The is part one of the Key to an Effective Small Business Website series.

Choosing A Domain for an Effective Small Business Website.

A domain name is your business’s address on the internet.

You want to own it (some businesses find themselves renting the domain from a web designer at high cost). You want control of it. A good domain name may even help your business. Many businesses are even using the domain name (complete with .com) as the business name.

Choosing a domain name for your small business should be fairly easy. We just want to make sure you do it right and don’t make a mistake because your first choice is not available. This is a little bit different than choosing a domain name for a niche sit which I have also pointed written about on this blog.

I am covering choosing a domain for your business website early in this series.

The reason is because there are people out there buying domains simply with the plan of selling them at a profit sometime in the future. I do not want you to miss getting one because someone purchased it two weeks earlier just as an investment and not use. In some industries this is a possibility.

First rule – .com and only .com

Don’t take a .net because your first choice is taken in .com but still available in .net. You will only be sending more traffic to someone else. Your customers will always assume it is .com if they are trying to remember. You will also often include your domain in advertising.

Second rule – do not use the free online tools to check if domains are available

Use the tool provided by your domain registrar and only search when you are ready to purchase it. Purchase the domain immediately. There are some sites online that use these searches to find prime domains for investment like I mentioned above. I have heard of more than one case where someone has checked for a domain and found suddenly purchased when they waited a bit before purchasing.

Search for the domain using your registrar’s search. Purchase the domain as soon as you find the best one for your business. Do not wait. I get to the recommended registrars in just a bit.

Third rule – no dashes in the name

You can use more than one word. Just do not separate them with dashes. Dashes (or underscores) will make it nearly impossible to give out your domain name orally in person or on a radio advertisement.

Fourth rule – Be very aware of homonyms

2, to, two, or too? Again, you want to be able to give your domain name out easy and for it to be easy to remember.

Fifth rule – Don’t be cute

This is your business website not a personal website. Be businesslike.

I suggest one of two options for your domain name.

First, your business name.

If your business name is short, easy to spell, and memorable take it if the domain is available. If your business name is too long, uses really long words, or hard to spell, look at the second option. Think about your customer. Would it be easy for them to remember and type out?

You have a bonus if your business name will also have keywords that people would typically type if they were looking for your type of business.

The second choice would be a domain name related to your business and area of business.

chicagoplumbing.com might be preferable to thomasscirrottoplumberextraordinaire.com even if the later is your business name. Using your business name will make it easier for people that are familiar with your business to find you.

However, using a locality and business type will help you get some additional search engine ranking for a phrase people will commonly search for. Many new customers you get from your website may very well be typing in the type of business you have and the city in a search engine. Using those terms in your domain name will help you rank a bit better. In the example in the previous paragraph, someone typing in “plumber Chicago” in Google is more likely to see chicagoplumbing.com in the listing than the second example.

This is only one factor, so do not be afraid to use your business name if you want. Just keep it in mind as an excellent alternative. It would not hurt to buy both domains. If your business name is not completely unique, you should buy the domain name for it even if you use the business and city domain. In my case, there were several other businesses with a similar name in the US alone. We were lucky to have the domain name. It has value far beyond the $10 annual fee should we decide to sell it.

Choose a good domain registrar

I recommend Namecheap as a registrar. My second choice is GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy is a bit better known but checkout with them is a maze of offers for all sorts of “extra” services that you do not need, want, or are usually free or cheaper anywhere else. Do not get hosting from Go Daddy! We will talk about hosting in a later article Getting your domain at Namecheap is simple. Create an account. Search and find the domain you want. Buy it. Namecheap may include a year of “whois” protection free. This will keep you from getting additional email spam.

I have used 4 different registrars online and these are the only two I feel good about recommending.

I have had friends purchase domain names and pay $40 and not get services they needed with it. A domain with Namecheap will be about $10 for a year. You may want to consider purchasing the domain for more than one year if you think your business will be around for longer than a year (I hope you are).

If you really want to use GoDaddy use my link, I’ll get a commission. I recommend Namecheap and there is no commission or compensation for doing so. That is how much more I think Namecheap is better for you.

I think you are ready to go buy that domain name now.

We won’t get around to using it for a bit, but buy it now. Once you purchase it you will have one less thing to worry about later. Just remember the details of your domain registrar account. We’ll need to hop in later and tell them where you site is hosted. Till that time, your registrar will probably put a holding page on it.

If you have a bit of extra money, it would not hurt to purchase a spare domain. If you bought a domain with your business name maybe get the locality-business type name or the other way around. You may change your mind and there are some other uses for a second domain.

In the next post in this series, I am going to cover a subject even more important to your small business and its website than a domain name. Without it, you really do not have a reason to stay in business.

Till then, happy domaining.

Honest, this is not a bad .info scam site!

AP has a story on the most dangerous domian name suffixes to visit.

.info’s along with .hk and .cn are amoung the domain suffixes that are most likely to be "dangerous" according to McAfee. I personally was surprised by the .hk’s (Hong Kong) being known for being bad. I could have guessed about the .cn or China suffix.

One of the primary problems is with Websites selling pharmecutical products.

The report recommends avoiding buying pharmecuticals altogether from .cn domains. Many sites with these domains have multiple pop-ups. Another problem is fake forms used for harvesting information and email addresses.

The Associated Press: New report identifies dangerous Web domains McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are ".hk" (Hong Kong), ".cn" (China) and ".info" (information). Of all ".hk" sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of ".cn" sites and 11.7 percent of ".info" sites that way. A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the ".com" domain — the world’s most popular — were identified as dangerous.

The best domains?

According to the report, .gov, .jp, and .au are some of the safest. .gov sites are government domains and therefore a bit harder for scammers to use. .jp are Japanese domains. I think I have seen a few spammy .au (Austrailian) sites although the report lists them as amoung the safest. Spam does not nessarily mean dangerous though.

Choosing a domain is an important part of building your site.

Much like building your business in a bad neighborhood, a domain suffix could be a problem. You don’t want your domain property in a bad neighborhood. I still recommend a .com domain if at all possible. While .com domain suffixes were not amoung the safest domains, they still have advantages. They were not the worst domains in the report either.

I think if I had gone with a .com domain suffix this site would be doing a bit better.

There is always the stigma of being a .info and being labelled spam.

I recently had to contact Akismet to get off the spam list.

This is the second time I have had this problem. Yet, I always try to leave comments that are relavant to the post. I think .info domains and email addresses have a default suspicion on them. I know my spam filters sometimes don’t like good comments from .info’s. I have even not been able to use a .info email in registering occasionally.

Do you ever suspect comments from a .info are spam on your blog before you read them?

What is the advice you would give to a friend that wants to make money online?

For me, the advice would be simple, and non-expensive. Advice that anyone could use to make money online. It would be make money online advice that would not cause them to lose money online.

For starters, I would recommend they start with a blog or two.

There are many advantages to blogging to make money online. It is cheap, so there is little money to lose and anyone can afford it. No expensive software, and very short learning curve. The only real cost is time.

I would recommend starting with two blogs. Start with a personal blog and a niche blog. The personal blog you can talk about anything, even your success at making money online. You can talk about your car or what you had for dinner. Whatever.

The niche blog should be based on a subject that you are nearly an expert on. A sport, hobby, or some aspect of business may be what you niche is. It could be about some disease you are especially familiar with (although something like this could also be the basis of your personal blog). I truly believe everyone is an expert at something. The niche blog will need to be focused on that subject and that alone.

The first investment should be the domian name.

This is the most important part of your blog. Your domain name makes you independent. It gives you something to own and sell at a later time. With your own domain name, you can move your blog to another host if there is a problem with your current one.

After you have a domain name, you need a host for your blog.

I would recommend HostGator. This blog is currently on XXXXX and I have not had too much trouble, nor do I plan to move it off, but I have a HostGator account for other sites and that is what I would recommend. Other than a domain name or two, hosting is the only thing you should spend money on till you see real regular income. ***This site was moved to HostGator and the name of the above host is now removed for various reasons.

This is where every Internet marketer eventually falls into the trap.

There is no ebook or magic program that is going to make you instant money online. We all claim to not believe in the get rich quick scheme, but we all try to cheat. You spend money on some ebook, or program that is going to make it easier or faster or more profitable. It will never happen. Not that they do not work, some do. Prove you can get the blog to work first before you even think about anything else. If you cannot stick with the blog long enough, you will not stick to the other methods long enough either. You will just waste your money. That is what I am trying to save you.

Use WordPress for your blogging platform.

WordPress is easy to use. Easy to set up. Easy to modify. There is a plugin to do almost anything in WordPress. There are lots of free themes. You can use it for nearly any make money online purpose. It is also free to use.

Use free social networking to build your traffic.

Not just Digg. Use MyBlogLog and Blogcatalog. Blogging Zoom has the potential to be a major factor in helping your blog get good traffic and ranking. Use it. Use StumbleUpon on other Blogging Zoomed posts. You’ll find someone will eventually start to Stumble your sites too. With social bookmarking sites, it is better to give than to receive. That means you’ll find they work better when someone else bookmarks your site than when you do it yourself. Also, commenting on other blogs is an effective way to gain links and traffic. *Update-Blogging Zoom is dead while the domain is still in use.*

Plan for the long term.

Try to stay on the good side of the search engines. Avoid the paid links situation and penalties. Don’t trade the future of your site for quick income with TLA, ReviewMe, and Paid Posts. You can make an income without damaging the potential PR of your site. It may not be as fast or easy, but in the long term, your site will be stronger and more profitable.

Also, don’t expect real results until you have given serious effort for several months. Dedicated Effort+Persistence=Eventual profit. Lackluster effort+Inconsistency=Nothing and you will be wasting your time. Yes, it is possible to still not be successful after working hard, but that is a rare problem. Usually, the problem is dedication in some form.

Read good resources on making money online.

I recommend Vic at Blogger Unleashed and Courtney Tuttle’s blog. These two are behind Blogging Zoom and they have excellent information for making money with your blog. Read about using keywords in your posts. Learn about niche blogs and sites. They have good advice.

Above all, post!

Don’t spend more time reading on how to post than posting.

John Chow has always posted 3-4 times or more a day. So does Problogger. Now they can hire someone else to make posts, but they did it to start with. A lot of people (me included) want to blog but do not post enough. Even one post a day is really not enough. How did these guys start making money with a blog? They actually blogged! While your niche blog may not need that many posts (depends on the type of niche) your personal blog can use it. Once a day is the minimum. Why Twitter when you can post? There’s a thought.

OK, now I am going to spend some time this week posting.

Maybe not everyday, but I am going to post! Expect to see some posts with more details about hosting, domain names, and WordPress. I have some other posts that I have been too lazy to make that I need to work on.

Now, what advice would you give to a friend who wanted to make money online?