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A good domain name is worth a fortune. SiWIS can advise
you on the best domain to suit your business, and help you secure
it.
Picking a domain name is often one of the most
overlooked factors when building a successful website. The choices
are apparently huge with any number of different TLDs being
available to select from (eg .co.uk and .com). In many cases you
will find that your immediate choice has already been taken by
another business or individual but our recommendations will go
beyond simply picking a name.
We do not sell domain names.
We recommend the use of an extremely professional domain
administration system. So if you want to buy a domain name we
would strongly urge you to visit 123-reg.co.uk
The following briefly outline the factors you
should consider when picking a domain name.
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.co.uk or .com?
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The domain extension is quite important when
it comes to the effectiveness of a domain. URL's which end in
.com give across the impression of worldwide business, big
businesses, willing to trade across the continents. URL's
ending in .co.uk are more localised. They let the user know
that they are dealing with a UK business which can lead to
increased confidence. BUT it is generally advised that if both
variants of your name are available that you buy both to
prevent cyber squatters buying the alternative and trying to
sell it to you at an inflated price.
If you put yourself in the place of an
internet user who has just searched via a search engine,
looking for a UK supplier of product/service X and they are
faced with a list of results as long as your arm, then the
ones that will offer a more likely match to them will be the .co.uk,
whereas the .com could be interpreted as a US business and
therefore offer a less likely match.
To throw a wildcard in here,
there is strong evidence to suggest that the actual domain
extension (TLD) can have a major impact on search engine
results. See next section.
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TLD Priorities
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Domain extensions have a
classification system. Simply put, there are TOP LEVEL DOMAINS,
COUNTRY CODE DOMAINS and THIRD LEVEL DOMAINS
When choosing a domain name for a
site which will rely heavily upon traffic from search engines it
can be extremely important to ensure that you choose correctly
since the domain extension plays an important part in where the
result will be displayed. Search engines give importance to TOP
LEVEL DOMAINS over and above all others such that for 2
absolutely identical sites, the one with the top level domain
extension will be given a higher placing than one with a
secondary country domain or a third level domain.
The current Top Level Domains are;
.COM .NET .ORG .BIZ .INFO .NAME
When viewed in conjunction with the
information given in the above section .co.uk or .com? this
might seem somewhat confusing. If you still require your domain
to be region specific and yet not suffer at the hands of .com
etc domains, consider appending your chosen name with 'uk' or '-uk'.
eg 'domain-uk.com' rather than just 'domain.com'.
Because of the demand for unique names on the
internet, there has been a dramatic increase in the domain
extensions available. Where your preferred name is unavailable
as a .com or .co.uk it may well still be available with a
different UK or GB extension. This is worth considering BUT
these extensions are relatively unknown by the internet users on
the whole and do not remain memorable as a result. You may be
better served by purchasing one of the new TLD's ie .BIZ or
.INFO
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Keyword rich domains.
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This factor comes into play with
Search Engines. A domain name which contains at least one of
the keywords used in a search will be likely to score a much
higher result than other sites which have no keywords matched
within the domain name.
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Alpha Numeric priorities
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This, once again, refers to Search
Engine results. Evidence shows that the alpha priority of a
domain can affect results. By this we mean that domains starting
with letters at the beginning of the alphabet will outrank those
starting with a letter from further on in it. Thus abc.com would outrank def.com IF
all other elements of the search criteria were identical ie the
domains had 2 absolutely identical pages. Whilst of only minor
importance, it is still a consideration. It is rumoured that
numbers rank higher than letters, although we have seen no
direct evidence of this factor.
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What is the primary purpose of your site?
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If you plan to provide mail order, ie to the
entire country, the you may find it worth trying to secure
a generic domain name, which need not necessarily contain the name of your
business. This type of name, eg www.bikes4trials.co.uk
gives across a specific message about the content of a site, and
can be helpful in terms of Search Engine queries. This type of
domain name will stick out more than a business name.
BUT if you purely wish to use your website as an
advertising medium, promoting the existence of your shop within
your region, then
you should secure a domain based around your business name, as
most local people will be able to associate the domain name and
site with your shop.
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How many domain names?
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There is no limit to how many domain names can
"point" to your site, so you can secure variants of
your name. For instance Chevin Cycles own the following domains,
all of which point to their site;
http://www.chevincycles.co.uk
http://www.chevin-cycles.co.uk
http://www.chevincycles.com
It is also worth securing ALL the possible
variants of your name (assuming someone hasn't beaten you to any
of them) so look for the variants using hyphens as well as the
through words. The example above shows this.
Securing all the variants is a worthwhile
exercise regardless of whether you are buying a business name
based domain or a generic based one. Either way you are
protecting your own interests, since if you have them, no-one
else can register them. This is particularly true with generic
names as there is very little legal recourse against a third
party registering a variant of a generic name for which you own
one of the main variants, and subsequently trading into
"your" market.
There are other reasons why it would be
beneficial to have all the variants. Hyphenated domains are
easier to read and will offer a greater memorable impact than
domains where a number of words are joined together, BUT when
users type in domains, they tend to forget to put the hyphens
back in! So for your domain "billy-bobs-bike-shop.co.uk",
they type "billybobsbikeshop.co.uk". Now what if
someone else owned that domain!
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How should I buy a domain?
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There are hundreds of sites who offer domain
names for sale on the internet. We have direct experience with
both 123-reg and freeparking and find their services to be
extremely useful when buying supplementary domains. BUT a large
number of ISP's (Internet service providers) will give you a
domain name for free if you sign up to their services.
Some of the things to watch when taking a domain
name from an ISP are that there are no "release" fees,
and that you have full email services with your domain.
Similarly, if buying from a "parking"
service, try to ensure that you have a domain management tool
which will allow the domain to be pointed to your chosen
webspace when the time comes.
Just remember "price" isn't
everything, it may cost you more in extras than you saved in the
first place!
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