Domain Names provide a way to uniquely identify you and your business from others on the internet. While generally you won’t need to have a domain name to have a website it will certainly make it appear professional.
Technically speaking most hosting providers will allow your site to piggyback off their domain name, by using a subdomain. For example if your hosting provider is ‘hostingcompany.com’, you could have your business.hostingcompany.com as a subdomain and your site would be hosted there.
For people unfamiliar with your business, it may make it difficult to distinguish where your business starts and the hosting business stops, because your name is ‘bundled in’ with the hosting business.
For others hosting websites with large commercial hosting providers they must purchase a domain name, or bring their own domain name in order to have hosting.
This is because some large commercial providers like Bluehost, Dreamhost or Hostgator insist that you either purchase a domain name or provide an existing one you have purchased when you register.
For these customers the decision then becomes not whether to purchase a domain name, but rather which domain do I choose?
Here are some of the top reasons I give for having your own domain name:
Domain Names reinforce your brand
Firstly, buying and using a domain that represents your business name or business activity reinforces your brand, providing your visitors with instant recognition for your business.
So if you purchased the domain name www.yourname.com.au, then you could attach it to your website at yourhame.hostingcompany.com. This means that anyone visiting www.yourname.com.au would get to your website.
Additionally when you own your own domain name, you can create email addresses at your domain name, making your business look more professional in email.
So if you own, www.yourdomain.com.au, then your email addresses can be setup as:
[email protected], or [email protected]. You can even use generic email addresses for business processes like [email protected] or [email protected].
Domain Names improve your search engine ranking
Domain Names are useful to help others identify your business from others with similar names. This is especially important when it comes to the results that Search Engines provide.
If your website is for business purposes you will want to have a search result that clearly indicates your business or what you do.
This is what Search Engine Optimisation (often shortened to SEO) is all about, but SEO is not the topic of this blog post. Except to say that if you choose a domain name that is directly linked to what you do then your search rankings in Search Engines like Google will benefit.
Domain Names give you flexibility
The advantage of purchasing the domain name yourself means that if you ever need to change hosting companies, for any reason, then you just ‘point’ your Domain Name to the new hosting company servers.
During the period while the internet ‘catches up’ with your changes, all your visitors will go to either your old site or the new one and eventually all web visitors will go to the new site. They won’t even realise you’ve made a change.
In short domain names give you much more control of your online presence and ultimately it gives you more flexible choices about where you host your site; stopping you from getting ‘locked in’ to a particular provider.
From as little as $17 a year, you can have the peace of mind that your own domain name can bring. As you can see, having your own Domain Name delivers many benefits at a low, low price.
If you need to purchase a domain name do consider us. Asporea Consulting offer .com.au domain names for just $17 a year along with great service and advice. For more information about Domain Names and to purchase one, visit domainnames.asporea.com.au
