You should give careful consideration to your domain

You should give careful consideration to your domain name before you register it with a web host. A domain name should be easy to remember, easy to spell, and use as few characters such as dashes and underscores as possible. If customers can remember your domain name and type it into their address bar without having to go through a search engine, they will be more likely to visit your site right away. Search engines produce multiple results, and if potential customers have to search for your site every time, they may find another web site they like better.

If you can use the name of your company as your domain name, that's great. However, if you've decided to name your company Google or Yahoo, you're probably out of luck as far as domain availability. When you're choosing a domain name, list several of your top choices and include breaking characters (yes, you should still avoid them as much as possible, but if your company's name is Flowers Forever and you have to choose between flowers-forever and something entirely irrelevant to your business, by all means use dashes!). You can then go to www.DomainAbbey.com or another domain search site to find out if your choice of domain names is available. If the .com name you want is taken, don't forget to check for availability in other web extensions like .biz, .net, .cc, .org and .info.

Once you've determined what your domain name will be, it's a good idea to check on other web sites with similar domain names before you register yours. For example, if you choose flowers-forever and then discover the web site www.flowersforever.com offers exactly the same products and services you plan to offer, you may want to consider something different. If there are existing web sites with only a character's difference between them offering the same thing, customers may end up at that other site and stay there. Try reversing the words if it still makes sense (forever-flowers), or coming up with a creative domain name that is not the name of your company but still reveals what your business does (FlowerArrangements or BestFreshFlowers).

You can register your domain name through any of a number of companies that provide domain name reservation. Most of these are free services. However, it will save you a step-and possibly some trouble-if you register directly through the web site host you plan to use like www.DomainAbbey.com

Selecting a Web Host: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

With thousands of web hosting companies to choose from, you have plenty of opportunity to select the one that's right for your business. It is always a good idea to research web host companies before signing on with one, especially one that requires a certain term of service.

Though there are a large number of free web hosting services, there are many reasons to select a paid hosting company. In order to be a professional and successful virtual corporation, you need your own domain name. If you use a free service, your domain name will be something like