WHEN Stephen Phillips decided to buy a website address for his market-research
firm, Spring Research, he made a big mistake. On the advice of his business
partner he decided to buy only Springresearch.co.uk and did not bother to
buy Spring research.com, too, even though it was still available.
“My business partner said I needed to advertise myself as a UK-based company
so it was really important that I bought the .co.uk name. Which was fair
enough, but I should have got the .com name as well. It was just sitting
there,” he said.
Within a month Phillips realised he had been foolish not to acquire the .com
name, but by then the name had been snapped up by someone else. It took four
years and much haggling to buy the name and it ended up costing £700 instead
of the few pounds it would have cost in the first place.
With websites becoming an increasingly important part of modern commerce,
small businesses such as Spring Research are learning - sometimes the hard
way - that website addresses, or domain names, are not just an optional
extra but an essential part of their business.
Most small-business owners understand the concept, but they are often unsure
how to find and keep a domain name.
Susan Hallam is the founder of Hallam Communications, an internet-marketing
consultancy. She said: “It’s very rare these days to find a business that
doesn’t understand it needs the internet. What many have trouble with, is
that they don’t know the first step they need to take.”
In many ways Phillips was extremely lucky to have got the .com name he wanted
– and to have paid so little for it.
However, if the domain name you want has already gone, do not despair. A lot
have been bought up speculatively with a view to selling them on at a higher
price rather than to use them for a business, so you may still be able to
buy the one you want provided you are prepared to pay.
Several websites act as brokers for domain names. If you go on to one of these
sites, you can browse the domain names that are for sale or put in a request
for the name you want if it ever comes up for sale. Brokers include
Pool.com, Sedo.co.uk, Snapnames.com and Dotpound. com. Some will also give a
free valuation of any unwanted domain names you own.
Hallam said: “There’s a huge market for domain names and lots of organisations
that do nothing but broker them. They match up buyers and sellers. The value
of a domain name is purely a function of the demand for it.”
Approaching the owner of the website name you want can also yield results. You
can find out who owns which website at Whois.org. Hallam said: “A lot of
people bought domain names speculatively because they thought they would be
able to sell them at a profit some day and now they are sitting on thousands
of them. So they might be happy to shift some. A small business may be able
to acquire a domain name for a couple of hundred pounds.”
Acquiring the right domain name is very important, though, if you want the
name to enhance your business.
Hallam said that to be able to choose a good domain name, it was vital that
small-business owners got to grips with the way that internet search
engines, notably Google, worked.
Research shows that when people are searching the web, hardly anyone bothers
to look beyond the first page of results even though the search often
produces hundreds of them. So, to get your company noticed, you need to give
your website name enough pointers for it to be automatically placed on the
first page.
“A domain name needs to be memorable, consistent and coherent with your
brand,” said Hallam. “And it needs to be search-engine friendly. If, for
example, you are a florist in Lincolnshire, it might be worth buying the
domain name Lincoln shireflowers.co.uk, for example.” Hugh Boyle is the head
of digital for Europe, Middle East and Asia at Ogilvy Action, a marketing
communications agency. He said that when choosing a domain name small
businesses should think about being a bit more creative than simply getting
their business name and adding .com to it.
“People relate well to firms that don’t necessarily put their brand in the
domain name,” he said. “And it is good to be clever or funky with them. It’s
an area where you can be creative.”
Boyle himself, for example, has already speculatively bought the domain name
Youarenot goingoutlikethat.com, which he thinks would be ideal for a teen
fashion brand, and Fridayafternoon.com, which would work as a weekend events
website.
One of the best examples of this, he said, was the DIY chain B&Q’s
decision to buy and use the domain name DIY.com. “It’s brilliant,” he said.
“What it is saying is, B&Q is DIY. It’s a clear statement of
market leadership and of confidence.”
Prime domain names can also earn you big money if you decide not to use them
yourself. Boyle cited a friend who bought a domain name for a few pounds and
then sold it for £20,000.
Whatever name you came up with, he said, it was vital to get both the .com and
the .co.uk versions. “If you can’t buy the .com and .co.uk, then think of
another name,” he said. “Domain name endings such as .net, .uk.com,
.ltd.com, .biz and .tv don’t resonate. And you won’t get many English
companies using .eu.
“Also don’t have any hyphens. If people are going to the wrong site when they
are looking for you, then unless they really need your product or service,
they won’t bother to look again.”
You should also try to avoid confusion with another business with the same
name. “Look at a different characteristic of your company and use that
instead,” said Boyle. “If you are a plumber and you have the same name as a
bookshop, don’t mess around with hyphens and .orgs because it just
frustrates people. Choose something smart such as Leaky pipes.com.”
Once you have bought the name for your business, think about what proxy
domains you need to buy. Proxy domains are website addresses that you don’t
actually use but that link to your main site through vital keywords that
will be picked up by a search engine such as Google.
Finally, once you have acquired a domain name that works for your business,
you must renew it every two years. If you don’t, the consequences could be
devastating. Hallam said: “Remember that you do not own a domain name, you
only rent it. I’ve seen a lot of small firms get their fingers burnt because
they forgot to renew their domain name. There’s a whole industry out there
engaged in ‘sniping’.
“They sit there and see that your domain name is going to expire on March 4 at
5pm, and the second your domain name expires they have an automated piece of
software to swoop in and buy it. Once they have it, you have no right to it.
It’s a nightmare.”
HOW TO CHOOSE A DOMAIN NAME
-Get both the .com and .co.uk versions. Don’t bother with anything else
-Don’t put hyphens or underscores in the name – they only confuse people
-Choose something memorable and easy to type
-Buy proxy domain names rich in relevant keywords to direct people to your
site
Remember to renew the name every two years
Suggesting that you should register multiple domains and point them to the same site is one thing - suggesting that this is good practice for search engine optimisation is quite another.
If you get the same site indexed multiple times via different domain names, the search engines will see them all as different sites. This might sound good, but in fact is likely to lead to duplicate content penalties and possibly see ALL of the "sites" excluded from the index.
Search engines are keen not to list the same site several times over as this is a poor user experience, hence their efforts to remove duplicate content. You should choose one "master" domain for online marketing and stick to that - the others should simply be for brand protection and capturing type-in traffic.
Ian Lockwood, Nottingham, England
You don't lose your domain if you fail to re-register it on the record's "expiry date". There is a procedure, which varies by registrar, but in general terms:
There is a 'grace period' (usually 30-40 days) in which you may re-register the name. After this, there is a 'penalty' period, usually 30 days, when the registered owner may still re-register the name although an additional penalty fee (usually $100 or £100) applies.
After this period, the domain name enters a 5-day 'drop' period. On the 5th day, at a certain time (again it depends on the registrar and domain extension) the domain is "released back into the internet's eco-system" where anyone may register it in the normal ways.
It is at this stage that "snipers" may try to secure the name. So you actually have about 70 days after your official expiry date to rescue the name before it enters the "drop zone", at which point, it may be difficult to reclaim, if others may perceive it as valuable and try to snipe it.
Matt, Mexico City, Mexico
Your advice not to use underscores or hyphens is only partially correct. You certainly confuse people if you do have hyphens and underscores, but without them you confuse search engines. For instance, for humans it's easier to type "timesonline.co.uk". But Google does not know what the word "timesonline" means. It can determine that "times-online.co.uk" or "times_online.co.uk" is using two separate words, but "timesonline" is something it can't figure out.
So companies not only need the .co.uk and .com versions of their domain names - they also need them with hyphens (for search engines) and without hyphens (for people).
Graham Jones - Internet Psychologist, Reading, UK
The example of diy.com demonstrates the importance of ‘direct search’ (where a user types a term directly into the search bar rather than use a search engine). By registering niche-capturing terms, as B&Q have done, companies can profit from targeted traffic, strong branding, high levels of brand allegiance and also, improved search engine rankings as generic names can perform very well in SE listings.
In my experience, the reality of the secondary domain name market (trade & monetization of registered domain names) is one comprised largely of legitimate business entrepreneurs. These domain investors recognise an opportunity to acquire generic, dictionary terms, which they speculate will increase in value as our online usage continues to evolve. The coming years will see us spending more time and money online, and as online ad spends grow, we’re likely to see a rise in the phenomenon on which they capitalize; that of ‘direct search’.
Best wishes,
Nora Nanayakkara
www.sedo.co.uk
Nora Nanayakkara, Reading, UK
The article alludes to people speculatively registering domain names for financial gain. Caution should prevail. If one registers a domain name that infringes on intellectual property (IP) (their business name, a product or a service) then they may actually be breaking the law. Such “cybersquatting†as it has become known can open the domain registrant to legal action from the IP owner. Where someone feels their IP has been infringed, they can consider legal action or involve the relevant Domain Registration agency. In the US, the Digital Copyright Millennium Act allows Internet Service Providers (ISP) to take direct action. Shutting down a website or blocking a domain that is suspected of IP infringement. They act first and ask questions later – so, if someone has a website/domain that may infringe on someone else’s IP and the IP owner contacts the ISP, the ISP is likely to suspend a website / domain without notice and challenge the registrant to prove their rights to its use.
Andy Poulton, Swindon, UK
Even if the .com is taken that doesn't mean don't buy and use the .co.uk
I have a bunch of .co.uk websites that are popular and have sold many .co.uk's for more than £700 after buying them for £2.
Plus in the notes at the end of the article it's weird that you mention underscores??? You can't register a domain with an underscore it it...
Matt, London,