Domain Name : Beginner’s guide
Beginners always ask – what is a Domain name and how do domains work in the internet world !
Howdy friends! This is a very common query for all beginners. You need not get worried about this question coming to your mind if you are a beginner. I am sure that many of you who are currently going through this article are well versed with the term – domain.
But you will definitely add some value to your knowledge today by completing this most popular article on this site. Beginners will definitely get all their questions answered before starting their own blog!
Let’s start this topic with an example.
Nick is a well-known Mango farmer. He grows a lot of popular mango varieties on his farm. He always takes care of his mango plantation at his farm ensuring the best agricultural practices. As a result, his mango production is increasing year on year.
He always keeps his farm-produced mangoes at his farm warehouse just after production. Then he transports these mangoes to different markets as per the need. Due to this, he has become a famous farmer in his area and across the state as well.
Now, if you are a mango lover and always love to have farm fresh delicious mango, then you always search for such a farm and farmer to have good quality mango. From somewhere you come to know about Nick and now wants to meet him for delicious production.
For this, you need Nick’s Farm address! After a lot of searches, you have managed to find out Nick’s farm address and reached his country site fam house by asking the nearby people. Now you are extremely happy to visit his mango plantation area. You want to purchase today’s morning production that is kept at Nick’s specialized hi-tech warehouse present nearby the Orchard. You and Nick both went to the warehouse and you purchased the variety of mango that you wanted.
In the above situation,
Nick’s Countryside Mango farm address is similar to the domain of a website. In a virtual world, you need some address to which your audience/traffic will come by searching at different search engines (Like Google, etc). Unless and until you have some address to find you, how come the traffic will reach you in the virtual internet world!
The warehouse discussed above where Nick used to store his harvested mangoes can be compared to the term “Hosting” in this virtual internet world. Hosting – is the space within the address (Domain) where you store all types of data like images, videos, etc. to maintain your website. It just like your PC/mobile phone which is having some internal storage/memory.
I think you have got an idea of Domain and its importance when we talk about a blog or website. So Domain is a basic thing that you need to start a blog.
What is a Domain Name ?
Now we will understand the meaning of the Domain in a technical way. We have understood that each and every website needs an address in the internet world like our house does have in the real world.
In a simpler way, Domain is the address through which traffic comes to your website. Domain Name is also known as Domain Naming System (DNS). So Domain Name or DNS is a naming system by which we can find or reach any website in the internet world.
The internet is like a bigger network where different computers are connected to each other through a specific network. Each computer is having a particular address. This is called IP address – Internet Protocol Address. This IP address is a numeric address that tells the browser – where the searched website really exists on the internet. An IP address looks like this – 172.16.08.9 – which is a numerical decimal representation.
Can you remember such numbers to visit your favorite websites? Certainly not. It’s very difficult to remember such numerical decimal numbers for all websites. Domain Naming System (DNS) had been invented as a solution to this.
It’s very easy to remember and can be searched in the search engines easily as well. So we can register a domain name as per our wish and its availability with an extension (.com /.edu/.net etc)
Each and every website is stored or hosted at a particular server through proper hosting. The domain name of that website is associated with the IP address of that particular server. When you enter a website name in your browser, it first sends an invitation to a worldwide network of servers that form the name System (DNS). These servers then search for the name servers related to the domain and forward the request to those name servers.
For example, If you host your website at Bluehost, then the name server information of Bluehost looks like
ns1.bluehost.com & ns2.bluehost.com
And finally, in this process, you are able to find and see the website that you have searched for through the domain name.
How to Choose a Perfect Domain Name for Your Website ?
As you’re reading this line now , I am quite sure that your setting up a new blog or business. One of the first things on your to-do list is choosing and buying your website address. It is called the Domain Name.
Now there’s a lot of competing advice out there in the internet world . While doing this , a lot of factors must be taken into consideration . Some are great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but terrible from a branding perspective and vice versa. It’s to be noted that the domain name market is pretty saturated and a lot of the best names are already taken / registered.
With all that is used for choosing the perfect domain , can be a bit of a juggling act for sure . But don’t worry . I will show you a practical checklist of what to go for , what to avoid and how to prioritize all these factors to make your job of choosing that perfect domain name for your blog / business in easier manner.
So here we go ! So let’s find the way to choose a perfect domain name that your customers can remember , type in without any trouble and help you get found in searches. I’ll show you all that plus area , cool tricks toward the end that you can actually use to truly have the best domain This method is generally used by the SEO experts .
Basic criteria that a domain name should be /have
A) Short and Memorable:
It’s pretty obvious that people always love simple and short names. If your domain name will be longer or more complicated then people will find difficulties in remembering this. With such bigger names, there is a chance of people screwing it up when they attempt to share it and certainly when they type it in the search engine. So keep your domain name as short as possible. Then it will be easier for you to make your blog/business a Brand in the future with such short and memorable domain names.
B) Extensions – Dot com versus dot anything else:
So here’s the thing a lot of domain names you might want are probably taken or registered at least in the dot-com version. So people start thinking – hey! that’s okay, I can just get a dot-net or dot other which also is actually a real thing you can get. In fact, a new industry trend has pretty much popped up during this past decade what we call top-level domain extensions.
Currently, people have a built-in association with dot-com extensions. They think of websites as dot coms only. It makes the name a little more catchy, actionable and fun in my personal opinion. If you really can’t find anything with dot-com then you can go with other domain extensions that are available in the marketplace.
So now we are into the biggest debate over domain names should you go for something classy and branded or for something more keyword driven. Also there are some pros and cons for each of these. So let’s just talk about these in detail .
When I say a branded domain, I mean something like www.bloggingtweet.com and a keyword-driven version of that might howtoregisterdomain.com.
So with the pure branded domain it reads cleanly, it’s memorable and it feels like a real brand. But in case of keyword driven domains , it closely aligns with what people might actually search in google for making it much more likely to rank for that term. In the 2nd case it also happens to be some what memorable , but it doesn’t really sound like much of a brand.
In Keyword driven domains , one feels like you’re going to click a link/site which can spam your page.Where as choosing something purely branded can really hold you back in terms of ranking and searches . Exact match domain names do give you an edge. But its for a shorter period of time . But a well maintained consistent domain (website/blog) will lead you towards your future goal with the help of the loyal community that you will make this happen through branding this domain.
Here’s what I actually recommend not to prefer an exact match domain like bestcarpenterindelhi.com but a partial match domain something that combines your business name and your top keyword phrase. If your business name is all about carpentry and wooden furniture then you might want to go for something like furnitureworld.com etc. Its just a matter of how aggressive you feel you want to be here.
You can just use one of your keywords rather than the whole phrase . Remember, even having one very broad keyword like furniture can still help you . I’d personally rather see you use your full business name with one good keyword.
You can use a trick to resolve this confusion. You can make this work by combining your business name and your best keyword phrase. You can buy both
- more aggressive keyword rich domain and
- a shorter punchier more branded domain as well
having either a .com or a.net or dot extension. You’d then use the keyword domain as your actual site where it lives and then simply redirect the branded version to it . In that way searchers on google are more likely to just find and click your keyword domain name if you do a good job with your title and description meta text. They probably won’t notice the generic ness of your URL as much. In this context you always share your branded domain name with your subscribers as it’s easy to remember. It’ll still take them to the same place because it’ll redirect to your actual website.
So that would be the outward-facing domain you’d use out in the world but you still want to build backlinks and business citations to the real domain ( the keyword domain).
Conclusion
In course of time as your business/blog grows or if keyword domains start to lose ground in search , you can always start thinking about transitioning towards your branded domain because you own that as well. Then you can keep the main domain while discarding the domain which is not ranking anymore.
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