There are a few very important considerations to make when choosing a domain name for your business. The name itself should reflect your company or its services and products. While ego might dictate a personal name for your business, it is not recommended if you are marketing on the world wide web. Finding a business and domain name that tells what you do rather than who you are will be much more effective.
If at all possible, a one word domain name will have the greatest value and brand name recognition. Primary study data compiled by DomainsBot Labs shows that nouns are the most important part of speech when used in a website domain name. Two to three nouns used together can increase your ratings with the search engines to 90-100% serps (search engine results page). A noun and verb combination will still rank in the top 90 percentile. Some items to avoid in your domain name are hyphens between words and numbers used in place of letters. Made up words are also to be avoided unless you have a massive advertising budget to make the word familiar to the general public. Not only will they be harder for users to remember but the spelling errors generated will prevent your site from showing in results.
Once you have chosen your website name, it must be registered. You must purchase and register your domain name through an agent company. While the major search engine companies like Yahoo and Google offer this service, independent companies like GoDaddy can offer the same services for registering and hosting more economically. While you do not have to host your website with the same company you register the domain name with, there are advantages. Payments can be combined into packaged groups and discounted for multiple years of registry and hosting fees. Your registration fees should run no more than $10-15 USD per year.
Cost for hosting your website on the company’s servers depends upon the size and usage of your site and can be as little as $5 USD a month for a starter package and increase upward from there. Keeping your registration and hosting with the same company also makes it easier to keep up with your domain names and the times they need to be renewed. This is of the utmost importance as failure to keep your registration current can cause your domain name to default and possibly be sold to someone else.
While it may cost a bit more in registration fees, it is best to purchase all the top level domain name extensions for your business and website name. You will definitely want to use the [dot]com extension for your business website. Owning the rights to [dot]biz, [dot]org, [dot]net and [dot]info will prevent a competitor from creating a knockoff site similar to yours and funneling business from you.
Finding the availability of your chosen name can be searched through either your preferred registration company or use the services of whois[dot]com. Whois lists the ownership information and contact addresses of all domain name owners. They are also affiliated with companies that will act as agents to attempt purchasing currently active domains that you may wish to acquire.