Getting the Most Out of Your Domain Name and Hosting

If you are a small business owner these days, then you probably know that trying to do business without a website is virtually impossible. Before you decide to get a website, however, there are a few basics you should know about domain names and hosting, that can help your business.

The first thing you might be wondering about are those free sub domains that are advertised. Surely, a sub domain will work, and it is free, right? The trouble is, everyone else also knows that your sub domain is free, and that means that the first thing they are thinking when they land on your site is that you were too cheap to spend a few dollars on a top-level domain. That is not the impression you want to make, is it?

It’s far better to spend a little money buying a top level .com, .info or .biz domain, that gives your visitors the right impression about you and your business, than it is to try and save money on this!

Next, there is the domain itself. As more and more sites are registered, it is becoming harder and harder to get one word domains, and it is usually impossible to get the one you want. This is where a little creativity, and a little keyword research, can make all the difference.

Let us say, for instance, that you own an auto workshop called Mike’s Mechanics. You operate in a small local area, and you have decided you want a website, but www.mikesmechanics.com is already taken. Why not try different combinations of your area, and the type of business you are in? After all, if people search for your type of business in your area, they are likely to type in the area itself, followed by the service, and with any luck, they will find your site!

This is known as optimising your domain, and since you are going to want to optimise your site for search engines anyway, it makes a lot of sense to work your keywords into your domain name too.

Once you have found a combination that works, and that is likely to get you a lot of optimised search traffic, it is time to look at hosting options.

Contrary to popular belief, not all hosting packages are created equal, and it is usually not the best idea to opt for the cheapest package you can find. There are several reasons for this.

First, there is bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth that is included with your hosting package will determine how much traffic your site can get in a month. Since you are hoping for lots of traffic, choosing an option that allows for only a small amount of traffic every month, and then running out of bandwidth half way through the month, and having your site inaccessible is not the best choice! It’s far better to pay a little bit more, and get a hosting account with unlimited bandwidth, and know you’re safe.

Then there are the servers themselves. You want to do a little bit of research, and make sure that your hosting provider has a reasonably good server uptime. Remember that if your hosts servers go down, your site goes down too, so you want to get the maximum average uptime you can find!

Your next consideration would be space. If you are only hosting a small, local, static site, you can choose hosting package with a small storage capacity, but with unlimited capacity packages becoming cheaper every day, it is a good idea to opt for one of those, and to know that you will always be able to expand your site if you need to. Many unlimited hosting packages even allow you to host more than one site these days, so it is a good idea to look into that if you are serious about online business.

Having a website is definitely one of the most important things for small businesses these days, whether online or off, and making the right choices when it comes to your domain name and hosting is crucial.

Choosing the right domain name can help to make your online marketing efforts easier, and more effective, and having a reliable hosting plan means you will not have to worry about your site being inaccessible. Remember that your website will often be your first point of contact with clients and potential customers, so you want it to present a professional image. After all, presentation is what marketing is all about!

So by all means, if you do not already have a website, or if you are looking at establishing another one, go for it, but take some time to think about what you want to achieve with your website, and how your domain name and hosting package can help you to do that.