Purchasing a Company Domain Name
Being a website designer, I’ve seen many problems come up with domain names. Here are some tips and things to think about when purchasing a domain name for your company.
Buy The Right Domain – One That You Like
A domain name that has some age is important. For most businesses, they are going to be buying a new domain name (make it a .com) and thus it will not have any age to it. That is fine. Just make sure that when you buy the domain name, it’s one that you know you will stick with – that way, you will eventually get the benefits of a domain name that has some age (which helps with SEO – search engine optimization).
An Important Domain Name Registration Tip
One important thing is how you register the domain name. This is where tons of problems creep up later. Some mistakes that are too often made are when people either have their website design company register the domain name for them or the domain name ends up in the name of someone working at the company who is not the President of the company.
If the website design company registers it, then it’s often very hard to get it back in your name later when you want to choose another website designer. If there are hard feelings between them and you, then it’s even worse. Register the domain name yourself – always.
If the domain name is in one person’s name who has left the company, then that also becomes a problem. Their email address no longer works. Things like domain name registration notices don’t get received. If changes need to be made to the domain, then the place that the password would get sent is to that email account. Register it in a “generic” email account that can be an alias. Let me explain…
A generic email account is something like “webmaster@yourdomain.com” or “info@yourdomain.com” because it’s not someone’s personal account / not in one person’s name. You should be able to create email “aliases” for email accounts, so what this means is that “abc@yourdomain.com” can have an alias of “webmaster” so that they get email for either account. When that person leaves, you can move the “webmaster” alias to someone else’s account and then you do not need to keep changing this at the domain name registrar. It’s a good practice and it saves a lot of trouble later on, trust me.
What Kind of Domain Name Should We Buy?
Of course, buy a “dot com” domain name. I personally hate the word “my” in front of a domain. I think it’s a fad (brought on by Microsoft) and eventually those domain names will look old and dated, which means you’ll have to start all over again. So if your company name isn’t available as an exact match domain name, then you can add some words to it. What is best is to add a keyword (or keyword phase, if short) to the end of it. Just make sure the name is not too long (20 characters is starting to get somewhat long).
When you buy the domain name, try to also buy the “.net” and “.org” of the domain. This protects you from your competitors buying them from you. We’ve seen non-profits just buy the “.org” of a domain and then a disgruntled employee buys the “.com” and makes all kinds of trouble. Protect yourself from those kinds of things. You may also want to buy the “sucks” version of your domain as well (for example: “yourdomainsucks.com”) so that nobody can use it. Domains are just $8 or so a year, so it’s definitely worth the investment and protection.
How Long Should You Register a Domain Name For?
The maximum! Go 10 years or so. This has a number of benefits. First, some people think that Google looks at how long a domain is registered for when it’s ranking a website. Google wants to give a good result, so they probably want to give results to websites that look like they’re going to be around for a long time. Second, you don’t have to worry about renewal for a long time. There have been countless cases of websites going down because a company or organization forgot to renew it.
Conclusion – Purchasing Domain
This isn’t all you need to know about registering a domain name but just a few important tips that I haven’t seen mentioned many other places. These are things that people don’t think about much but definitely should. Getting control of a domain name later on can be quite a hassle – you have to fax in your business incorporation papers and other kinds of proof of ownership. If you know what to do when planning ahead, you can avoid these kinds of problems easily.
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