Getting your own website - How to find and register an exceptional domain There are a few people that will tell you that all domains are created equal and all it takes is a little work and a few basic steps to get your website in all the major search engines. Well, it is true that all domains come into this world as nothing more then a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols but a poorly chosen domain name will give you poor return for your time investment while smart planning and even smarter buying you can save yourself YEARS of work getting a website that will be found and referenced within the first few hours that you own your website. The goal of this series of pages is to share some of the things that I have learned in the past 10-years or more of running some of my websites. How do I find a great domain and where should I register it? As I said in my introduction there was a time when I would have given the advise that there are plenty of great domain names out there and there and all you need to do is go to your favorite domain registrar and try a few combinations of keywords until you find a domain you like and you will be good to go. My oppinion has changed a great deal in the past few months so please read through everything that follows for a full picture of my current methods. The first step in creating a website is to have an idea of what your content will be and how you want to present it. I would suggest taking some time and use a few of the major search engines (Google, MSN, YAHOO, ALTAVISTA) and look at what other websites are on the web with your niche. Before you start, you would be well advised to evaluate if you are bringing something new to the internet or are you simply recreating something that already exists. If you have something new, that is great as you will be successful! If you are trying to do what a hundred other websites are already doing then you need to evaluate if you have a niche or something special about what you want to do or offer that nobody else has. If you can find a niche you can also be successful. If on the other hand, you are trying to create a new website that is essentially the same as dozens of other websites with essentially the same content, and nothing that really sets your website apart then you have your work cut out for you but it is possible to still be successful if you don't mind some work. How do I verify my Niche and my Keywords? So, you now have an idea of what you want to do and what your competition looks like. The next thing you should do is pay a couple bucks for a membership to WordTracker. Wordtracker is a service that allows you to see what internet surfers are looking for and what search terms they are using to find them on any of the major search engines. These search results are then compared to websites that have this content and calculations are performed so that smart decisions can be made about how likely a person looking for your product, service, or topic will find your website. A membership to WordTracker is likely the single most important investment any serious webmaster can make and the investment will pay returns on this investment many times over. Once you have a membership to wordtracker, you want to sit down and make a list of search terms that you think people will use to find your website or websites like the one you want to build. You will want to run these keywords through several different search engines as there are some striking differences in the performance and results that you will see from one search engine to another. Remember to save your results and print them out as you work as what you are trying to do is find a niche where there a good number of people looking for something that few websites are offering. This is the key to success on the internet and if you do your homework correct you will be successful. OK, I have my Keywords and niche but what about a domain? We started this discussion with a goal of finding a domain so that you can have a website, right? I am sure someone will read this and say why would I need keywords and such when I didn't get a domain to use them with. Well, this is where doing things in the correct order will not only get you some traffic but it will also get you listed high in the listings in YAHOO, GOOGLE, MSN, or any of the other major search engines. The very first thing you should do is work to get a domain or event more that use some of the unique keywords that you fund in your searches. I would try to stick with dot-com domains as they are well known and what most people think of first. i would also suggest against really long domain names if you are trying to establish a website that you want people to be able to return to easily as I know I am a poor typist and speller and long domains are just hard to get in the browser correct. If you are only after search engine traffic then longer domain names can work for you as long as the domain name you have focuses on the keywords that you found in your search above. To find a domain that is available, all you need to do is go to our favorite registrar and use their website to search for domains that you might like. Over the years I have registered domains with many different registrars and most of them are about the same but prices can be extremely different. The registrar that I like the best and the company that I have been moving my domains to is GoDaddy and this is because GoDaddy makes it easy to update a domain or move things around plus the cost and response time is the best I have seen anywhere. As you search for a domain, keep a list of domain names you like and refer back to your keyword lists from WordTracker. If you can find a domain name that is made up from keywords that are searched for by lots of people you can out compete other domains for those target keywords by having those keywords in your domain name (plus having good content on the website as well). As you go through the process you will likely find domain names that will require you to go back to WordTracker and search again. I would encourage you to take the time and look at the combinations that work best for you. After you have found your domain and you have it registered at GoDaddy.com or elsewhere you next need to find a hosting package. Finding a Hosting provider to host my website. In the last section I encouraged you to register your domain without concern to a hosting package. I strongly recommend that you do this as suggested as I have had to move several of my websites from place to place because of problems of one form or another. Most of my websites at this time are hosted with HostRocket.Com Hosting. I am using HostRocket because their performance and speed of there servers have been exceptional and they have excellent tools that allow a webmaster to monitor errors, who is accessing a website, what they are seeing, and where they leave. HostRocket also provides the necessary tools to run sophisticated web programs including php scripts and mysql databases, which are the future for all websites. Just the same, there are lots of other hosts that provide these tools but Host Rocket also provides some advanced tools like Unix Cron jobs that are essential for backing up critical website information and keeping that information safe from would be hackers that are always looking for a way to do other people's work harm. I will be adding separate pages to discuss some of these features and why they are important at a later time. Please note, you can buy your domain through HostRocket but doing so you will actually be registeing your domain with a second company and HostRocket is not a registrar. I repeat my recommendation that you register your domain with GoDaddy.com and you simply pay for hosting where ever you want as with the registration at Godaddy you cam move your hosting around all you want or need to! When looking at the hosting plans at HostRocket.Com I would encourage you to conside paying the extra cost for the Host Rocket two or Host Rocket three accounts. What these accounts have going for them is the ability to add ONE or TWO additional domains to the same hosting package. I make this suggestion as through the power of PHP and the MYSQL databases there are some very powerful things that can be done with multiple domains sharing the same base files. Here again, this is something I will have to add to the site at a later time. Now that you have a domain name registered and you have a hosting package it is time to build your website. In the next article in this series I will discuss the tools that are required to build a website for beginners to the more advanced programmer. Form there we will discuss getting your website listed in the various search engines and directories. I will also be adding another page that will describe another way to find exceptional domains that are already listed in all of the directories and search engines as well as sharing a powerful script that I use to help me determine which domains that I want to buy. So please come back again for the next addition to this series! Article written by Quarterbore May-27-2005, All rights reserved.