Buy The Domain From Its Current Owner
Sometimes the domain you want isnt available, but it isnt in use either. Thats called a parked domain, and in that case the domains owner may be willing to sell it.
Fortunately, its relatively easy to find out who owns a specific domain. To do this, your best option is WHOis.net:
Enter in the domain youre looking for, and in most cases the search engine will provide information on who owns it and how they can be contacted.
If youre able to get contact information for the parked domain, you can start negotiations. Its best to begin by sending a simple, friendly message letting the owner know youre interested in the domain, and waiting for them to offer an initial price.
Once youve successfully come to an agreement, consider using an intermediary such as an escrow service to complete the transaction. That way, you can ensure that it goes safely and smoothly for both parties.
Research And Measure Domain Value
Image by 1shots / freedigitalphotos.net
You need to be very careful when you buy a pre-owned domain name. Its just like when you want to buy a used car you get it checked, find out if it has ever been involved in an accident etc. Its the same with pre-owned domain which is why its important to look at the history.
Your perfect domain mightve been penalised by Google, flagged for spam, malware, hacking or other illegal activities. When you get that web address, it comes with all the baggage which means youll get everything it stands for good and bad.
Theres actually a great video from Googles Matt Cutts with things to look at when researching a domain to buy. Here are his top tips:
- Search for the domain name without the .com and see what people wrote about it. Has it been criticised for being spammy or doing anything illegal? Does it have a good or a bad reputation?
- Ask the owner to see Google Webmaster Tools and look for messages and stats there.
- Ask the owner to see to get some insights on traffic and more.
Here is the video:
If you want to go back in time and get a historical record of how the site looked in the past, go to archive.org and type in the web address in the WayBackMachine search box.
Next you will be able to browse through snapshots of the site dating between its registration up to just a few days ago.
Heres how IMDb.com looked in 2001:
Tips When Making Your Ca Purchase
Always register the domain name yourself
Never let third parties, such as a marketing agency, complete a registration on your behalf. This can become a problem if you part ways and no longer have access to the account managing your domain name.
Register common variations of your name
If your company or product is commonly misspelled, register the alternate domain names and forward them to your primary website. This helps protect your brand identity and ensures no one else can register these domain names.
Provide accurate contact information
CIRA and your registrar will use the contact information provided during the registration process to communicate important information about your domain name.
Register a .CA with French-accented characters
The .CA domain registry supports French accented characters within domain names: é, ë, ê, è, â, à, æ, ô, , ù, û, ü, ç, î, ï, ÿ. When a .CA domain name is registered, all variations with accented characters are reserved for the original registrant exclusively.
Choose a registration term length that works for you
You can register a domain name from one to 10 years at a time. A longer registration period, combined with setting up auto-renewal with your registrar, can help you ensure your .CA domain name remains registered and active.
Protect your domain
Also Check: Gg Domains
What To Do If The Domain Name You Want Is Taken
If youre doing a domain search and the domain name you want comes up as unavailable, it most likely means that someone already owns it and:
- is using it for a website
- is planning to use it on a site thats not launched yet
- is only using the domain for email addresses
- is keeping it because the name is similar to a domain he/she is actively using and the domain is being redirected to their site
- has an idea for the future and registered the domain in advance
- is just fond of the name
- wants to prevent other entities from using his/her name or brand
Ugh, right? Trying to get the perfect domain can be really frustrating, or, at the very least, really expensive. There are currently 137,510,404 domains registered with .com alone, and as of 2016, were looking at 326.4 million domain names in total. Maybe youll find a diamond in the rough, but its getting harder and harder every day.
Whats a person to do? Well, here are your options.
Domain Names Allow Us To Distinguish Sites
The number of worldwide websites exceeds one billion, and that number is growing by the second. Domain names allow humans to distinguish one site from another instead of having to use the long unique string of numbers known as an internet protocol address. Domain names are made up of the domain extension , the second-level domain , and a host name . Together, these details make up a uniform resource locator .
Recommended Reading: What Is The Io Domain Extension
Choose The Best Domain Name Option
When youre checking for available domain names, youll often find that your first, second, and tenth choices are already taken. Some of the different approaches you can take when this happens are:
- Keep searching. Let your creative juices flow, and continue to search until you find something you love or at least like.
- Choose another extension. If the .com isnt available and youre set on a certain name, consider the .net or .org if you think it will work.
- Reach out to the owner. Maybe the domain is already owned, but its not being put to much use. You could reach out to the owner with an offer.
Research And Find Out The Domain Name Value
The first step towards buying a domain name is to find out what that specific domain is worth. Thats because some domains can be quite expensive. Its best to know if you can afford to make an offer before spending hours trying to figure out how to buy it.
If you do loads of research only to realize that its too expensive, youll be way more disappointed for having wasted your time and effort.
Finding out a domain value is easy. For that, you can go to any domain appraisal site and enter the domain youre interested in. Heres how you can use the domain appraisal tool for GoDaddy.
Simply visit the site and enter the domain address with its extension in the field offered. Now click on the GoValue button.
It will quickly give you a rough estimation of what that domain name is worth. On the right-hand side, it will also compare the same domain name with other extensions and display the price value of each.
This is helpful because you may find that other domain extensions are more affordable than the one you originally had in mind.
Recommended Reading: What Is The Io Domain Used For
Registrant Email Address Considerations
Unfortunately, just finding an email address for the registrant doesnt guarantee contact. Particularly if someone has owned a domain for a long time, they may not use the email address anymore that they provided for registration. Lots of things can change: leaving school, getting hacked, and changing addresses, or simply upgrading the email hosting you use.
Also, many email clients have stringent spam filtering, and emails from addresses that theyve never received email from before may not be allowed through automatically. There are lots of articles out there outlining other spam filter triggers. Heres a good example. These are good things to be aware of for how you craft your email to the owner of the domain you want.
Some people also use WHOIS privacy services, either provided by their registrar or by a third-party service. Sometimes its obvious when one of these services is in place. For example, for customers using our new WHOIS privacy service, information for WhoisTrustee will be shown instead of a person or organizations contact information.
There will be email addresses shown for the contacts when a WHOIS privacy service is in place, but theres a chance that the registrant cannot receive email sent to them.
Tips When Registering A Domain Name
Obtaining the right domain name from the start is important, especially if youre creating a business or personal brand website. Changing domains is not only expensive but also potentially damages search engine rankings and conversion rates.
With this in mind, here are some things to consider when buying a domain name:
Also Check: How To Transfer Squarespace Domain To Godaddy
How To Register A Domain Name With Godaddy
With over 20 million customers, GoDaddy is both a domain registrar and web hosting powerhouse. It has a wide array of domain extensions ranging from .com and .org to newer selections like .fun or .law. The company plans to add even more TLDs to its collection in the future.
To buy a domain on GoDaddy, start with a domain name search on their homepage. The system will reveal whether the name is available for purchase using your desired extension.
If the .com version is taken, GoDaddy offers a domain broker service, where a representative will negotiate with the owner to purchase the name for you. You will pay $119.99 and a 20% commission to hire the agent in addition to the domain registration fee.
Click Add to Cart on a domain name and continue to checkout. On the next page, GoDaddy will offer several add-ons to bundle the order with.
GoDaddy has two privacy and protection options Full and Ultimate . The first protects the domain from hijacking, malicious transfer, and loss of ownership due to billing failures.
On the other hand, the second offers malware detection and search engine blacklist monitoring features to uphold your domain security and reputation.
Additionally, GoDaddy offers a custom business email plan with the domain. The pricing ranges between $1.99/month and $8.99/month.
The next step is to create a GoDaddy account and fill in the billing information. There are three payment methods available credit card, PayPal, and check.
Look At Alternative Tlds
In most cases, if your domain name is taken, it means the .com is taken. Often, the other TLDs arent taken, so you could technically opt for one of those.
But wait! Dont rush off and buy whatever TLD you can find.
This is a complicated decision.
Here are some of the factors to keep in mind.
First,people trust .com URLs more than any other TLD.
The .com extension has a lot on its side. Its familiar, its been around for a while, and its been the gold standard of TLDs for years.
Second, many people think some TLDs are spammy. People tend to think of .com URLs as safe and other TLDs as unsafe or untrustworthy.
Obviously, thats not always the case, but some people will think that no matter what. They cant get their heads around the idea of a trustworthy site that doesnt end in .com.
Third, alternative TLDs have no SEO advantage. No TLD is inherently better than any other.
That information :
So what does this mean for you?
If you want to use a TLD thats not .com, you can do so without losing any SEO power.
However, your audience might not trust it.
It helps if the TLD is directly related to your business or niche. Twitch, a site that broadcasts users playing video games in real time, smartly uses the .tv TLD:
In the end, you have to consider how easy its going to be for your users to remember your URL and whether or not theyll trust a domain thats not a .com.
Recommended Reading: Average Domain Name Cost
Extend Your Brand In The Url
Until 2016, Tesla Motor didnt own Tesla.com because it was already taken.
What did they do? They used TeslaMotor.com instead.
That URL served them well for years because the word motor was such a natural extension of their brand.
This method has the advantage of preserving trustworthiness in your URL.
The catch? You have to make sure you dont throw in just any old word to extend your brand. It has to be relevant and say something about your business.
Gogo, an in-flight Internet provider, uses air along with their brand name:
That makes perfect sense when you think about it.
On the other hand, if they used something like GogoToday, their brand wouldnt have been as obvious, and it wouldnt have sounded as organic.
The trick is to consider related words that you can add to your brand name without sacrificing meaning, memorability, or naturalness.
Some words lend themselves to certain niches. For example, if you sell software, you may be able to use the word app in your URL like Invision does:
This might be your best bet if youre after a .com and want to keep your brand name in the URL.
Check Domain Name Availability
After you choose a domain name, check its availability. You can type a domain into your navigation bar, a search engine, or use a dedicated domain name search database to make sure its available to purchase.
Its best practice to have a few domain name options ready in case your first choice is taken. If your preferred domain name is unavailable, take a moment to think about what the replacement should be ideally, once you get your domain, you wont want or need to change it anytime soon. Try simple variations like including the or my at the front of your domain name, or changing the TLD. If youre set on a specific domain, you can also reach out to the owner and see if theyre willing to sell, and at what price.
If youre launching a business, consider buying multiple domains including common alternate spellings of your brand name, and international domains if you plan to scale so visitors have more ways to find you. You can move, forward, or point domains to ensure people land exactly where you want them to, no matter which domain they use.
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How To Buy A Domain Name: A Simple Guide To Get You Started
A domain name is essentially a digital address its what people will type into their browsers to access your website. You can buy a domain name from a domain name registrar or hosting provider by visiting a domain registrar, finding the domain you want to purchase, and following the instructions to buy it.
Keep in mind that buying a domain name is one of the most critical steps of starting a blog, personal site, or online business. Without one, users would not be able to easily access your website on the internet.
Luckily, the process to register a domain name is quite straightforward even beginners can complete it in a few minutes.
This article will explain each of the simple steps to register a domain name and present some tips and tricks to ease the process.
Check out this video on how to register a domain name: