Your first task in setting up a business web site may be deciding on a domain name.

If your business has already established brand name recognition with consumers then you should probably consider using your actual business name as your domain name also. If however, like most businesses, you are trying to draw attention from customers who are searching for your products and services, but who likely don’t know who you are, then a different approach is needed.

For example, someone searching for an affordable interior decorator that can help them in the Denver area, a domain name such as - www.denverinteriordesigns.com tells people 2 things right off the bat when they look at this url - (1) You offer interior design services and (2) you operate out of the Denver area. So before planning anything else, you have already begun the process of capturing visitors who are pre-qualified by using an url such as this one in this example. Ultimately, this should be your goal.

A third thing to consider is that very likely, after completing the keyword research needed to optimize your web site for search engine listing, you will discover that “Denver” and “interior design” are 2 of your best key phrases. Having them placed strategically in the domain address may give you a slight boost in ranking as well.

Should you hyphenate long domain names?

Ideally you want the domain name you choose to be fairly short; it’s easier for people to remember the name. If you choose to use a slightly longer domain name hyphenating it may help keep from misspelling it when typing it in the browser bar. Some seo consultants will tell you that search engines like Google(c) will penalize you if you use hyphens. However, it is our experience that it makes no difference to the se’s whether the name is hyphenated or not.

The one thing we do recommend is that if you are going to use hyphens in your domain name, purchase the same domain name without the hyphens and re-direct visitors who forget to add the hyphens when typing, to the hyphenated version of the domain. That way, no matter what they type, they will arrive at your landing page.

To Dot.com or not to Dot.com . . . ?

Most people are conditioned to search using a Dot.com extension when looking for a web site. Dot.com was here first and it’s what people are most familiar with. Try to get the Dot.com extension for your domain name first. After that we recommend that you also purchase all of the secondary extensions of your domain name as well. This keeps other web site owners from benefiting from traffic that should rightfully be yours because someone purchased say, the Dot.net version of your domain and benefited from traffic that misspelled your domain name when typing it into the browser.

Secondly, you may find that owning the alternate extensions of your domain name may prove useful in other ways somewhere down the road.

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When you first think of starting a home based internet business, the first you might think off is internet and then immediately after would be the name of the new business you are about to launch. The name of the business, and actually the first thing about starting a home based internet business is the name, or as it is appropriately known, “domain”.

What is a domain? Domain is the name of your online business, and the very first thing you need to have when starting a home based internet business (and any other internet based business as a matter of fact). The domain will contain of three distinct parts, i.e. the first part which is www (or World Wide Web), followed by a dot. Then you will have your business name - let us say it is “xyz” followed by another dot (or full stop) and lastly you will have com or org, au, ro, uk, etc. The last part will indicate what type or registration you have. If it is education, it will most likely be .edu, if it is Australia is can .au, .uk for UK, .ro for Romania and so on.

Your registration will determine in the end your full domain name. The registration can be directly by you over the net, or done through the web host. Both are genuine and trouble free, the charges for yearly registration seldom exceeding $100/-. Be careful however, when you do so, that you are named as the owner (registree) and not the web host.

When starting a home based internet business you will find it very useful to have sub-domains. In this way you can keep yourself organized your website free of clutter and have a separate address for each such sub-domain. The separate address would make it very easy to post links and link pages to search engines for best SEO results.

In similar lines you could use multiple domains. The difference between multiple domains and sub-domains is that the former is used a direction provider (re-direct) and the other is a separate folder. Both services are free and both are invaluable when starting a home based internet business since one organizes and de-clutters and the other boosts search engines capacity to identify your website.

There are a number of web hosts who promote free web hosting. Never go for free web hosting when starting a home based internet business. You can have that for a hobby or personal website, but for business is a definite NO-NO. The main reason for avoiding free web hosting, besides the fact that it gives very limited services, is because if tomorrow they go bust, you will disappear with their addresses. I advise you to use good professional services both for designing your website, as well as for hosting it. You cannot afford cheapness creep in when starting a home based internet business - value for money - YES, but not cheapness.

The domain is the first and last thing that a surfer will remember about your website. Make sure you choose a easy and remember - able domain name - or you will risk oblivion. Also always have on your page a link prompting for book-marking. This can be priceless when starting a home based internet business and you want to build up traffic.

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