Getting a Domain to suit your Business

One of the things you have to do before anything else is purchase a domain name. Your domain name is akin to your house address. It is your Internet identity. It lets people know who you are, where you are, and the nature of your business.

No too parties can have the same domain name. Domain names are unique.

"Technically, a domain name is an addressing construct used for identifying and locating computers on the Internet. While computers use Internet Protocol (IP) numbers to locate each other on the Internet, people find them hard to remember. Therefore, domain names were developed to permit the use of easily remembered words and phrases to identify Internet addresses." (Verisign)

Domains can be registered in many languages and there are wide range of extensions (.com, .net, .org, etc...) to choose from.

What domain name should I choose?

Your domain can be any length up to 64 characters and can include alphanumerics and a divider "-". It's best to aim for something that contains both your business name and the field of business you are in. So for a company called Sinclair, who sell computers... a domain name like: www.sinclair-computers.com would be a good choice. If you want people to know where you are from, a regional extension like .co.uk or .ie or .de will let people know immediately what part of the world your in.

Having keywords in the domain name like: computers, also will make a difference to rankings in the search engines and portals. If you search Yahoo for 'dsl' see how many listings with the word dsl comes up on the first page...

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