Domain name is the part of your online address and your visitors will use it to find you easily. For example, Tutorialspoint domain name is tutorialspoint.com. Your domain name is unique to you. Once you have registered it, nobody else can register the same one if you continue to renew it.

Registering a domain name can be easy because you can select whatever name you want, but what you choose is crucial for your business future or your blogging website. So, in this section, let us focus on some rules that we must keep in mind before we purchase a domain name.

Rule 1 − Choose a domain name that can be your brand name, if required. Our domain name tutorialspoint.com is really branding because there is no generic keyword string like tutorials-points.com that can be hard to memorize where the ‘–’ is located.

If your brand doesn’t have numbers don’t purchase a domain with numbers because there is no brand matching from the user perspective. For example, tutorialspoints29.com.

Rule 2 − If you have the financial possibilities, then you can purchase domains with various extensions such as .com, .net, .info, .biz, etc. In our case, it would be like tutorialspoint.net, tutorialspoint.info, tutorialspoint.biz. There are domains that are misspelt, such as a similar case is google.com. If you write gogle.com one ‘o’ is missing, but still it will redirect you to the official website google.com.

Rule 3 − You must ensure that this domain name is not a trademark or is copyrighted.

Rule 4 − Find a short domain name. The lesser the characters in a domain name, the easier it is to type, to say, to share and to get shortlisted on social media platforms and in search results.

Rule 5 − Extensions are suffixes, such as .com or .net, at the end of the web addresses. These can have specific use, so ensure to choose an extension that works for your business. The .com domain extension is by far the most popular, but it can be tough to get a short and memorable .com domain name because it is around for so long. If your webpage is serving locally, then you can buy it with the suffix of your country.

Rule 6 − If your domain name is not going by the brand name, then at least you should use specific keywords which describes your business, for example, tutorialspoint.com. It helps improve your rank on search engines (which increases traffic) and it also makes more sense to your customers.

Domain Name Extensions

First domain type is Top Level Domain (TLD). These top level domains include any extensions which contain only one suffix — for example, .net, .info, .biz and so on.

Second Level Domains (2LDs) are domain names containing one more level after the .com or .co suffix. For example, .com.au is a second level domain style as it contains an additional suffix after the .com that shows the website originates in Australia.

A gTLD is a Generic Top-Level Domain and includes addresses like – .marketing, .estate, .fashion and .photography. This is a booming segment which is very popular recently and there is a huge range to choose from, whatever your industry!

CcTLDs are Country Code Top-Level Domains which are usually restricted to certain countries. These are domains like .au, .uk, .ae, .us, etc.

Extension also has a meaning. The meanings of some top-level domains are listed as follows −

• .com – commercial − This is an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted to register and it is always the main TLD.

• .org – organization − This is an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted to register. But, it is originally intended for use by any non-profit organizations. But as of now, there are no such restrictions and the .org domain name is being used by numerous organizations.

• .net – network − This is an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted to register. It was originally intended for use by domains pointing to a distributed network of computers, or “Umbrella” sites that act as a portal to a set of smaller websites.

• .edu – education − This TLD is limited to specific higher educational institutions such as, but not limited to, trade schools and universities.

• .mil – military − The .mil TLD is limited to use by the United States military.

• .arpa – Address and routing − It is for Advanced Research Projects Agency in the early days on the Internet, .arpa is now exclusively used as an Internet infrastructure TLD.

In the next chapter, we will understand how to register a domain name.