1. Domain names support your creditibility on the web

Your domain name is a very important part of doing business via the web. It can be compared with opening a small stand at the supermarket, where there are already many other stands or other shop owners. Less than 30 EURO per year - depending on your registration company - for domain name registration, is only a small amount to pay for credibility with your potential customers.

If your site is just a personal homepage (for pleasure or hobby-purposes only), you might not really need a domain name. Although having a domain name will certainly increase your website's visibility.

Each day, thousands of new domain names are being registered. Still, it is possible to find an attractive name: just be creative! On the registration-part of this site, you will find many tools and tricks that might help you to find your special/unique domain name. The longer you wait to register your name, the less choice you will have. Think of a domain name as an unavoidable expense for doing business online.

2. Domain names are transferrable

As mentioned before, a domain name is a traffic sign that points to your website. "There it is", says the traffic sign. You can transfer the site (switching to a new webhosting company) and via a small technical intervention (your new hosting company will help you with this) the domain name will refer to your "new" site. This way, you can always switch to another hosting company, for example when you can get a better deal, or when the services delivered are insufficient. You don't need to change a visitors' bookmark (favorites). Neither won't any links get lost during the transfer. All this is impossible without a domain name...

3. Domain names improve your promotion chances as well as your website's "perceptibility" on the internet

As mentioned before, domain names improve (by means of the key words) the site's classification in the results of important search engines. As far as web promotion advantages concerns, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Many big Directories (Site lists or reviews of other sites) will refuse to add your site to their listing unless it has it's own domain name. Some will only promote sites that have their own domain name.

This policy has many reasons. For us, it does not matter WHY search engines and Directories are doing this, it only matters that THEY ARE doing it! As the internet is continuously growing, things will only get worse for sites without their own domain name.

4. Domain names create a sense of professionalism

This subject goes hand in hand with a domain name's credibility. Wrongly or not, people think that hosted sites with their own domain name are more professional then others. This idea comes from two facts: all important, famous sites have their own domain name and on the other hand, there are many junk sites, hosted for free by ISP hosting services.

Unfortunately, our/your opinion is not important, as there are already many prejudices about commerial sites with their own domain names. When your free website or website hosted by ISP is ALREADY successful, your "personalised" website will even be MORE succesful!

5. Domain names are easy to remember

Which of these urls is easier to remember?

http://www.combell.com/diensten/dedicated-servers.html
or
http://www.dedicatedservers.be/

The upper url is the location where the Dedicates Servers website was previously located, before being refered to the domain name. As soon as the site got its own domain name, the number of visitors tripled on a very short term. This url was much easier to remember, so visitors kept coming back.

We went through many reasons why domain names can be useful. It's time now to continue with the next chapter of this guide: How can I register a domain name?