What is a Domain Name?

What's in a Domain Name?

Just like we all have a name and address, all the entities online also have a name address. This name is nothing but domain name and address is the IP address. Each domain name is unique and has all the information about the website or other entity which it represents. Each part of it provides certain information which enable web browsers to locate that particular web page. This avoids any confusions and misconceptions while locating web contents.

How do Domains Work?

In real world many people may have similar names. But a domain name is always unique and it has more than just name in it. It is like a short form which is easy to remember, but has all the information of that particular web content. When a domain name is entered in the browser, the browser retrieves all the information regarding that particular domain name and loads the web contents related with that domain name. (How exactly it does it, I will share in detail in my next post. )

Registering a Domain

To get your domain name, you need to register a domain name with a domain registration providers or also called registrars.  The ICANN regulates and oversees the domain name industry. This is the organization that is responsible for certifying companies as domain name registrars.  These registrar companies provide interfaces to search for available domain names, and they offer a variety of domain name extensions that can be registered at the same time. 

This here is the most basic information about a domain name. I will soon be posting details on different parts of the domain name. Keep checking for the updates, to know more about the domain name and every aspects related to it.  

A recipe for a successful website

What are the conditions your website should be fulfilling in order to become a successful site? Like we all know ‘content is king’. Content plays the most important role in a website.  But what exactly is a great content?  Well the answer is simple. Whatever creates an interest in your visitors and engage them in any way and make them want to come back again and again. But creating such content is not simple at all. You need to have someone who has a lot of knowledge on whatever your site is out.

Content doesn’t necessarily mean article or blog. It can be anything like video, images, tools which provide output, survey, poll, or anything which would engage your visitors and is useful for them.

Well this was about content. Other than this, there are many other things which would affect the success of your website. Once you have your site all set, the next important step is to get a best domain name for your site. Make sure you have your domain name right. You can refer my previous article on this.

Once you choose your domain name, get a good domain service provider and register your domain name. And the next step is to register a hosting account with hosting service providers. Most of the domain service providers also provide hosting service and the hosting service providers also provide domain service. It is good to have both your providers at one place. This way you’ll always know whom to go to whenever there is any problem with your site and it will be much easier to manage all at one place. But just for these reasons, you shouldn’t be compromising with any of the services. If you feel a company is mainly provide one of the two services and just to have everything in one place it is also providing the other too and it is not as good as the primary service they provide, do not hesitate to go for a different provider for the second service.

Along with the hosting and domain service, some of these providers also provide services like Ecommerce set up, Website creator tools for helping newbie and also allow installing third party service via their account panel.

These are few things you will have to think of before your launch your site.

How should your domain name be?

A domain name is definitely one of the most prominent parts of your website. This plays a vital role when you are marketing your website. Choosing the best domain name for your website will definitely benefits you in lot ways.

There are few things you keep in mind when you choose a domain name:

·         What is the purpose of your online presence? That means if you have a website, why exactly you have created the website. Is it non profit, business site, personal site, informational site, site for entertainment etc.

·         If you have business site, is it a local business or does it has an international market.

·          Are you willing to build your own brand or you are only interested in doing a business being behind the scene. What I mean when I say ‘Behind the Scene’ is an Affiliate business.

Once you note down the above points, you can create a domain name in many ways.

·          You can create a unique new word of your own word, when you want to build a brand. Ex: Omnis.com .

·         Brand name can also be created with existing common words which best describes your site’s contents. Ex: host.com .

·         You can also combine more than one common word to form a unique word, which describes your site. Ex: CrazyDomains.com .

·         But if you are not interested in building brand in some cases like mine. When the site is informational, you can combine the keywords and form a domain name so that it is easy to guess the content of the site and also can be crawled by Google faster. Ex:   topwebhostings.info.

No matter what style you choose to create a domain name, in any ways I would suggest,

·         The domain name must describe your website contents.

·         It should be short and easy to spell, so that it will be easy to memorize.

·         It should either be so unique that, once read people remember it for its uniqueness(Ex: FatCow.com) or it should be so simple that people can easily relate it to the site content and recall the name (Ex:CrazyDomain.com) .

·         You can also go for a completely crazy and fun domain name, if your first priority is to create a brand name. But then make sure you have enough budget to market your domain name.

·         Never use any special characters or numbers which has nothing to describe your site.

Other than these things, a domain extension also says a lot about the website and is important parts of the domain name. Here are few basic domain extensions and the definition on what exactly they mean:

·         .COM : These are the most commonly used extension . There is a misconception about these domains that they mean ‘Company’. But actually they mean ‘Commercial’. If you are any site that has a commercial intention then you can go for this extension. In fact there are lot of newbies on the internet who think ‘.com’ is the only existing extension. Hence, I suggest it is better you register a domain name with ‘.com’ extension to avoid loosing traffic from this group of users unless in some special conditions.

·         .NET:  This means ‘Network’. These extensions can be used to represent a website which is directly related internet infrastructure or may also represent a certain network connecting certain entities.

·         .ORG: This extension represents ‘organization’. If you are representing some kind of organization which works for a certain cause you can go for this.

·         .BIZ: This represents ‘business’. If you have local business and want to avoid the national and international competition for your small business this is the best for you. (.Bz is also used as an alternative for this)

·         INFO: Represents ‘information’. If the site is providing information and is for reference this is the extension to go for.

·         .TV: Represents ‘Television’. Websites representing a television channel or any other related contents can go for this extension.

·         .MOBI: Represents ‘mobile’. This is reserved for the websites to be accessed on a mobile device.

·         .US: represents United States. This is for website related to US. However, there is no restriction on registration. Anyone from anywhere can use this extension for their domain name.

So these are few basic you should know before you register your domain. I hope this has helped you in deciding the domain name.