5 Steps To Setting Up Your Business Website – Domain Names
Here are the five steps you will need to complete for setting up your website for your business:
- Domain Name
- Website Hosting Provider
- Website Creation Software
- Website Tracking Software
- Email Broadcast Software
We will cover each step in setting up your business website separately starting with selecting, registering and configuring your domain name.
Domain Name
Your domain name is what potential prospects and visitors would type into their web browser to directly pull up your website.
Domain names are purchased through Domain Name Registrars (also called Domain Name Registration Companies) who, for a fee, will allow you to select a domain name that is not already been registered and let you use it with your website.
For most Domain Name Registration Companies they will charge you a fee of approximately $15 per year for your domain name. You may be able to get your domain name registration for a little bit cheaper than that while other companies may charge a little more.
For an updated list of the recommended web hosting and domain name registration companies that I recommend, you can download a special report called Special Report: Website Hosting and Domain Name Registration Services on them at:
http://learntoberich.com/downloads/
Having registered hundreds of domain names, here are some domain name registration tips you may want to consider when selecting your domain name.
First, you will very likely want to register a domain name that uses a .com extension. There are other extensions like .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us and many others but the overwhelming majority of the general public assume that a domain name ends in .com. If you opt to use something other than the .com extension your domain name and someone else has the .com version of your domain name, you are just giving traffic to them as you advertise your business since a certain percentage of people will try .com trying to access your website.
Second, try to include keywords that you might want someone to use in a search engine to find your website in your domain name.
Here are some examples of what I mean by using keywords in your domain name.
Real Estate Agent Domain Name Examples
Real estate agents might want to have their website come up when someone types in their city name and real estate, so you might want to register something like:
DenverRealEstateForSale.com
If that is already registered by someone else, you may want to change it up a little and try something like these:
GreatDenverRealEstateForSale.com
FindDenverRealEstateForSale.com
DenverRealEstateToday.com
DenverRealEstateNow.com
DenverRealEstateDeals.com
DenverRealEstateResource.com
When I was creating our network of websites for real estate, we registered a domain name for each US city that we were marketing to. We ended up getting 280 domain names in the format of CityRealEstateResources.com where City was the name of the city that we were focusing on for that website. We were able to get all but a few domain names using that model. For the ones that we were not able to get because they were registered to someone else already, we simply changed it up to use CityRER.com instead.
The third tip for selecting a domain name is try to make it easier to understand when spoken. Some people will recommend getting domain names that have their keywords separated by dashes, but that becomes much harder to speak to someone on the telephone. For example, try speaking the following domain name out load now:
Great-Denver-Real-Estate-For-Sale.com
You’d be saying, “Great dash Denver dash Real dash Estate dash For dash Sale dot com.” Now, that’s a mouthful. That’s why I try to think about what it would sound like if I had to say the domain name to someone over the telephone.
Are there words that can be confusing? Are there numbers that people would wonder if it is the digit or word? Is it made up of single letters (like in an acronym) that are hard to hear and understand? Call up a few friends and colleagues and speak some of your finalists to them and see how easy they hear them and what their opinion is.
On the complete other hand, if you are registering an “extra domain name” that will only be used for online lead generation where it may be seen and clicked on but will never be spoken, I think dashes can sometimes help. However, I would not include dashes in my main business domain name.
Once you have registered your domain name with your Domain Name Registration Company, you will want to configure it to work with your web hosting account and your email. How this is setup will vary depending on your Domain Name Registration Company and your Web Hosting Company.
Until my next post,
James
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