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Domain Names
What is a domain name?
A domain name is the text name that internet users use to access your website. A domain name corresponds to the numeric IP address of a computer on the Internet. Each name must be unique.
It looks like the below:
www.domainname.com
If you have a regional domain name in the UK, it looks like this:
www.domainname.co.uk
The third portion of the domain name is called the top level or first level domain. Educational institutions have .edu and government organizations have .gov. In addition to this there are two letters as shown above for UK that shows us what country the domain name belongs to.
Thus, by looking at some of the domain names below, we can gather a lot of information about the website:
www.domainname.gov – This belongs to a government agency
www.domainname.ro – This belongs to the country "Romania"
www.domainname.edu – This belongs to a university / educational institution
If you notice above, the one thing that remains constant is "www", to specify world wide web. The host name is the name of a specific machine in a domain. In simple terms, your domain name is just a friendly way of finding your website on the web.
What domain name should I get?
To keep things simple for a company presence or a personal website register it with the same suffix as that of Google search engine in your home country. If you want to operate a global entity then register a .com domain
Alternatively an effective traffic routing strategy used in selecting domain name is using keywords with reasonable search volume in the domain name. While effective for diverting traffic, I do not recommend this strategy for those who want to build a brand. Keyword research is useful to understand the search terms people are using to find information or products in your field.
How do I do a keyword research for my industry?
To perform a keyword research use one of the links from the below resources list.
Resources
Video
In this video you will see how to do a basic keyword research for the footwearindustry for the purpose of selecting a keyword rich domain name.
