestions based on your keyword. Also, on the
Internet you can find software that focus on domain names.
Using free software Domain Name Analyzer you can make a list
of domain names and this software will check availability of
all included domains so you won't have to check one-by-one
which is time-consuming. Also this program will give you
useful suggestions.
Another useful thing in find decent domain names is using
expired domain name or back-ordering services. Using the
first service you will get the list of expired domain names
where you can find some really nice names with a little
luck. However, it is not easy because many people use those
services and some companies have special infrastructure that
check availability of certain domain names every second and
register them. You will have better chance to get your
desired domain using back-ordering services. These services
will monitor for domains you want to register and once they
expire they will make register them on your behalf. Popular
services are SnapNames.com and Pool.com.
It is recommended that your domain name be short, catchy,
brandable and most important - easy to remember! You can
register a domain name that has no obvious connections with
your business but that is cool. Then you will have to invest
more money in branding. With good domain name you will save
thousand and thousand dollars in advertising, especially in
TV advertising. If you are an email marketer domains are
also very important because getting email subscribers
without well designed web site is not recommended. It is
recommended that the name of your domain be the same like
your email newsletter name. You can make "teaser" articles
in your email newsletter so that your readers will have to
visit your web site in order to read complete articles and
vice-versa. You can put "teaser" articles on your web site
and require that people subscribe to your email newsletter
to read complete articles.
Also, in order to find out popularity of certain keyword
combinations you can use keyword suggestion services. We can
recommend you these services:
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox
Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
You can use Google, enter your keyword combination and see
how much results you will get.
If you are in process of registering a domain name we can
suggest you these two great companies:
Go Daddy - http://www.godaddy.com
Namecheap - http://www.namecheap.com
Internet brand management
We will take our company Infacta, Ltd. as an example.
Infacta is Ireland-based company so it is logical that we
registered www.infacta.ie. However, although we are
Ireland-based company we focus globally. This can prove the
fact that we have clients in more than 130 countries
world-wide. So, it is also logical that we have a domain
name in .com extension, too. Dot com domain name is
considered as a global domain name for companies. Many
people think that it is enough to have 2 domain names, but
not people at Infacta. For successful Internet brand
management it is not enough. Beside, .ie and .com domains,
Infacta owns domains in all major generic top level domain
extensions (gtld) like .net, .org and .info. This is to
prevent people or companies to use other Infacta name in
other extensions that can confuse our customers and make
harm to our brand. Beside that, we registered domain names
for our award-winning products GroupMail and GroupMetrics in
different domain extensions and for upcoming Messaging Times
website, as well. Other famous companies have literally
hundred and even thousand domains in their portfolio for
each country where they have a presence and for their
services. That is called a professional brand management.
There is also one more thing that can show how serious one
company is regarding their domain names and Internet
presence, in general. That is domain expiration date. Domain
names expire. After that (preferably before that) date
domain owners have to renew them. When you make whois
inquiry about certain domain name, for example at
www.whois.sc , beside registrant info you will see an
expiration date. Imagine that you want to see an expiration
date of your email marketing software company and you see
that the expiration date is the next year or even this year.
This doesn't sound promising if you want a reliable business
partner that will be in the business in the next 10 years,
too, that you can count on. It is not only important because
of whois searches and credibility, it is important because
of search engines. Google gives better placement for
companies that have domains registered for longer period. It
is a sure indicator that it is a stable business and that
they won't go anywhere. Infacta domain name www.infacta.com
expires in 2011.
There are some services that can help you in Internet brand
management, to monitor that someone else is not using your
trademarked names. One of those companies that offer brand
monitoring services is NameProtect, Inc. at http://www.nameprotect.com
Also, it is highly recommended that before you register your
domain name to visit http://www.uspto.gov to check if your
name that you want to register has been trademarked to avoid
possible problem and law suits later. USPTO is official web
site of the United States Government for patents and
trademarks. Here you can also register your patent,
trademark or service mark.
If your company's name has a good, generic name and you want
to register a domain, it is most likely that the .com domain
will be taken. Sometimes, it is good choice to buy it from
the actual owner. Also, you can buy domain names that are
highly connected with your products and services and that
will help you in Internet marketing.
The most popular web sites for buying/selling domain names
are:
Sedo - http://www.sedo.com
Great Domains - http://www.greatdomains.com
Afternic - http://www.afternic.com
About the Author
Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta
is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet
easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending
highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics,
software for email tracking. For more information visit:
http://www.infacta.com |
