Domain name registration is probably one of the most important things that you will do when creating your own website. A domain name is the one thing that will identify your website - it is like a brand name. Once you have registered it and have used it for a couple of months it is extremely difficult to change it to something else. So think well before you register your domain - it is a decision that you will have to live with for a while - if not forever!

So how do you choose a good domain name? 

Your domain name should reflect what your site or your business is about. It should be descriptive and easy to remember. If you can register your domain name by using your best niche keyword you will also score a few points in trying to get your site high up in the search engine rankings. For a full explanation why, read this article on using keywords in your domain name.

In general though, small businesses tend to want to select a domain name that is closely related to their company. There is nothing wrong with this, since it does reinforce your company branding.

Points to consider:

• If your company has a distinctive name that you use in your marketing campaigns, and if your company is well known among your customers it might be best to try and register your company name as your domain name. For example, it will be better for Standardbank to try and register standardbank.co.za as opposed to bankingservices.co.za
  
  
• But if your company does not have such a strongly branded presence in the market, or if you are offering a product or service that you specifically want to market through the internet without even HAVING a company, then a descriptive name might be a better option (e.g. www.health-products.co.za)
  
  
• Hyphens are easier to read in print, are easier to 'understand' by the search engines (remember that a key linking strategy is to have text links contain your targeted keywords. If your domain name is legible to search engines and it is used to link to your site, you score some points since your keywords are already contained in your domain name), and gives you more choice. The negatives about hyphens is that they are difficult for people to hear! You will probably have difficulty in spelling out your domain name over the phone or in conversation when it contains hyphens. If you can therefore, register your domain name both WITH, and WITHOUT the hyphens. You would be wise to do this in any case in order to protect all versions of your domain name. If you do not register the domain name yourself that you are not planning on using directly, someone else might just do it and use a slighly different version of your domain name.
  
  
• The other difficult decision to make is whether to register a .com or a .co.za. Our advice on this is to register a .com if you are primarily going to focus on marketing your products and services internationally and to register a .co.za if you are primarily going to market locally. Please note that lots of search engines (for example Google and MSN) nowadays offer the facility to search locally (e.g. 'Pages from South Africa'). If you are a locally based business only planning on using your internet site to locally market your business you should definitely register your domain name with a .co.za extension, rather than a .com since a .co.za is more likely to show up in local search results rather than a domain name with a .com extension. The other advantage of using a .co.za is that there is much more scope for coming up with a name that contains your keywords than with a .com. Trying to register a .com with ANY popular type of word in the domain is almost impossible these days.

Please contact us so that we can help you with this most important step - registering your domain name!