How To Choose The Best Domain Name

Registration

(NOTE: It is recommended that you read this page on a laptop or desktop computer, as the resources mentioned here below are not mobile optimised. For your convenience, the shortened version of this URL is http://bit.ly/choose-best)

So now we have come to the registration stage.

It should be stated at the very start of this section that you don't need to pay extra for a domain name if you open a Bluehost account for your hosting, because Bluehost gives you a domain free as part of their hosting package (you just enter your chosen domain name into your Bluehost hosting account when you open it). However, for future reference you might want to read on anyway.

The registration service I recommend is Namecheap because, as its name implies it is relatively cheap, but it is also extremely good and accommodates a huge number of country specific domain extensions. Registering the domain at the same company where your site is hosted will almost certainly cost you more (sometimes considerably more) because your hosting company is specifically a host and not a registrar, and regards fees for domain registrations as additional financial gravy (also don’t forget that you will have to renew the domain registration fee every year for as long as you wish to keep the site, so it is a recurring expense for you. Best to find the optimum deal possible in terms of price.)

It should also be said in passing that the same is true in the reverse: do not use your registration company for your hosting, and for largely the same reasons. Registration of domains and hosting of sites are two different functions and have their own specialisations and skill sets. The two are separate. Keep them separate.

Namecheap offers TLDs and second-level domains for over thirty countries, including India and Peru, as well as the usual .com, .net and .org. It also offers .eu domains for all EU country domains, as well as .tv (originally the TLD of Tuvalu, but now used in conjunction with products and services advertised on TV and also for video sites) and .co (originally created for Columbia but used freely as a “company” site for any business). You can also register .us and .us.com (United States) names, .de and .de.com (Germany) names, .fr (France) names, co.uk (UK) names, .ca (Canada) names, .es (Spain) names as well as many others.

Create an account with Namecheap with a username and password, then head to the search box to see if your chosen domain name is available. If you want country specific TLDs go to the support section and navigate to Support > Knowledgebase > Search Result for the search box for country specific TLDs. Or click on the Domains link near the top of the page, select the Domain Name Search option from the drop-down menu and type your domain name into the search box.

I typed in LawyerWatford.co.uk and it showed up with a tick which meant it was available, as was the domain LawyerWatford.com. Below this Namecheap will show a list of other available domains with different extensions like .club, .life, .stream, .group, .review, .trade, .science, .global and several others. Following the advice given above, avoid these other options, and proceed to the registration by clicking on the cart button then going to your cart. If you feel you must have both the .co.uk and the .com versions then by all means register them both (no need to build two sites; you can simply redirect the one to the other). This will be useful if your customer knows your main domain name but is unsure as to whether it is a .com or a .co.uk. But this is the only instance where you should do this. Avoid all other extensions; it just isn’t worth it.

Should your domain name not be available, use the methods described above, such as adding HQ, etc., to the activity + location formula, and register the resulting domain in the same way.

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