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Choosing The Right Domain Name

Find the right domain name Take your time when choosing your domain name because it can determine how hard or easy your website will be to promote. Below are some things to think about when choosing your domain name.

Your Domain Name Should Describe What Your Website Is All About

You should be able to tell viewers what your site is all about using just a few words. This distilled concept will be the main keywords for your site.

Defining these keywords in your domain name will help tell people exactly what your site is about. For example, if you are building a website that focuses on musical instruments, the domain name "musiciansgear.com" tells people exactly what the website is about. On the other hand, "music.com" suggests that the website is about music, but it could be for sheet music, hiring a musician or possibly recorded music.

Using highly descriptive keywords in your domain also helps you gain better search engine rankings. Search engines give more value to domain names that contain the keywords that people are searching for, and will rank websites that have the specific keyword in the domain name higher.

Your Domain Name Should Be Easy to Say, Spell, and Remember

Of course there are exceptions to this rule, but if you know the name of a site where the name is hard to say or spell, or if the name of the site doesn't really describe the products they sell, it's likely the owner of that site spent a great deal of time, money and energy to market that name so that you know it now. While Amazon.com is a very memorable domain name, the folks at Amazon had a considerable advertising budget to make that happen. You want to make sure that your domain name is easy to remember, especially after people see it or hear it. If you were to tell someone what your domain name is, would they know how to spell it?

Make sure that none of the words in your domain name can easily be confused with another word. For example, jobassistants.com and jobassistance.com sound the same, but are spelled differently.

Keep It Short (If You Can)

Most short domain names (single word domains) for popular subject matters will likely be taken, but you still want to keep your domain name as short as is practical. Most domain names under 3-7 characters for the .com and .net domains have already been purchased and are no longer available. So, you're going to need to try to find something a little longer, but keep in mind that the length of your domain name should be as short as you can get.

While a domain name can be up to 67 characters long, obviously you don't want a viewer to have to key in 67 characters to find you. Most viewers won't be able to remember it, and fewer still are likely to spell it without typos. Using our music store example, the following domain name would probably not be a good choice: www.verybestmusicalinstrumentssupply.com

You Can Buy (and Use) More Than One Name

If you think that people might have a problem mispelling your name when they key it in, you may wish to purchase and employ the misspelled domain name too! Our company (hosting4less.com) often has people typing "hostingforless" and even "hostingfourless". The simple solution was to buy those domain names too. No matter how you spell it, you'll still find us!

What's Your Extension?

The 'extension' is what appears at the end of your domain name. Domains that end with .com are the most common. Of course, since they've been around so long and are the standard, shorter .com addresses are more difficult to get. Recently .co has been added to the mix and so many good short names are still available with this domain name. You might also wish to try .biz or .info, while these are not the most common extensions, they're becoming more accepted with time and the different extension might even make your domain more memorable.

If you have a highly recognized business, we would recomend registering not only the .com form of your domain name, but also the .org, .net, and perhaps even the .biz and .co forms as well. This can keep copycat sites from using those similar domains to create 'impostor' sites that appear to be yours.

Instant Answers to Web Hosting Questions

What do I do if I've lost my password?
What do I do if I've lost my password?

If you've lot your password to your site or FTP space, you'll need to send us an email letting us know who you are, the name of your website (or the name the account is listed under) and the last 4 digits of the credit card used to open the account. If you'd like us to call you back, please include your phone number. This is for security purposes, and for your protection. This method assures us that we're communicating with the authorized site administrators. Send your email to: support@hosting4less.com
How are web hosting overages billed?
How are overages billed?
Hosting 4 Less offers various hosting packages The user will be kept abreast of their disk space, bandwidth and email accounts via a web based reporting tool that will let the user know how much disk space, bandwidth and email accounts he/she is consuming. If the client surpasses these limits the client can adjust their usage or upgrade to a larger package. The client will be automatically charged the following surcharges during the first week in the following month for the overages in the preceding month.

• Bandwidth: $1 per GB over.
• Storage:$ .10 per MB over.
• Email Accounts: $1 per POP Account over.
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