Domain Name Registration Mistakes
I received an email the other day asking me what I thought about the domain names that he was thinking about ordering. It made me think that I'd just put together a post of the types of mistakes that people make when registering domain names. By the way, these are simply my opinions, I'm sure that some people will disagree or would like to add a few mistakes so please feel free to leave comments with your thoughts.
Not Register A .COM
The reason that I think that this is a huge mistake is because people are accustomed to typing in a domain name with the .COM extension. If you register a .NET, .ORG, .US, etc you are just losing out on repeat traffic.
The reason is that people remember the domain name but often times don't pay attention to the extension. When they attempt to go back to your site they type YourDomain.com which of course belongs to your competitor and thus you've lost out on return traffic.
Not Registering Every Extension
With domain prices being so affordable it just makes sense to register every extension during the domain name registration process. There's no reason to let a competitor or domain squatter register the other extensions of your domain name and possibly put up a website of questionable content or even try to sell you the extension for many times more than you could have paid.
Using Too Many Dashes
I understand the importance of keywords in a domain name for search engine optimization purposes but if you want to brand your website for people to return to the last thing you want to do is register Your-Main-Website-Keywords.com.
It's difficult to remember and I can't think of anything that looks more unprofessional.
Not Registering A Domain Name For Multiple Years
The chance of losing a domain name due to it expiring isn't great considering the number of reminders that are sent but I just don't see how it's worth chancing it. You may change your email address and not receive the notices or something like that.
It's best to register your domains for multiple years so this doesn't happen, plus you generally receive a discounted rate during domain name registration for registering for multiple years.
Well that's about it. These are the main mistakes that I can think of during domain name registration. Again, feel free to chime in with anything that you can add or that you may disagree with.
Best regards,
David Lalumendre
www.WebsiteSpot.com