So now that you’ve understood (I am hoping, at least ) the basics of domain names and who manages them, lets proceed further to understand what domain name(s) you should register for your business / personal use and some tips on domain registration.

If the target audience for your service / product is global and you feel that maximum visitors to your potential website would come from Google, Yahoo, Bing (by the way these are called Search Engines) then you should think about WHAT your target customer would search for when he is looking for businesses /services of YOUR TYPE. In such a case I would highly recommend that you register a domain name that contains your most important keyword (keyword = what your target customer would search for) instead of your company name.

One such example that comes immediately to my mind is that of a customer of ours offering Treks in the Himalayas. The name of his company is Wayfarer Adventures while the domain name for his website is www.trekkinginhimalayas.com. This is because NOBODY would ever search for “Wayfarer Adventures” when looking for Trekking information in the Himalayas.

And it is for this reason that his website has been No.1 on www.google.com for the last 5 years when somebody searches for “trekking in himalayas”.

Of course, you can still list your company name on your web site, but your domain name should include the most important keyword that you think a potential customer would use while looking for companies like you.

Now, as always, there are exceptions…

If your business operations are specific to an area or they are localised then in my opinion it would make more sense to build brand awareness and register a domain name with your company name. Like, in the above example it would be www.wayfareradventures.com.

Now that you have decided on your preferred domain name(s), you should start looking for their availability. To check the availability of your domain name(s), you would use a service called “WHOIS” lookup. There are 1000s of WHOIS websites, but I normally use www.drwhois.com. Plain, simple and to the point. Just go to the website and type your first choice in the box.

IMPORTANT: You would recollect from Part 1 of our series, www. is NOT part of your domain name. So while searching for availability JUST PUT IN example.com or whatever your first choice is.

After you click the Whois button on the page:

• If the domain is available, the results would show as “NOT FOUND” or “No Record Found”.
• If somebody has already registered your chosen domain name, the results would show the registration details of the person who registered this domain.

After you’ve found your perfect domain name, you can proceed to actually register the same at our website http://domains.tradebooster.com.

USEFUL TIPS FOR REGISTERING YOUR DOMAIN NAME(s)

1) Don’t register domain names that are too long and have too many syllables if possible. Domain Names can be upto 63 characters long, but that doesn’t mean you have to use all 63 characters .

2) Use hyphens / dashes ONLY if your name is more than 3 words long (unless your name includes 3 short words). A name like buyingdomains.com doesn’t really need a hyphen because it’s already readable the way it is.

However a name like buying-domains-for-sale.com looks better than buyingsdomainsforsales.com since there are so many words in the name.

3) If you are serious about your Internet Presence, protect your domain name by registering multiple extensions for the same domain name (.net, .org, , biz, .info, .in, etc.), of course subject to their availability. For example, we have registered ALL useful domain extensions for tradebooster (except .biz. Somebody registered it before we woke up )

MOST IMPORTANT TIP

Your domain is your online business. So please do not jeopardise your own business in the hands of either your staff or your vendor. Give complete and correct registration details for your company / yourself while registering your domain name(s).

OOOhhhhh! This was a long article… right? But it had to be, because this is the first and important step in establishing your presence in the World of Internet.

In the next article I would talk about the registration details and the domain record.

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In the last article I had talked about different domain extensions like .com, .net,.org, .biz, .info, .in, .us and the like. These different domain extensions give the users a better choice for choosing their domain name.

The comprehensive list (referred as database) of the domain names registered under a particular extension is maintained centrally by a company known as “Registry”. This control had to be centralised otherwise there would be duplicacy of domain names. And this would not possible otherwise when you type www.google.com in Internet Explorer (referred as Browser) on your computer, your computer wouldn’t know which google.com to go to.

Each domain extension is managed by a separate Registry. Given below are some of the domain extensions and their corresponding registries.

There is another company called ICANN (Internet Coporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) that has overall responsibility for managing the domain name system. ICANN in turn has delegated control of each Domain Extension to the registry.

The registries DO NOT sell to end consumers directly. The registry sells domain names through companies known as “Registrars”. Some of the popular registrars that some of you might have heard of are:

1. GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com)
2. eNom (www.enom.com)
3. Tucows (www.tucows.com)
4. Network Solutions (www.networksolutions.com)
5. DirectI (www.directi.com)

If you as a customer need to register a new domain name for your business or for your personal use you would typically follow the steps below:

1. Go to the website of the registrar

2. Search for your preferred domain name(s).

3. If available, register the domain name. That’s right, you can only register a particular domain name only if the same has not already been booked / purchased by another person / company.

Once you have registered your domain name, you have successfully taken the first step towards establishing your Internet identity.

The next article would tell you more about what domain name(s) you should register for your business.

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What is a domain name?

If you search for definitions of “domain name” on Google, the results would be fairly complex and most likely you would give up pretty soon. However, the purpose of this Customer Education Series is to make you understand the Internet as a layman and not as a technician. So lets start by understanding what a domain name actually is.

Lets assume I am a professor in a University and taking a class on this subject. I have my students seated in front of me in a 10 x 6 matrix i.e. 10 rows with 6 students in each row. Now during the course of the session I need to ask a particular student a question. I can refer to him as the student seated in row 5, 3rd seat from the left or I can refer to him as “James” which is his name. In both scenarios I am referring to the same person. His name however, is a more convenient way of referring to him rather than the first method. Specially so, because I need to remember the names of 60 students in my class.

This is exactly how the Internet or for that matter any network works. The real location of a server / machine on the network is identified by something called the “IP Address” (IP = Internet Protocol). A typical IP address looks like 122.160.156.225. Now imagine 60 students in my class, each having a specific IP address (his seat location). How difficult or almost impossible would it be for me to remember that. Isnt remembering names much much easier?

So the name of the student is like the domain name and the seat location of the student is his IP address. Now imagine day 2 of the same class. James, the student in question, is now seated in row 7, 2nd seat from the right. Today, if I need to refer James by his location I would call him as the student on row 7, 2nd from the right. However, if I need to refer him by his name, I would still call him as James. And this is exactly why names are better than IP addresses.

A domain name is practically an easier way to refer to your Internet Business, though the actual location is always the IP address.

A domain name looks like:

www.example.com

Now, let’s break this up:

example – this is the domain name

.com – this is the domain extension

For those of you who have used the Internet for years now, you would recollect that the domain names began with 3 possible extensions viz. .com, .net and .org.

However, for those who were late in catching up with the Internet, their preferred domains were gone by that time. Hence, today you would see multiple domain extenions like .biz, .info and country specific extensions like .in, .us, .uk. This has given an opportunity to the late entrants to get a domain name of their choice to establish their presence in the World of Internet.

To summarise, a domain name is just a name for referring to your Internet identity. The actual process however works on IP addresses. Just like James could shift from 1 seat to another class after class, you can also choose to shift from one provider to another, but the name still remains the same and hence easier for all to remember.

The next article would cover more details on domain extensions and registries. Stay tuned!!

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