Choosing and Registering a Domain Name for Your Online Business
Continuing the series on FREE Guides on How to Setup Your Own Blog from Start to Finish, I am sure you would have chosen your niche that suits you. We now have to think about choosing a Domain Name for your Blog. The truth is, your domain name plays a great role in the success of your blog.
Once you choose and register it, it is yours for life. In my case, I wanted to start a niche on Make Money Online Nigeria but the domain name that has exactly the letters has been registered by someone else. I would have chosen another domain name but it will definitely affect my blog later. In choosing your domain name, you would encounter problems if this is your first time at it. In today’s post, I would provide you with necessary information you need to choose a good domain name.
There are a couple of options open to you in choosing a domain name. These are;
1. Self-Branding
Self-Branding quite simple is you, for example, adesojiadegbulu.com is a domain name I chose for branding myself as a problem solver who does development: Personal, Entrepreneurship and National. This allows me to talk or blog about anything I want. It also helps me cover multiple niches if I wish. If what you are after is self branding, then using your name as domain name will be a brilliant idea you should pursue.
2. Niche Domain
Niche Domain would relate to a certain niche or topic that you wanted to blog about. For example, let us assume the niche you chose to start a blog on is a weight loss niche then you want to try weightlosshelps as your domain name. It is important to have a ‘keyword rich’ or otherwise known as ‘long tailed Keywords’ domain name. An example of a keyword rich domain name for what we chose in the previous example is nigeriandating or similar. And you be glad to know that makemoneyonlineng.com is a niche domain in the making money online niche.
You could do some research by typing the keywords into www.google.com and checking results, once you have completed this exercise then the next step to think about is registering your Domain Name for your blog.
Registering your Domain Name
There are many Domain name registrars to choose from when registering your Domain Name. You may however wish to check and see what existing Domain Names are expiring or expired. Some of the benefits of buying an existing Domain Name is that there may well be ‘existing backlinks’ and the Domain Name may already have a ‘Page Rank’ in Google. This gives you an instant boost as your new WordPress Blog would receive instant traffic. Whichever domain name you want to register, I recommend that you register your domain name with Web4Africa. Not only do I use them to register my domain names, I use them to register my clients domain names too. They are reliable. Click on Web4Africa and go to their site. When you get there, click on Domain Names and start your domain registration process. You would register your domain name with less than N 2, 000.
You could if you wish register your Domain Name and get your Web host with Web4Africa at the same time. We will cover this in on of the upcoming posts. The advantages to this is that everything would be centralised and there is no need to change Domain Name Servers (DNS).
In registering your domain name, I suggest that you register a .com or .net extension, the reason being that the Search Engines normally ‘default’ to the .com extensions of Domain Names first. I also suggest you avoid the .info extension; there is a reason why they are cheaper Top Level Domains (TLD). Spammers use them for SPAM Websites. Ok, you now have your Domain Name sorted; let’s get your Webhosting Account set up.
Before we get to that, the following Domain Name Tools will be of great importance to you.
Whois: One of the first and most popular whois services on the Internet. Simply type the domain name that you want to research and it will tell you its availability.
Instant Domain Search: This tool enables you to see which domains are registered, and which are free in real time, as you type letter by letter.
Ajax Whois: This is a real time domain search tool which behaves similarly to Instant Domain Search. The advantage is that it includes more extensions.
Psychic Whois: Another real time domain lookup, but with an auto-complete feature enabled.
BustAName: This is one of the best domain research tools on the Internet. Simply insert any number of keywords, prefixes, or suffixes, and the service will mix and match them for you.
NameBoy: A basic tool that offers domain name ideas. All you need to do is type in a primary keyword (and a secondary one if you want), and it will display a list with relevant domain names.
Xona Domain Hacks: A domain hack is a trick used to form a word by combining both the domain name and its extension. Examples include bla.st (blast), del.icio.us (delicious), and blo.gs (blogs).
DomainsBot: This tool operates like a domain name search engine. After you type in keywords it will create a list for you (the more keywords included the bigger the list) with related domains.
MakeWords: This tool creates a list using random domain names, outlining those that are already registered and the ones still available.
Banned Domain Checker: Before considering to purchase a registered domain, it’s a good idea to check if Google has banned the domain in the past.
I hope you enjoyed this. If you have any question regarding the subject of this post, make sure you ask for clarification using the comment box provided further below.
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Regards
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Adesoji Adegbulu is the Founder of Maven Technologies Nig. Ltd (aka 9jacorp). He is a social/internet entrepreneur, business consultant, network marketer and a problem solver who loves helping people and business succeed.
I write, research, inspire, teach, empower and serve as a resource person. I am a social media enthusiast. You can connect with me on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
