Choosing the right domain name and web host are two important aspects to starting your business online.
Lord knows we don’t want any headaches later on from the choices we make now.
So make it good!
What’s In A Domain Name?
When you get to the brainstorming part of your domain name, hopefully you have done your research into the sort of business brand you want to have. There are different directions you can go. You can use your own name, or something catchy with a keyword included to give clarification to your audience, or your name and keyword. You want it to be brandable, memorable and that can grow with you.
In the past, it was important to SEO to add the keywords into your domain name to help rank your website. Not so much anymore. It’s more important to have the end user in mind.
Again, your domain name should be memorable, and catchy. Have it reflect who you are, and yet speaks to your niche. For instance, when I was thinking of a domain name, my love for hiking the foothills near my house came to mind, along with my love for the California Live Oak Tree that I see all along the landscape. And with the theme and colors I liked, it brought it all together. Boom! Live Oak Coaching was born.
Here are some ideas to help you with the process:
- If it’s a niche blog with affiliate marketing you can be more descriptive. Let the user know what it’s about. Make it clever.
- If you are doing an MLM network marketing type site use your name.
- If you are branding you as the service you can use your name and descriptive word also. Especially if you are a local business (i.e., yournameplumbing.com).
As a word of caution, I would stay away from any trademarked names. I’m sure their army of attorneys is bigger than yours.
There are some cosmetic things to think about also:
- Make sure you spell the words correctly. I mean the keywords and other descriptive words, because I know you can spell your name correctly. Right?
- Don’t use hyphens (-) or dots (.) since the user may not remember and then they won’t find your site.
- Don’t use numbers. Only because it may confuse the user and they may not know to spell it out or use the character.
- Keeping it short and sweet would be better. I would limit it to 20 characters or less.
Now what about the extension you ask? The almighty .com is still coveted, however, other extensions can be used. If the .com is available it’s probably a good idea to buy it and hold onto it, or use it. There are other cool extensions out there, for example yourname.me could be used, or if you are a MLM networker person you can use yourname.networker.
There are a lot more unique possibilities with the addition of these newer extensions. Check out all the extensions available here
The important thing to know is the .com is no longer the be all end all extension. There are more factors than just using the .com that is going to get you ranked. I think the newer extensions are going to become more common place and might seem more “edgey” and hip to use now, not to mention memorable. Just saying! And, of course, make it meaningful to your business.
It’s probably a good idea to come up with a few ideas for your domain then ask friends and family what they think.
What if you are having trouble coming up with a domain name? Here are some tools that you can use to help you come up with ideas:
Web Hosting – Let’s Get This Party Started!
Well now it’s time to get a host for this web party – your new business! Behind every good party is a good host! Your web party – I mean website, needs to run in a reliable and timely fashion. No one wants a host who crashes often, and when you call they are not very helpful. This could lead to lost opportunities for you and not to mention the frustration.
Also, transferring from one host to another is a difficult and painstaking process, that’s why it’s important to research the best and most reliable hosting that you can afford, where you can build your site and avoid issues in the future.
Like I said earlier: we don’t want any headaches later on from the choices we make now.
So…
Here are some things to consider:
- You want to make sure that they have a user-friendly control panel to load WordPress and manage your website. Hopefully you are using WordPress for your business (that’s for another blog post).
- If you don’t have the technical experience, then you would be better off using a product such as Hostgator. Where you can have your domain name and hosting in one package with a nice control panel and support when needed.
- Should you use shared or dedicated hosting? If you are just starting out, your website may not be that big, so shared hosting should be fine. If you have a more mature website that’s rather large, and has a lot of traffic, a dedicated server would be better. Of course cost will be a factor as dedicated hosting is going to cost you more.
- Site speed is really crucial in this day and age due to the short attention span of readers. That’s why you need to do whatever it takes to get the loading times of your site as short as possible, even if it means using a different hosting service.
- Uptime is important too, you don’t want your user to not be able to access your site because your host is down. There will be times that they will be down for maintenance and such but you would probably know ahead of time. It’s the unexpected that brings frustration.
Need Help?
If you’re interested in building, branding and managing your own online business right the first time, without the confusion of information overload, please click here for my coaching services.
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I wish you much success!
God Bless,
Marie
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