New York SBDC Research Network

From MarketingProfs "Domain names play a crucial role in branding and SEO of a website," begins an infographic by review site Website Builder. So it's important to think about your business's website domains carefully, understand how they work, and know your resources for purchasing and maintaining them. The infographic explains all that and more about domains, from the parsing of a URL to a timeline of domain names. (The first domain to be registered was symbolics.com in 1985!) It also answers some common questions about domains and SEO. For example, avoid using numbers and hyphens in a domain name, the graphic suggests, and keep your domain name as short as possible.

There’s plenty of advice out there about choosing a business name, such as the need to do a name search in your state, a trademark search, register the name, and other key legal issues.  Those are all important factors to consider as you choose a business name. But I’d like to focus today on five considerations you should also be thinking about. These five things may be overlooked when choosing a business name (or thinking about a re-branding of your business): Dot Com Domain Names Still Rule Today’s small businesses depend on Web presence to generate leads.  Prospective customers are researching businesses online before they buy, so being findable online is crucial.  Before you settle on a choice for a business name, go to your favorite domain registrar, and search to see whether the .com URL is available.  The “dot com” version of a name is still the go-to address that most of the public thinks of automatically.  So whenever possible, try to get the dot com version of your

Imagine your a small-town entrepreneur, looking to build a local business. You may end up using your last name as part of the company name... That's all fine and good and rarely causes a problem. If you were really ahead of the curve -- say, you knew about the Internet in the early to mid-1990s -- maybe you even registered yourself a domain name, your last name followed by the now-ubiquitous dot-com. If you did, chances are you ended up something with a lot more valuable than you bargained for. Unless your last name is Nissan. In that case, you probably ended up with a big headache -- and a lot of legal bills. Since the 1980s, Uzi Nissan -- that's his real name -- has owned a number of small businesses branded with his last name. In the early 1990s, he started the Nissan Computer Corporation. He registered the Nissan.com domain in 1994. More from Now I Know .

When it comes to finding the right Domain name for your website, it can be nearly impossible to get a good vacant domain name. Many people often come up with great ideas, however, they are unable to keep a domain name that reflects their website content because of unavailability of domain names. In my experience even friends and family can be of little help in such a case, as thousands of domains are getting registered as we speak. This means that every idea that you can think of, has probably been used already. If you are looking for a good Domain name that reflects your website content or can help you keep a novel name such as perhaps, “YouTube”, then it might be worth seeking help from a few handy web services given below. More from Techwalls HERE .