As a small business person, you want to project professionalism and credibility. You will not do this by using a free email address, such as name@yahoo.com, name@gmail.com, or name@hotmail.com. Many people believe that you have to have a web site for your company or that it is expensive and complicated to set up your own domain. In truth, it takes just a few minutes of your time and can be done for less than twenty dollars a year.
With the millions of websites on the Internet, the hardest part of the whole process is finding a name that has not been used by someone else and that represents your business. This is best done by brainstorming ideas and making a list of possible names. You need to take into consideration that your domain name will be used by the search engines to classify your site. If you have a painting company, you may want a name such as paulspainting.com. If you have a handyman business, you make choose a name such as Frank-Repairs-It.com.
Registered domain names are restricted to typically using only ASCII letters, numbers and the hyphen (-). Since this rule does not allow the use of characters commonly found in non-English languages, and does not allow multi-byte characters necessary for most Asian languages, the International domain name (IDN) system has been developed and is now in testing stage for a group of top-level domains established for this purpose.
Top level domains (TLDs) are what you find at the end of the Internet address. Some common examples are:
- .gov - Government agencies
- .edu - Educational Institutions
- .biz - Business Organizations
- .org - Organizations (non-profit)
- .mil - Military
- .com - Commercial business
- .net - Network organizations
- .ca - Canada
- .th - Thailand
- .us - United States
Most businesses around the world prefer to use the .com TLD. A few years ago the .biz TLD was added for the business community, but has never really caught on. While search engines will find .biz domain names, it is still best to find a .com address if you can.