Domain names are an important part of any company’s online marketing effort. When you sign up with a web hosting company, you may have the option to buy a domain name to transfer to them, or to even receive free domain names as part of your UK hosting package.

Before you buy domain names to use, make sure you understand the value that domain name registration can provide to your business, and select your domain accordingly.

Here is why a domain name matters in online marketing:

• Domains describe your business to customers. If a customer sees your website in their Google search results, the domain name helps inform their decision of whether your website is relevant to their needs and whether your site will be trustworthy and informative.
• Domains describe your business to search engines. Part of search engine optimisation (a complex process on the whole) is domain name. If your domain name contains keywords that match your site and what you want to rank well for, this can help your site get seen by more users.
• Domains can help in offline marketing that draws people online and to your site. Choosing a domain name that is memorable and easy to spell can help make your radio, television, or print advertising more effective.

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As a business owner, you know it’s a good idea to have a website. Perhaps you’ve looked through domain names, read about web hosting, and maybe even gone through the domain name registration process and hired a UK hosting company. You may have picked out a template, put some information up, and got your site to go ‘live’.

But it’s important to take a step back and make sure you are doing things for the right reasons and going about it in a way that will actually benefit your business. Don’t buy a domain name and set up a site just because you think you’re supposed to have one. Websites aren’t valuable for the sake of being websites – they’re valuable because of the function they fulfill, for the role they play, and for the value they offer to your customers.

Think of it this way: your website is your business’ online presence. It needs to give customers a sense of what your business is like and provide useful information to them, even if it’s just as basic as a list of service you provide along with business hours and contact information.

There are plenty of ways to go about building the website itself: you can buy domain names directly, or receive free domain names from a company who provides your web hosting. But before you get too involved in the building process, step back and make sure that your goals for the website match your goals for the business, and that you stay true to who you are throughout each step of the process.

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You’re probably wondering: “What does Twitter have to do with my domain name or your website content?” The simple answer is this: separate elements of your online presence should not just relate back to your business, but should relate to each other.

Each of these three things plays a different role in the success of your website and your web hosting experience.

• Domain name is an important initial draw to the website: it sums up what the site is about.
• Website content fleshes out what you have to offer: it fills in the details and provides useful information.
• Twitter (and other social networking) builds the relationship: it’s a way to reach out to customers, and to let them reach out to you.

When you buy domain names (or receive free domain names from a UK hosting company, which some do offer), take a step back to make sure all of the elements of your company’s online presence will be aligned. For example, you should buy a domain name that clearly and succinctly relates to the content the website will contain. Your Twitter handle should be a close match to your domain name. And the things you Tweet about should be related to the things your website content addresses.

This may sound obvious, but you’d be surprising how many companies’ web presence are “all over the place” – be smart by thinking ahead and presenting a cohesive brand in everything you do, both online and off.

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When you choose a domain name, it’s safe to assume that you plan to keep your website at that domain for the foreseeable future. In some cases, short term domain names may make sense, such as a website created for a one-time event or promotion. But for the most part, when you go through the domain name process, you’re hoping to keep, and to grow, that website for a good amount of time.

So the last thing you want is to lose that domain name because of an error. This can happen if you buy domain name registration for an amount of time but don’t renew when that time is up. There are a few ways to prevent losing a domain name:

• Register for several years up front. It tends to be cheaper per year this way, and your renewal comes up less often, so there are less chances to forget to renew.
• Sign up for automatic renewal. Some companies will offer this and will automatically charge your credit card when renewal comes up.
• Get a web hosting provider who will worry about it for you. If you do domain name registration through your web host, it may be cheaper, and they can handle registration renewal on your behalf.

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Are you confused about the relationship between (and difference between) domain names and IP addresses? You’re not alone. If you’re familiar with the internet at all, which you likely are since you are reading this blog, you’ve no doubt worked with domain names before. It’s the address at the top of this page, in the URL bar. Between after the prefix (http://www.) of any website, you’ll find the domain name associated with that website, which we’ve acquired for our blog through domain name registration.

In practical application, a domain name is the “address” you use to find the website you’re looking for, but in reality, it has a much more static address, known as the IP address. What does this mean? Well, IP address is a unique combination of numbers that are assigned to every individual entity that’s at all connected to the internet. Your computer has one, and the server on which a website is stored has one, and even mobile phones that connect to the web are assigned one. They’re a way to differentiate who does what online, as well as where everything is located.

How Do Domain Name and IP Address Relate?

Well, it wouldn’t really do to type in a long string of numbers when you want to visit your favorite blogs, read the news, or find out about the weekend weather forecast, so domain names are used as more user-friendly locators of IP addresses where websites are stored.

So, for example, say you have a website. You therefore will find out the IP address for the server where you’re storing your files (or rather, your UK web hosting provider is storing the files). It might be formatted something like this: xxx.xx.xxx.xxx.

No one wants to type that into a URL bar, so you do a domain name search to find the perfect domain name for your site, and get your UK web hosting company to set it up so that when people type in your domain name, they’ll be taken to your site.

The great thing about domain names is that you can have more than one domain name directed at the same IP address. And if you change web hosts, you can build a new site at a new IP address (or move your existing site files to a new IP address), and have the domain name direct to the new address. Your website visitors don’t have to know that you changed servers: to them, they type in your catchy, user-friendly domain name and are directed to your UK website, the same as always.

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Buy a domain name today and you could set yourself up with a nice little nest egg. That’s because domain name registration in the UK can cost as little as a few pounds a year, yet yield hundreds of thousands when sold to the right buyer.

So how do you know which domain name is the right one for you to invest in? Well the simple answer is you don’t, but with good foresight and general market awareness of future products, trends, events and so forth, you can speculate on what types of domain names will be hot property in years to come. In fact, if you’re lucky, you might even find some really good domains still available today.

Your best bet is to register a good number of domain names; after all, you need only strike with just one of them to return a tidy profit. Once you’ve selected the domain names you want to register, look for a cheap UK domain name registration company that offers secure and swift domain name registration. Then place a holding page that points all your domain names to an enquiry or bidding area. If you take up hosting, some domain hosting companies offer free domain names too.

Finally for anonymity it is highly recommend that you protect your privacy when registering the domain names by selecting a service that hides your personal details from the domain name public registry.

Good luck with your searches!

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