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Willing to know what is a domain? It is the most valuable part of your site address without which you can’t build a successful website. There is more than 1 billion sites on the world wide web and all the sites have domains. It is, as usual, the title of your site with an endings like .com, .net, .org, info, .biz, .io etc.
Site owners register it from the ICANN-accreditted domain registrars who take fees worth $15 to $20 per year including the whois guard. Once you register your site title aka name of your domain, you have to provide your contact address, billing address, mobile number, email address etc.
Page of Content
- What is a domain?
- What are the features of a domain?
- What to look at while choosing and registering a domain?
- What is an expired domain?
- What is a premium domain?
- When to register a domain ?
What Is a Domain?
The Domain is the most valuable part of a website which everyone needs in order to access and visit a site. It is, normally the site title including the TLD or endings like .com, .net, .info, co, .in etc. Each website has a title which is also called the site title which you can see under your site’s theme or customizer . Actually, this is the domain which you need to type there while you create a site.
Have you visited websites? All the websites have web address or unique site URLs. One site’s web address always stands unique from the others. This web address aka the site URL contains the domain which stays in between the protocol or www and the last endings such as .co, net, .info etc. The last endings too within your domain.
As for my website, the web address is ‘https://www.bloggingnowatoz.com‘. Here, in the site URL, the first, namely, the https is the protocol. The protocol also includes colon(:) and double slash(//). WWW here refers to the host and the remaining part till the end, namely, ‘bloggingnowatoz.com‘ is the domain name for my site.
If you visit this site, look at the browser’s tab and you can see what is the title of this site. Here, the title is ‘Bloggingnowatoz’ which is a part of your full domain name( bloggingnowatoz.com).
Here, the site address may be variable as follows:
- http://www.bloggingnowatoz.com
- http://bloggingnowatoz.com
- https://www.bloggingnowatoz.com or
- https://bloggingnowatoz.com
If you use only http and add www to your site URL, your site address will be the first option(1). nonetheless the second option(2) if you use the same http protocol but do not ad www.
On the other hand, if you use the https and www, your site address will be like the third option(3) and you use the same https but do not add www to your unique web address, your site URL will be like that of the fourth option(4).
What I am going to make you understand is that your site address may be variable based on schema or protocol but the domain remains the same that you see above, as I have illustrated.
I hope you have understood what I was trying to persuade you.
Would you like to know more? Ok. Bloggingnowatoz is a great reservoir of blogging resources! Scroll down and you can know more about domain.
What Are the Features of a Domain?
The features which a domain may include are that it should be short, compact, easy to spell, memorable, keyword-based and easy to type.
Go through the following points to learn what are the features of a domain:
Short and Compact: Most of the popular sites have short and compact domain consisting of equal to or less than 15 characters. Site title consisting of less characters is easy to read and write. It results in better user experience. I have personally tried, tested and examined that websites with compact and short title are easier to type and memorize.
“Always try to keep the domain name below 10 characters. Never let it exceed beyond 20. Also, remember that one-word domains are like gold, two word ones are good, three word domains are average.”
PixelCrayons
Easy to Spell: The domain name should be easy to spell. Words which are easy to spell result in better user experience. Do not include foreign terms or language, as many non-English speakers don’t understand that. If you include foreign word, it may be difficult to read and write for users. Whenever you are going to select word/s to register for your site title through the ICANN-accreditted registrars, your first priority should be to choose the word/s which can spelled easily
Memorable: Another notable feature that you should take into account is that your domain must be memorable. The more readable, the more useful for users. Web users do not like to bookmark what they have visited before rather they like to memorize your site address. So, if you choose words hard to remember, there is possibility that you may lose traffic. That’s why I always recommend to use memorable domain name.
Keyword-based if possible: Try to include keyword/s in your domain name while you are going to choose and register it. Keyword helps to appear in the search results quickly. Billions of people use Internet all over the world. There are many keywords for searcher’s queries. Using keywords let your site appear faster in the search results.
Moreover, if the site gives some idea about what it offers, what it performs and what users expect from it, then it will be a good idea in terms of site’s niche and user’s query. As for my site, Bloggingnowatoz.com indicates that the site is about blogging on various aspects of products, services, techs and other niches what bloggers love.
Brandable: The name of the domain should be brandable. What does it mean? Do you know what is brandability? You know that the famous online eCommerce sites, companies and service providers have their sites with their individual features. Whatever they offer to their customers they include their individual mark, stamp, identity mark or services to stand them unique from others. Another concept of brandability is that what word you want to use must be be exclusively owned by you and it should not be found elsewhere in use. It cannot be found in any social media platforms too. If it sounds true what I have said, then think that you have the opportunity to build a brand using your domain. I hope you have understood about brand, brandable and brandibility.
Popular Endings: Another good feature of a domain name is that it must include popular endings like .com, .org, .net, .info, .co etc. These are the popular endings that most of the users love to use. Owing to their wide-spread use and universal popularity, most of the Internet users are familiar with them. So, you must include one of the popular domain endings.
Avoid Numbers and Hyphen: Do not include hyphen and numbers in your domain name. Hyphenated word often leads to typos that result in bad user experience, traffic loss and annoying to visitors. It also hard to remember if you include numbers in your domain name.
Suppose a domain name is less4you.com or lessonforyou. Which one is more easy to remember. Always the latter. That’s why number must be excluded as far as possible. Furthermore, hyphen too sholud be avoided. Suppose wpguidesforyou.com is a domain. If you write it as wp-guidesforyou.com, it will be harder to remember, as users may lead to typos and most of them do not bookmark what they visit.
What to Look at While Choosing and Registering a Domain?
So far, you have understood that what are the features of a domain name. Now, let’s consider the factors that we should look into while choosing and registering a domain name.
Firstly, the domain that you are going to choose and register must be available for registration. It should not be registered by anyone. You can’t register it provided that it has been registered before.
Secondly, check its presence in the social media sites. You check its presence in social media site sites like Facebbok, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress.com, Reddit, Medium, Quora, Tumblr, Vimeo, YouTube etc. To check its presence, you can use the social media name checker like Namechk.
Thirdly, do not register a penalyzed domain, as it may have impact on your site’s search engine optimization.
What Is an Expired Domain?
Thousands of Internet users register domains but when they do not renew them, the domain names are expired after the end of grace period. In order to avoid such blunder, renewal must be made before expiry.
What Is a Premium Domain?
As I have described above, there are millions of domain. Some users register them for launching website, online sites, online stores etc. But there are others too who register for business purposes. They register the interesting domain names and sell in the market at high price. Once such kind of domains are registered and available for sale in the market are called the premium domains.
When to Register a Domain?
You can register a domain anytime and there is no certain specifications about it set forth by the registrars, registries or IANA. However, as I have found in my personal experience that the each day a lot of new domains are registered. There is no guarantee that you have chosen a good domain , you want to register it some days later and you can avail of it.
I have chosen three domains to register but after one month I have found that they have been registered by someone else. So, whenever, you find a good domain, register it and don’t delay lest it may be taken by others.
