Once upon a time, having a website was considered fancy and websites were a luxury. However, nowadays it is necessary to own a website. Most companies today have websites. Many people are associated with businesses because of their websites.

Having a website today is a must. The first step to having a website is to register a domain name. This may seem like an easy task, but there are certain things you need to keep in mind when doing it.

1. Cover the bases: If you’re registering a domain name, then it makes sense to register as many extensions of that name as you can. For example, if you register only mybusinessdomain.com, there might be some other company registering mybusinessdomain.org. This could lead to some serious competition that could have been avoided if you had registered all the extensions.

2. Park together – If you have a name with different extensions, or if you register many names at once, it makes sense to park them together with a single service provider. This will facilitate its organization and control.

3. Don’t get tied down: If there’s only one domain name extension available for the name you want, it means the other extensions are already reserved. This means that your website is not the only one with that name. Therefore, it makes sense to search for other variations of that name rather than simply registering the name extension that is available.

4. Cast the net wide: As you sign up, it’s good to think about what you’ll be doing in the future. Would you be doing only what you are doing now or would you like to expand your business as well? Don’t choose a name that defines your business too narrowly. This will make it difficult to expand your business with the same name in the future.

5. Keep it short: Keeping the domain name short will make it easier for people to remember it and there will be less chance that people will miss it.

6. Do not use hyphens unless necessary. By remembering your domain name, people will not remember the spelling along with the hyphen and this could affect the name and business.

7. Keywords are important, but that doesn’t mean stuffing your domain name with keywords. Having a keyword will not guarantee that your website will start ranking among search engines. It makes sense to have keywords only if the keyword reflects your business. However, websites can also work fine if there are no keywords in the domain name.

8. You can use letters, numbers, and hyphens. However, you cannot use special characters like #, $, ^, etc. You can also use capital letters.

9. Avoid established brand names. This could lead to trademark issues and get you in trouble.

10. Always keep your website updated. If your contact information changes, be sure to update it on the website. Remember also the renewal dates of your domain name and renew it on time.