Don't Lose Your Domain NameLoosing your domain name is costly and it can happen to you.
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Patricia Hughes May 29, 2007
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A key element in Internet marketing is your domain name. Just
think of the time, money and effort you put into creating and marketing
your Web site . Also consider everything that has your domain and email
address. Imagine if you lost your domain name. What would that cost
you, not only in time and money, but lost opportunities?
Every Web site owner should have a check list of maintenance
activity for their site on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. One
of the items on your yearly checklist should include checking your
domain name.
Years seem to fly by and you may have registered your domain name
for a two or three years so you don’t worry about when it expires. You
may also have a false sense of security because you feel that the
company you bought the domain name from will inform you. You’re right,
the company will inform you, but it is not fool proof.
Keep in mind, depending on which company you used, if their main
business is registering domains they probably don’t care if your domain
expires. Many of these companies have backorder options. Backorder
options gives someone the ability to backorder your domain so the very
second your domain expires it is registered with the person that
backordered it. It may not seem legal, but it is.
In addition, the company that backordered your name can be kept
anonymous – even if they end up with your name. Your name can be sold
to someone else that may never use it and you may never be able to find
out who has it. Just think about it. An unethical competitor can
backorder your domain name and if you are not careful they can own it
and sit on it just to keep you from having it. Or they can try to turn
around and sell it to you for thousands of dollars and it’s all legal.
Not ethical, but legal.
When you registered your domain name you most likely included your
contact information, but has that changed? Is the email address still
valid and do you check it often? If you’re like me, you probably
receive hundreds of emails a day and many go straight into your spam
folder and get lost. You should not expect the company that your
registered your domain name with to call you. They won’t.
Each year you should check the status of your domain name. Have some
sort of system to remind you such as a tickler file or an email alert.
When you check on your domain name you may want to check to see if
there are other domain extensions available such as .net or .mobi. You
may not want to use these names right now, but they are inexpensive, so
it’s worth buying them.
Be sure to register your domain name with a reliable company. Also,
make it easy on yourself and consider registering it with your hosting
company. Our hosting company’s main business is hosting. Registering
domain names is a value added service. It may cost a few dollars more
to register the domain name with them, but the convenience of having
all the information at one location is extremely valuable. We are able
to go into our hosting account information and on the dash board see
when the domain names expire.
Your domain name is a valuable asset to your company. The age of a
domain name also plays into rankings for search engines. Just image if
you lost your domain name and everything you will have to do to change
it or the cost of trying to get it back. Consider the cost of
reprogramming your site, reprinting everything that has your domain
name and not to mention any online ads you have running. Losing your
domain name will cost you thousands of dollars. It is something you do
NOT want to go through.
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