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Your website's domain name will become your internet "name" so it's important that you give it some careful thought. A good domain name will help you get more visitors to your website, and better results from them. The ideal domain name is something that is easy for people to remember. If you can make it short and to the point, while related to what your website offers, that's the ideal situation. Long, complicated domain names create too much chance of people misspelling it and ending up on the wrong site. Your domain name should be relevant to what you offer on your website. If you're selling swimming pool filters, something like poolfilters.com would be a good option - easy to remember and relevant. Using your company name as your domain is not always the best option. If you want your offline customers to be able to find your website, it's a good idea to use your company name. If you're looking for new customers on the internet, a domain that is more descriptive of what you offer will be a better choice. After all, which would you be more likely to visit if you were looking for pool filters - poolfilters.com or abccompany.com? Most short and simple domain names are already taken, so it can take some searching to find something suitable. Many people choose to use hyphens in their domain names. This can make it difficult to verbalize your domain name. If you're telling someone about your site or advertising it on the radio, you'd need to say "pool dash filters dot com". Again, it creates an opportunity for error that you probably should avoid. Using numbers in your domain name can also make it easier to find a suitable domain, but don't resort to "cute" names like poolfilters4you.com. In this case, you'll again have problems trying to verbalize the domain. "Pool filters, the number 4, you (y-o-u) dot com" is a mouthful and just begging for mistakes to be made. Use a Domain Registrar or Register Through Your Web Host? Ideally, you should use a separate domain registrar and register your domain name yourself rather than doing it through your web hosting company. Most web hosting plans include a free domain name, but domain registration is inexpensive and paying a little more to do it yourself can save you a lot of future hassle. If you ever want to change web hosts and your domain is registered through your host, it can be a lot of work to get them to transfer it to the new host. Plus, some less-than-honest hosts will register the domain in their name instead of yours. John Lenaghan writes about free web hosting services and other website hosting topics on the Hosting Report website. Find out more at http://www.hostingreport.org
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