The Many Advantages of Having Your Own Domain Name

By Karl Heinz Resch

Easy to find
An URL with your name or the name of your company is easier to find or even can be guessed correctly by your prospective visitors.

Easy to remember
Once your customers have found your Web site, it's much more likely that they will remember a short URL than one that reads http://www.somehost.com/members/you/index.html.

Independence
You can switch to another Web space provider and take your URL with you. Without your own domain name you would have to

• resubmit your pages to the search engines and directories
• find out who links to your site and inform them of your new address (hoping that they all change the links)
• eventually keep paying your previous hosting site for a while to redirect the visitors of your old pages to your new location.

Credibility
A lot of Internet users tend to trust a company with their own domain a lot more than one without. However, for others this is not relevant. What do you think of companies that can't afford their own domain name or are hosted on a free server? Serious businesses need to have their own domain name.

Easy to type
A short URL is easier to type in the browsers address field. It's also easier to add it to your SIG file or to write it on your business cards and print it on your business letters.

Protection
Once you've registered your domain name, no one else can take your name and register it. Try a Domain Name Query to find out if your desired domain name is still available.

Affordable
The registration of a .com domain with InterNic only costs USD 35 for one year. The first two years have to be prepaid.

More advantages

• You can have your own access-logs on your server and analyse them easier and faster.
• You can receive email at your domain name and have your own email addresses, like This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it