What Is A Domain Name And Why It Is Important For Your Success
What Is A Domain Name
You maybe asking yourself what is a domain name and what is it used for, well we will try and explain to you so you understand, making the right choice for a great domain may have many implications on the success of your personal or business website so this is important to get right the first time around.
There are hundreds of combinations for different domain names it can seem daunting at first to try and find the right one to suit your niche website, a domain name is a unique identifier when you choose your domain there are no two domains the same.
Key Words In Domain Name
Your domain name can have a big impact on your websites seo or search engine optimization, if your domain carries your main key word for your services or products that you are selling, this can be a huge advantage in getting on to page one of google searches for your product or service.
Domain Name Server
When you purchase a domain name from say A2 Hosting the domain is pointed to the A2 hosting server if your hosting is at A2 Hosting you are fine, if your hosting is else where you have to point the domain to your hosting server this is done where you purchased the domain name in the DNS records, the dns records consist of an IP address (A Record) which resolves the domain to an ip address, the Alias (cname reord) allows you to resolve sub domains of your main domain to other fully qualified domains or sub domains.
Mail Servers (MX Record) allows you to specify the mail server host name that email for your domain name should be delivered to, Advanced DNS Records, some domains will have advanced records which include TXT records and SRV records usually you do not need to edit these records.
The only records that need to be changed if you purchased a domain name seperately from your hosting provider or you need to use the hosting providers IP Adress (A record) are the A Record which looks like this 47.23.10.125 and the name server which looks like this ns.liquidweb.com both these records can be obtained from your web hosting provider and enterd to the DNS records under services where you purchased the domain name from.
You then need to wait for the records to propagate over the internet this time can be any where from a few hours upto 48 hrs before the records have propagated during this time you will not have any access to your website you can use an online propagation tester to see if your records have propagated just enter your url and click search for any results.
Top Level Domains
The .com is the most popular top level domain extension and is popular with businesses and corporations all over the world and is used to attract visitors from all around the globe to your website, there are top level domains specific to individual countries like .com.au for Australia and .co.nz for New Zealand, although they can be searched for from all around the world they are targeting visitors from that country.
Sub Domain/Sub Folder
A subdomain is created in your CPanal the url would look like (www.forum.createawebsite.online) forum being the folder name within the public HTML where your sub domain files are located, or you can run a seperate domain in a subfolder the url would look like (www.createawebsite.online/forum) for a more indepth explanation please read what is a sub domain.
A great domain also needs to be easy to remember with the least amount of words incorporated into the domain, you do not want a long and hard to remember domain name as customers will often not remember the next time they need your product or services when searching online.
With so many business and personal websites already on the internet with there own registered domain name, alot of the main key words maybe already taken for your product or services that you supply to your customers, which make it alot harder to be creative with domain choice there are however new TLD choices appearing these days making the choice of a new domain name easier.
