Sunday, January 24, 2010
Web Design Checklist I - Domains
Choosing Your Domain
1. Domain age - older domains have more credence as spamming websites are normally short-lived so older more longstanding domains are indexed better. Likewise if there is less than a year left until you need to re-register the domain consider renewing it immediately;
2. Domain registration information hidden/anonymous - serious businesses would not leave their information hidden to the public;
3. Type of domain - in this country you will find that .co.uk domains are indexed faster than .com so unless you have an international business buy a .co.uk domain.;
4. Domain past owners - if you are buying a “second hand” domain check very carefully as to how many previous owners there have been, how often did the owner change, where was the domain hosted, what business was carried out on the domain. You do not want your website to gain the poor reputation of a business previously hosted on the domain.
5. Keywords in the domain - try and have at least one keyword in the domain, separate any words using hyphens as search engines will see the domain as being made up of separate words as opposed to one long meaningless string. If you do use hyphens avoid having more than 1 or 2 in the domain name.
