Types of Available Domain Extensions

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Whether you are a business that operates solely online or a brick and mortar business looking to expand to the Internet, you will learn that your business’ domain name is everything. A domain name is like a physical address for internet users. It is what allows visitors to visit your site and continue to purchase your products or use your services.

Considering how important domain names are to businesses, it is important that you make sure you pick out a proper one that represents your business and is easy to remember. The first step in getting a domain name that is easy to remember and represents your business is to choose a website extension that shows visitors what type of website you are operating.

The following are some of the most popular types of website extensions businesses use:

  • .biz is commonly used for businesses who are establishing a business website.
  • .com is used for commercial websites and is considered the most popular type of web extension on the domain name market.
  • .info is popular for information based websites that provide users with facts and don’t typically sell products.
  • .mobi is becoming more popular as the use of mobile electronic devices increases. It is used to represent a compacted mobile version of a website.
  • .org is reserved for organizations. It is commonly associated with non-profit or charitable organizations.

The type of extension you choose can help visitors identify what type of website they are visiting. It is a good idea to register multiple domain extensions with your company or business name to make sure competitors don’t try and trick your competition.

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How to Market Your Website

There are a lot of business owners who believe that if they just get themselves a great domain name people will automatically know that they’ve got a website and they’ll instantly begin attracting more customers. While this is a great thought, it isn’t how the real world works. It’s true that you need a good domain name that is easy for your customers to remember, but it’s also true that before you’ll start to see any real benefits from your domain name, you will have to do some website marketing first. There are a variety of ways that you can advertise your website and the good news is that the majority of them aren’t that hard to do.

The first thing that you must do to promote your online website is to begin putting your domain name on all of the material your business sends out. This means that all of your business memos, letterhead, pens, magnets, etc. You will also need to put it on your business cards as well. While you should have it on the front of your business cards, you may also find it beneficial to place it on the back of your business cards too. Another great way to market your website is by having a car decal made for your vehicle. You would be surprised at how many people read the bumper stickers and car decals on vehicles while they are stuck in traffic.

Utilizing SEO keywords in your website content is also a good way to market your website. When you have informative content on your website that has popular keywords that have a high search rate with low competition, you will improve your website’s visibility. It works because these keywords will improve your page ranking in Google when someone searches for those specific keywords. When you optimize your website’s content and put your domain name on all your promotional material, your website will see more traffic.

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Advice for Choosing a Domain Name for Your Company

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What steps should you take when trying to choose the right domain name for your business or personal website? Many people treat the process of choosing the domain name as a fun and entertaining exercise. Well, the task should be treated at par with the process of choosing the name of your business. Just as you want the business to reflect your ideas and vision, your website and its name too should strike a chord with your visitors.

For starters, do some research and find keywords that apply to your business and market.  Make sure to choose keywords that are popular but have a lower supply of other online businesses using them.  This will help you rank better and faster for a certain set of terms.  You should also make sure that the keywords you choose reflect what your business does in some way.  You do not want people thinking you sell car parts when you are really in the business of selling personalized umbrellas.  You can usually find free ware on the web that can help you find and make these keyword decisions.

Also, make sure that you consider the future when you are choosing your domain name. If you own a group of companies, then choosing a specific industry, which happens to be your primary source of income today, as your domain name may not be a smart move. Circumstances may change in the future and you may end up with a domain name that does not reflect what your business stands for or represents.  So do the research and the planning first before making a final decision.

Changing the domain name or shifting your website to another domain name will not be an easy task. You will have to contact all your customers and stakeholders and educate them about the change.  It can be done, but take the time to do it right the first time.

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How to Choose a Domain Name

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There are many things you can and should consider before you select a domain name for your website. You need to think about the purpose behind your site, research availability and more. But the most important thing you need to do is choose a domain that ends in .com. Sites ending in .com are the most common and the most well-known, the .com extension lends credibility to your site and it’s the easiest for people to remember.

You’ll also want to keep the web address as short as possible, and avoid hyphens. Again – the goal here is to help people remember your site. The more complicated your web address, the more likely someone is to mistype it or forget where the hyphens go. If you are developing the site for business purposes, imagine your web address in advertisements or spoken during a radio commercial. Those hyphens really mess up the flow of things, don’t they?

Now that you’ve settled on a good, memorable, simple .com web address, you’ll want to go ahead and buy all the other versions of your site that you can. Snap up those .net, .biz and .org sites and redirect them to your .com domain. Buy the singular and plural versions of your domain and redirect the one you don’t use to the one you do. This will alleviate frustration for your customers if they mistype your web address, and it will protect you from other people purchasing those domains and capturing traffic that should have come to you.

There are other things you need to consider. Don’t use 4 when you mean the word “for,” or 2 when you mean “to.” Stay away from industry jargon and slang. Check for copyright issues. Finally, find out how much you’ll have to pay to get the name you want.

With a little leg work and research, you can select the best available domain for your needs.

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The Importance of Proper Extension for your Domain Name

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A domain name is similar to that of a trademark, logo, or brand name because it represents features of you business identity.  Customers will come to correlate it with your company, product, or service if you give it the correct name.  There may be several uses for your domain name such as email address, web site, or maybe even an ftp or another server. Your domain name will be an important aspect of how you market your service or product.

You can also change or move your domain name, for example, you can change phone numbers, you can move physical addresses, you can change the company that sponsors your website, you can change you internet providers, all with keeping the same internet provider.

Selecting a domain name is very important and in order to attract traffic to your website using the correct extension is also very important.  Most marketers on the internet prefer using the extension .com because it performs better than other non-domain names. If your choices are already taken you can consider using a different domain extension such as .cc, biz, .net, or .info extensions:

Domain Name Extension

•    For community or commercial sites use .com-, this extension is used more than any other domain extension on the internet. This is also recommended for Internet businesses.
•    For information sites use .info
•    For your local county use .co, .de, .us, .fr, .sg, .uk-These are more expensive than the rest.
•    For anything that correlates to the internet you can use .net
•    For radio and television sites use .fm, and .tv
•    Use .org, which stands for organization-This is used by many online groups and is used for non-profit sites.
•    For government and public housing sites use .gov-This is in use by all government websites.
•    For business sites use .biz-This is also recommended for you business on the internet.
•    For education and research, sites use .edu.

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