A Guide to Registering Domain Names

Choosing a domain name for your site can be tricky. There are many factors that should be considered and with the huge popularity of the Internet all too often your ideal domain has already been registered. The following information will help you in choose a domain name that will work for you ...

Relevance
Obviously your domain name should be relevant to your company name or activity. For example, if a company called 'Salex Joinery' would probably register www.salexjoinery.co.uk. This is a good choice because it matches their company name and it includes a keyword which describes the company activity. However, some web sites have a completely unrelated but very short domain name. For example www.egg.com for the internet based credit card company. If you are planning to set-up a company, it is sometimes better to find the ideal domain name and then make your company name match the domain rather than the other traditional way round.

Search Engines
Once you have a web site set-up you will want to get it listed in the search engines. Search Engines work using keywords. If a user types in a keyword like 'joinery' the search engines will rate all the relevant web sites and order them by what the search engine considers to be the most relevant first. If the search engine finds that keyword in your domain name then it will consider your site to be very relevant and hopefully put your site towards the top of the results.

Generic Domains
If your domain name doesn't have any keywords in it then you might want to consider registering an additional domain for instance www.woodworkingandjoinery.co.uk. This is called a generic domain name. You can then set-up a 'Gateway Page' which is a web page containing keywords and a description that will help your site gain a higher position in the search engines. This Gateway Page can then be linked to your main web site. Generic domains can be an extremely effective way to get visitors to your web site, but must be managed carefully. HavNet provide a web site promotion service that takes care of all the details for you.

Keep It Simple
You domain name should be kept as simple a possible. If possible avoid the use of hyphens. Although they make your domain name more readable when printed, people often forget to put them in and therefore won't find your site. If you have to use hyphens then we recommend that you also register the same domain without hyphens to minimise the chance of mistakes. We can link any number of domains to your web site. We do this free of charge - all you need to do is register the domain through us at our standard rate. If you can, keep the domain fairly short. Imagine that you are telling someone your web site address over the telephone. The shorter and simpler it is the less chance they will get it wrong and the more chance they will remember it.