Technology Toolkit

Domain name is an important part of your online business. Without a good and meaningful name, you can never expect to make your business a success. You can choose a good domain name by using a number of online domain-name suggestion tools. Here are some simple tips to choosing a domain name by using one of the domain-name suggestion utilities.

Choose your theme: Theme and subject of the domain name form an important part of a domain name. You may wish to decide on the main theme of your web site. Once you choose the theme of the web site, pick a name that relates and works well with the main theme. Let us say that you are dealing with selling flowers online. Then, you may wish to pick up a domain that reflects this glower selling theme. For example, choosing a theme enriched domain name like onlineflowerselling.com will work very good.

Find the domain name: Experts prefer and recommend .com as your preferred domain name. Most successful online entrepreneurs like to find a name based on the keywords. These keywords always relate to the main theme of the web site. If you are selling red flowers, then you must choose domain keywords that reflect the flower-selling theme. For example, you can choose a keyword like red flowers, online flowers or virtual flowers.

If you do not own a domain name then you can make use of a number of online domain tools to find your name of choice. Before buying one, you may also wish to use a keyword search tool to check the availability of good keywords. Let us say that you want to find keywords that relate to orchid flowers. Then, you will need to find all keywords that connect to orchid flowers and online sales of orchid flowers. This means that your keywords will be a combination of themes like orchid flowers that you want to sell online to your virtual customers. For example, you can choose keywords like online orchid flowers.

Tip: Most popular keyword search tools are

www.keywordtracker.com and

www.keyword.adwords.com

Now that you have your preferred keywords, you can use free online domain name tools like

http://www.nameboy.com/

http://www.domaininformer.com/tools

Enter your keywords plus domain extension in the search bar and find out the availability of the domain names. If it is available, then you can place an order for it almost immediately as someone may pick up that name before you.

Registering domains: You can register your domain name only when it is available. To find whether the name of your choice is available or not, you can make use of a free online utility called Whois database. Just enter the keywords Whois on the search-engine address field and enter the web portal. Now, you can type the domain name of your choice in the Whois search data entry box and hit Find button. Now, the database will inform whether the domain name is available or not. If it is available, you can buy the name immediately by paying the required registration fees.

A successful web site or blog is always made meaningful by its domain name. The web address that you choose must suit the theme and tenor of the web site or blog. Make sure that your name matches the subject of the web site or blog. Almost all well-known web portals have a domain name that is short, easy to remember and type into the address window of the browser. You should understand the system by which a domain works and performs. An effective name is always catchy with a definite theme and subject. Your visitors will feel that the domain name of your web site is quite powerful as it can evoke very strong connections with something that is special to the web user.

As far as possible, use main keywords that connect to the theme and topic of your web portal. You may wish to avoid hyphens and underscores as they can confuse and mislead your site visitors. Complicated web domains are those that are very difficult to type and remember. Extra symbols and strange characters can put off web users.

Choosing a very meaningful and practical domain name is actually very simple and straightforward. You need to sit down and think over all possible combinations of good keywords and their phrases. If you want to choose a good name, you can start with a comprehensive list of prospective names and shortlist the best ones among them. When you create a list of good names, the next step is to check whether they are available for registration. To conduct this important search, you will need to use an online tool that tells you about the availability of names.

Domain ownership identification tool is a very simple utility where you will find out who is the owner of the domain is and whether the name of your choice is available or not. This tool provides you the complete details of domain ownership including the date of expiry. Choosing a domain name is a trial and error exercise most of the good domains are already in use and you may need to work hard to create a good name. Domain name tools provide you a number of alternatives when the name of your choice is not available. You can pick the one from the list that best represents your theme and business idea.

If there is a domain name available for purchase, you can pounce on it and buy before someone does it. Domain name industry is a highly competitive industry and you never know when someone is going to buy your domain name ideas. While searching for a domain name think of all possible keyword phrases and wordings because most web users have their way of choosing products or services. Keywords play an important role while searching for domains by using domain name ownership online tool. If you do not find the domain name of your choice, you can always sift through the alternative list to choose the best one. Most of the online tools are efficient in providing a listing of most probable choices that eventually allow you to find a domain name that best represents your business theme, topic, style and tenor. Another emerging trend is to buy expired domain names from registrars. You will need to be very careful while buying an expired domain because the name that you wish to buy may have a shady past. However, expired domain market is a very good place to find those domain names that are not available in the fresh domain name market.

The general rule of thumb is to buy a domain name immediately when it is available in a domain ownership tool. It is always better to buy the domain name of your choice even if you are not creating your web site right now. Never ever, allow someone to buy your domain name. You may regret your decision of not buying your domain name when it was available.

To achieve success with your web site, you will need to choose the right type of domain name that is relevant to the theme of your web portal. Hence, choosing the correct name is very important. Almost all well-known web sites have names built around very sensitive and important keywords. Good keywords are very essential for the success of web sites. Web users enter their keywords of choice to search for information from the web. A web user who wants to have an access to information about a product or service will enter keywords in the search bar of the major search engines. Keyword types of domain names are very handy to develop your business ideas.

If you are running an orchid flower selling online business, then you may wish to choose a name like onlineorchidflowers.com. Likewise, a business that sells discount flowers will do well with a name like discountedflowers.com. Choosing the right type of name is not at all difficult. You just need to use your common sense to find out a very good domain name. Here are some practical domain name ideas for your business:

1. All famous domain names are very short. People can easily type very short domain names unlike a long one that is difficult to type and remember. People also hate to type a very long name.

2. Let the name chosen be very simple. People always misspell domain names that are difficult to type. It is likely that someone may visit some other people’s web site if they misspell your domain name.

3. Never ever, use a domain name that sounds like an established and approved trade name. You could land in serious trouble if you do that. Double-check your domain name before you publish it.

4. Let the name be relevant to the theme of your business. People want to reach web sites that reflect their needs and requirements.

5. Give preference to a .com domain-name extension. If it is not available, then you can take other domain extensions. .com is still the in thing!

6. If possible, register all similar domain names under different extensions like .net, .org, .biz etc. You can always redirect people to your main web site by using these domain names.

7. Never ever, use hyphens. Web users will never be able to remember them. It is also difficult to type these names. If someone is using domain name of your choice, do not order for a domain that contains hyphens in between. People may confuse your web site with similar sounding web sites. This will result in your web users visiting your competitor’s web portals.

8. If you have a difficult to remember name, people may miss out some letters in the domain name. To avoid this possibility, you can register similar sounding names and redirect visitors from these domains to your main web site. All well-known web sites use these techniques even if someone types wrong URL in the address bar of the search engine.

Make sure that the domain of your choice is actually available with a registrar. You can use the Whois database to check whether the domain name of your choice is still available or not.

Let us assume that you have a very good domain name with you. Did you ever know that you could add and compliment another domain in addition to your existing domain name? These domain names are known by the names like sub domains or add-on domains. However, they are almost like slaves to the main domains and they at under the command of the main domain name. These domains are simply the sub directories designed and added to the main domain name at the time of hosting them. This is because they do not posses their own control panels. However, such domains will have their personal index files and CGI Bin folders to help them make unique and special for your web site.

Before you create one of these sub domains and ass-on domain names, you may wish to understand the main differences between them. In fact, the only thing that is common to them is that you can add them to your main domain. They are the additional domain names that can act as subordinate to the main domain name. With an add-on domain name, it will have its own stand-alone URL after its creation. On the other hand, a sub domain is a simple URL that creates a link to the mother domain name.

Example: Add-on domain: www.orchidflowersinthewild.com Sub domain: www.blog. orchidflowersinthewild.com Another significant difference is the cost involved in creating these domains. Add-on domain always comes with a fee attached to it while sub domains are free and you can create as many sub domains as possible with your web-hosting package. You will need to pay an annual fee to register and use an add-on domain name. Add-on domains always share your resources from your existing web-hosting package. It means that you will get additional features from an add-on domain name just like your domain name. It will also possess its own FTP link and other related utilities.

Procedure to add an add-on domain name: Initially, search for a domain name and register when you find it. Once you buy that, you can link its DNS to your web-hosting server. Once you add it to the server, log on to your account and check for its listing in the control panel. Now, fill the name of the domain and install it in the main directory. Wait until you complete the installation process.

On the other hand, you can easily create a sub domain within the main domain name directory. Sub domains are very useful if you are planning to add more web pages within the parent directory. For example, if you want to add a blog to your web site, then you can create a sub domain like www.blog.orchidflowersinthewild.com. You can place a link on the main page of your web site and when a user clicks on the link, he or she will navigate to the blog page. Almost all web-hosting packages provide unlimited numbers of sub domains with the purchased hosting package.

Buying expired domains is a tricky topic! You will need to be very careful while buying an expired domain because many of these domains may have some problems associated with their registration. There have been instances when the previous owner decided to approach the legal authorities to reclaim their expired domains. While you need to be very careful in your dealings, you may also need to consider the following issues before buying domains that are expiring.

The issue of domain trademark: Make sure that the domain that you buy does not have any trademark associated with it. You will need to be very careful in dealing with domains that have trademarks against their URL. You could even land in potential legal hassles when you buy such domains. You may wish to conduct a detailed research to check whether the domain expired has any trademark. Use one of the web sites that provide information on trademarks.

The issue of corporate expired domain names: Many domain names have a close relation with corporate businesses. If a company or a business firm owns the domain names, you may even forfeit such domain names. In some instances, companies may simply forget to renew some of their domain names.

Tip: It is almost difficult to find out who is the real owner of a domain name before it expired. However, you can still find out more about a particular expired domain name.

To find out more about expired domains and their previous ownership, use these tools to conduct a detailed research:

a) Go to www.alexa.com that maintains a big database of millions of web sites. You can find out details like link popularity, ownership, traffic, ratings or rankings etc in this exhaustive web site. Just use the following URL to check the previous history of the web domain: http://xslt.alexa.com/data?cli=100&url=DOMAIN.COM. Some times, you may never find any information on some of the domain names.

b) Go to www.google.com to check the cache status of the expired domain names. Google always maintains a cache directory of web sites by using its spider technology. It is possible to visit a cached online copy of a web domain, including expired ones. With this tool, you can find out if the expired domain you want to buy had any trademark associated with it. Type the URL of the expired domain into the Google search engine box and make sure that you are checking the cache copy of the expired web domain.

c) Use link popularity checking tools: You can find out more about previously owned expired domains. Choose any of the link popularity checking web sites and enter the URL of the expired domain to check the links against the name. This gives you a fair estimate of the number of online references related to the domains. Zero values mean that the domain expired did not have any activity while higher values signify that the domain was very active in its previous avatar. However, the downside of this method is that you may find it very difficult to find the quality of these links. Some domains may have just a few links associated with it. However, these links may be very good in that they came from high quality web sites. On the other hand, an expired domain may have lot of links that came from insignificant web domains. Making a comparison just on the number of links may be quite premature and improper.

By using the above mentioned tools, you can find out minute and precise information about your expired domain. However, use these tools with utmost caution and without any prejudice as some of the data extracted could be misleading.