Tips On Registering Your Domain Name

So, you want some tips for your domain name? Here are a few important reminders to consider when registering your own domain name.

Your domain name is important for several reasons. More important of these reasons include search engine optimization and branding. You must select a domain name that will uniquely represent your online business and at the same time drive more traffic to your blog. How exactly do you do this?

Use Your Keywords In Your Domain Name

After you have chosen a topic to blog about, you can now register your domain name. While some bloggers have decided to use their own names for branding purposes (i.e. GarryConn.com and TerenceChang.com), I would advice you to use your keywords instead.

If your blog is all about blogging, it’s a good idea to include it to your domain name. Or if you want to optimize your blog for the keywords “Blogging Tips” and “Blogging Resources”, including these words to your domain name will improve your search engine visibility. Try using Google and search for “Blogging Tips”. You will notice that www.bloggingtips.com is on top of the search engine result page. Apparently, using your keywords in your domain name help boost your search engine ranking for those specific keywords. Of course, using your keywords in your domain name does not do all the tricks. You need to do some more search engine optimization.

Make Your Domain Name Easy To Remember

When you’re deciding for a domain name, avoid concocting tongue twisters as they are not helpful at all. Every webmaster / blogger would want to register a domain name that is short and easy to remember. You wouldn’t really want to miss traffic simply because your previous visitors forgot your domain name.

When registering your domain name, use at most three words or a maximum of 20 characters (Domain names have 67 maximum allowable characters). If you can get away with numbers (i.e. theweblogzone2008.com), the better. Doing this will minimize future confusion. Hyphens, which others claim to have some positive SEO effects, should also be avoided as it could potentially lead to confusion and sometimes inconvenience on the part of your visitors. Besides, there are no solid proofs that domain names with hyphens are much preferred by search engines. Also, it’s worth noting that a long domain name is not only confusing and easily forgotten, but it’s also not search engine friendly.

Use “COM” As Extension Or Register All Possible Extensions

With the popularity of blogging these days, registering a domain name of your choice is oftentimes difficult. Chances are, the domain name you want to register is either registered or is sold at a high price. If you already have a domain name in mind, you might want to register it right away before someone else does.

Now that domain name extension are no longer limited to “com”, you should also consider registering all other possible extension like; net, biz, org, us, and cc to protect your brand. If you can’t afford keeping all these domain names, make sure to prioritize registering your domain name with a “com” as an extension. COM as an extension is the most popular and oldest extension.

Considering that some people mispell domain names, why don’t register these domain names and have them rerouted to your blog. This would mean driving more traffic to your blog. The word “Blogging” for instance is oftentimes mispelled “Bloging”. If your domain name is Blogging.com, you might want to register Bloging.com and have it redirected to your blog to avoid missing traffic.

Don’t Register Domain Names That Infringe On Trademarks

Last but not the least, keep your business legit and avoid registering domain names that infringe on trademarks. If before, companies are willing to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars to buy registered domain names in order to keep their brand, nowadays; companies are turning to their lawyers for help. Laws regarding trademark infringement vary from one country to another, but trademark infringements are always prosecuted.

Before you proceed to the registration of your domain name, make sure that you considered the pointers raised in this post. If you think I missed some valuable tips with domain names, do share them in the comments.

Thank you for your time.

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