While starting a new online business, one of the first things that you have to do is registering a domain name. A catchy, easy to remember domain name that accurately describes your business can give your online presence a significant boost.

A majority of the web hosting services all offer domain registration in UAE, but is it necessary to use a separate domain name registrar instead?  What makes a good domain name and how does the registration process work?

A Domain Name

Domain is an internet address in a human readable format. Domains are automatically converted into IP addresses by domain name server (DNS), which serves as internet phonebooks.

 Domains can be divided into distinct parts, each with its own tag.

For example: Consider the address www.google.com

.com indicates the top level domain (or extension)

Google is the domain name.

www is the subdomain which is non mandatory.

The top-level domain or extensions is crucial. Initially there were only a handful but demand have raised the number to over 1500.The common ones are .com, .net, .org, and .co.uk.

Usually top-level domains can be divided into three groups: generic TLDs (gTLD), sponsored TLDs (sTLD), and country-code TLDs (ccTLDs).

Registering a Domain Name

Domain names can only be rented and not bought. You will have to annually renew your domain name registration either automatically or manually. Our advice is to set your domain name to auto-renewal to avoid being grabbed by someone else.

Domain names are generally registered with a domain name registrar. Most website hosting providers in UAE also offer free domain registration to entice you to choose them as your hosting provider.

Buying an Existing Domain Name

While searching for a good domain name, you will know right away that all the best domains are long gone. In fact, most of them have been bought by people who intend to sell them for a hefty sum.

To know who owns a domain name you can do a WHOIS search on the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) site and try to put in an offer.

Although buying an old domain name does not give you an advantage, but you may be able to speed up your search engine rankings and traffic if it has been used in the past. It could be worth it if the domain already has relevant backlinks or ranks for specific keywords on search engines.

Protecting Your Identity

It is highly recommended that you use your own personal details to register your domain name. Using the help of a hosting company Dubai can be a problem because they have control over your domain name and on the worse if you have a fallout or they go out of business you will lose the domain name as well.

Selecting a Domain Name

There are multiple factors to be considered while choosing a domain name for your business. Such as

·         Brandable: use names that are easy to remember and catchy.

·         Pronounceable- Easy to say names would make it easy to remember and memorize.

·         Shun weird spellings and hard-to-spell names

·         Your names should be short and be under seven-letter and three syllables.

·         Descriptive

 If possible try including important keywords relevant to your business in your domain name, but it is not much of a priority as before. Never use numbers and hyphens, because it is hard for people to remember when to use numbers or when to use hyphens.

If you are targeting an international market the undisputed king of domain extensions is the ‘.com’.

Also, you may want to select a country code TLD if your content is focused on a specific country. This will pull up your rankings in that country but will negatively impact results in other countries.

Transferring Domain Names

You can also transfer your domain if you wish to switch your website host. There are a couple of ways to do this. If you want to keep your current domain name registrar, you can simply change the IP address that the domain name refers to.

On the other hand, if you want to switch to a new domain name registrar, this can be done by simply confirming your identity and typing in the details of the new domain name registrar. The procedure for selling a domain name is also similar. You can avail the help of marketplaces like GoDaddy and Sedo.