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What is a domain name?

A domain name is the name used to find your website on the Internet eg lineofsite.co.uk. Think of it in terms of a label on a filing cabinet. Since your domain name will be what you become known by online, it's important to get it right.

The longer and more complicated your domain name is, the greater chance a keying error will occur when a client accesses your site or emails you.

On its own, a domain name is useless. You also need someone to provide server space in which to store your content. This is known as hosting. Hosting can often be purchased from the same supplier used to purchase your domain name but this need not be the case. Once your domain name is linked to your hosting space, these two elements combine to make your website.

1. Dot what?
Each domain name has what's called an extension. These are the letters following the website name. Originally intended for commercial ventures, the most well known of these extensions is .com. However, this is only one of several domain extensions available. These are some of the most popular business choices:

.co.uk
Generally speaking if your business is in the UK and serves a UK audience, a .co.uk domain is an appropriate choice as anyone seeing your site name can immediately locate your business geographically. Line of Site offers a free .co.uk domain name with all web design packages.

.net
Originally, .net extensions were intended for use by Internet Service Providers but this is no longer the case. If your your preferred .com or .co.uk domain names aren't available then you could consider a .net extension. Perhaps not as businesslike in ring though, it may be less desirable.

.org and .org.uk
These domain extensions were orginally designed for educational, non-profit and more formal websites. There is no limitation to registering a .org or .org.uk name however.

2. Company Name vs Business Activity
There is plenty of discussion on the web about whether your domain name should reflect your company name or your business activity. If your business is new then your company name will not be widely known. However if you are intending to establish a brand then your choice of name is crucial. You can check the availability of your chosen domain name on most sellers' sites.

Ultimately, you need to choose what makes most sense for you, your website and your business in general.

Consider:

• how your domain sounds
• is it memorable?
• how easy it is going to be to tell customers over the phone
• how it might look on a business card
• how well it relates to your business.

An advantage in choosing a name relating to your business activity is that anyone looking for your type of business will key related search terms into Google or Yahoo and results will have the matching search terms highlighted in bold, including those in the domain name.

However, since this is a popular method of choosing a domain name, availability of your chosen name may be limited.

3. Hyphenated or Not?
With many people choosing activity related domain names, this is another area of debate. Should your domain be an unbroken word or phrase or should the words be separated by hyphens?

There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Non-hyphenated domain names can be easier to explain over the phone for instance and easier to remember. However, they are increasingly in very, very short supply.

Hyphenated domains names can be slightly more difficult to tell people or explain over the phone, harder to remember and may not look as good on your business cards. Also they may be harder to establish as a brand name. The upside though is that there is much greater availability and choice.

Be careful though of choosing something too long eg www.web-hosting-website-design-cheap-websites.com.

Some search engine optimisation experts will say that hyphentated names are beneficial in obtaining good search engine rankings - particularly if links to your site from other sites contain the actual url in the hyperlink text - but overall, the major search engines are wise to this and the effect of keywords in the domain name is pretty small. There is no substitute for well crafted website content.

See also How do I choose a domain name?