Are you planning to start a business or a blog? You need to understand how to purchase a domain name and thankfully, we will explain all that in this post.
Take your time to find the best domain name that is available for registration since your chosen domain can make a huge difference in the long run for your site and business, online presence, branding, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Your domain name will eventually be the brand name and website address that people will recognize and associate with your product, services, or online presence. When you have a domain name in mind, you can buy it directly from a web hosting provider. However, you have to check first whether the name you want is available or not. In this blog, we’ll guide you on how to choose a domain name and purchase it.
Things to remember while buying a domain
The process of signing up for a domain name is quite simple. You’ll be asked to enter the domain name that you want to register and the hosting site will tell you whether that domain is available or not. It might also suggest some extensions that you can choose for your domain. Usually, most of the businesses prefer the ‘.com’ extension because this is the most popular domain name extension and easiest for users to remember. Moreover, it is known that Google prefers ‘.com,’ ‘.org,’ and ‘.net’ domains for SEO purposes. This is because ‘.info’, ‘.biz’ and other tld extensions can often be seen as spam sites or thin affiliate sites.
How to choose your domain name
- Keep your domain name simple and short. Avoid clever words, double letters, and homophones, etc.
- Don’t use digital numbers. Just because your domain name has a ‘to’ or ‘for’ in it, this doesn’t mean you need to use the numbers ‘2’ or ‘4.’
- Make sure to choose a keyword-optimized domain name. Use something catchy and creative for your URL. Use keywords to create a domain name that is memorable, catchy, and likely to be ranked in the first ten listings of search engine results.
- Purchase a business domain for at least 10 years.
- Don’t buy a domain that is not relevant to your business, brand, product, and service.
- One hyphen in a domain is OK, but more than that is generally unacceptable as it will not make your website easy to type and most people will make easy mistakes when trying to navigate to your website.
Generally, the best domain names are short, contain no hyphens, and offer a word summary of what the site is about. For example, you can choose a domain name such as usnews.com. This domain is short, contains no hyphens, and, is pointing to a website as a unique selling point.
Steps to buying a domain
Once you’ve selected your domain name, you need to register it. Make sure to buy your domain from a trustworthy web hosting provider.
All registrars require the name of the company or individual who owns the domain (the registrant). The individual authorized to handle daily matters (the administrative contact), and the person who handles all things technical (the technical contact) These can be different contacts or the same contact.
Whoever owns the registrar username and password is essentially in control of the domain, even though the legal owner is the registrant, so be careful. Choose a complex password to prevent any hacker from guessing your login password with a brute force bot program. Using a strong random password will ensure that you are the one in control of your domain and site. You can use an encrypted browser password management app such as LastPass. You should register with reputed registrars that allow you to “lock” your account.
Now, we believe the domain name registration process is a bit clear to you. It’s time to buy a domain for your business. Go to the CharityHost.org home page or the CharityHost domain ordering area to check for domain availability. Enter the keywords that you want in your domain and select the extension that you want. This domain checker will verify whether the domain name is available or not so you can proceed to buy your domains.
If a “.com” extension is not available, then CharityHost will suggest other extensions that you could purchase with the same name. For example, you can choose “.us” extension to promote your business if you want to target audience in the U.S. only. This might help boost your business locally in the U.S.A.. If in case you don’t want to buy extensions other than “.com” and the checked domain is not available, then you need to come up with another domain name to check. It’s always a good idea to choose and buy a domain for your website when planning about starting a business or a blog.
