As a follow up to the 5 Easy Ways to Get Your Business Online Post, I wanted to go into more detail on each of the steps you needed in order to get your business online. After a few of the questions I received I wanted to start off by digging into the domain name registration process.
Choosing a Domain Name
Your domain name is critical to your business. The domain name is what displays in the address bar at the top of the screen. In case of this page, the domain name is kindredwebconsulting.com. Your domain name is one of the first impressions a new site visitor is going have of you and your business and the design of your website is also important but there are companies that offer these services and can do the work for you, and you can get them from sites as https://www.whitesp-ce.com/. I suggest to all of our customers that they register their company name to start the branding process for their site, and to help let customers know they are at the correct site. There is also a lot to be said about registering several domains to make sure people can get to your site. If there is an abbreviation for your company name you may want to register that domain name as well as any common misspellings. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find your site just using the domain name. You can register as many as you feel like you need and most registrars have simple how to instructions for forwarding the extra domains to the primary domain of your choice.
Finding a Registrar
A quick google search will show you that there are well over 100,000 pages for domain registrars. We use GoDaddy but there are tons of other registrars to choose from. There has been a big push lately to start using Hover, because they don’t try to up-sell you for every service under the sun. The best advice I can give you is to not use the cheapest registrar you can find, because there can be a lot of problems in the long run. One problem I have had was when I was trying to transfer a handful of domains from a dirt cheap registrar and they had locked the domains so I couldn’t transfer them for another 6 months. It caused tons of frustration but I was able to get it worked out in the end. Domains are not expensive and it pays to be with a hosting company that is able to support your needs which in most cases includes being available to answer your questions.
Top Level Domains (TLDs)
Top level domains are the ending characters for the domain name you choose. If you are a non profit chances are you would want to get the .org for your domain name. Most people choose to go with the .com and .net Top Level Domains, but there are a lot of others to choose from. I have talked to people that swear google gives more credibility to .com domains, but I have not seen any hard proof of this in the SEO work I have done.
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