'Online' Identity

How To Get A Strong 'Online' Identity

You may have read about these so called ‘entrepreneurs’ who make money by registering every domain name they can. They then sell the names to genuine businesses at a profit – which is perfectly legal.

You may also have heard that you should register your name with every possible suffix like co.uk, .com, .net so that competitors don’t steal your traffic.

The truth is that there’s plenty of scope to get a good online identity and you probably don’t need every suffix available.

If possible, you want to try and use words that describe your business within your website address.

Why’s that important?
Because search engine ‘robots’ read and recognise proper words. If your name is one that they can associate with keywords their visitors use, your site will get better search engine positions.

What if the name you want is already registered?
If it is, try submitting it with a hyphen or two between the words. You may well find that it’s available and a better search engine option too.

You can do this at www.ukreg.com  

BUT - make sure your keywords are in the root of your domain, not the stem! For example, if your main keyword phrase is "cell phones" try to get a domain name such as "cell-phones.com" instead of "mobileuk.com/cell-phones.com." Some search engines will penalise sites with keywords in the stem.

How many suffixes should I go for?
By suffixes we mean .com, co.uk, .net, .org and so on.

Why is this important? Well, the last thing you want is a competitor stealing a .com, .net etc version of your name. You could lose a lot of business.

But you could easily go overboard and register tens, even hundreds of domain variations.

So, before you break the bank, how likely are you to need different suffixes?

The first factor to consider is your geographic area of trading. If you’re operating in an international market with $multi-million online sales, you should protect your online identity and register the different options for each country in which you trade.

But if you’re operating regionally and your name is not particularly descriptive, then going beyond co.uk, .com and perhaps .net is probably a waste of money.

Certainly, if you plan to sell internationally or even just the US, you should register .com as well as co.uk.

Register at the best prices
And don’t get ripped off. There are lots of sharks out there who’ll charge you too much for a registration. You can do it yourself at www.ukreg.com.

Company Formation
Finally, if you need information regarding company formation etc, look no further than here.

"How do you market your products and services on the web?"