A domain is your website’s name (“yourdomain.com”). To register a domain, you’ll need to register with a domain registrant. There are too many of them to count so you shouldn’t have problems finding one. Conduct some research before settling with one to make sure they are affordable (never pay more than $10-12 for a .com domain) and reputable. Once you’ve found your registrant, it is pretty simple and straightforward to register your domain. Search your prospects and select one. If you’re concerned about the potential for people to register similar domains and benefit from your name, you may want to consider also registering variants, such as yourdomain.net, yourdomain.org, your-domain.com, etc.

NOTE: Don’t purchase email services with your domain. The hosting provider you choose should offer email with your plan. If they don’t, you can use other services that are typically much better.

How do I choose a domain?

There are multiple factors that can go into choosing a domain, such as keywords and geographic locations. For example, some service providers may opt to go with a domain such as “myservice-in-mycity.com”. This will help with search engine rankings and that might be all that matters to the domain owner. If you are a service provider, say a plumber, and your main goal is to drive local viewers to your website, then this will work just fine.

Another important thing to consider when registering a domain is branding. How important is your business’s brand? Using our plumber example from before, perhaps the local plumber wants to grow his business and become well known locally; he wants to build a reputable, well-known brand. As a result, he may want to go with a domain that customers can associate with his brand. For instance, hairycrackplumbing.com rather than plumbingincleveland.com. As a consumer, which will you more easily remember for a specific plumber? If your brand is already established but you’re just now moving into the world wide web, you will want to register a domain that fits. If you are a new business and have yet to decide on a name, you’ll want to do some domain research to make sure you can register a similar name.

Choose which way you’d like to go with your domain, you need to start brainstorming for ideas. Next, you’ll need to see if the domain you like is available. There are plenty of tools to do this but the one I like to use is Instant Domain Search. Once you’ve found the available domain you wish to register, it’s time to lock it up. Simply choose a domain registrar (see below for a list of popular choices) and complete checkout.

ADVICE: Spend the few extra bucks for WHOIS Privacy. This will protect your personal information (i.e. name, email, address, phone, etc.) by keeping it out of the WHOIS database and help to avoid unwanted sales calls and marketing junk.