UK Affiliate Networks

Independent UK Affiliate Programs

Choosing your domain name

Choosing a domain name is an important part of creating your new website. Here are a few things that you should keep in mind when choosing a domain.

Try and choose a domain that is easy to remember, to encourage repeat visitors to your website. This is increasing difficult these days as domains are being bought in their thousands and hoarded by "cyber squatters" hoping to sell on the domain they have purchased at a premium. However, there are still good domains to be found if you are creative in your thinking. You don't have to choose dictionary words - you could make up a random word eg kelkoo.com - or you could choose an obviously recognisable misspelling of a dictionary word, eg sexee.co.uk. Alternatively you could string together one or two words that describe what you are promoting - eg fishingtackle, fishing-tackle, fishing-rods-tackle etc. The advantage of stringing words together is that you get a boost in search engine rankings for the terms in the domain name. So if I have a site selling red widgets, all things being equal, I am likely to rank higher for the search term "red widgets" with the domain red-widgets.co.uk, than I am with the domain squee.co.uk, for example. The obvious disadvantage is that longer domains can be more difficult to remember. For this site, you can see that I have chosen the long domain approach, as I would like my site to rank highly for the term "affiliate programs".

Another thing to bear in mind is the geographical location of your domain name. If you choose a domain ending in .co.uk, .org.uk or .me.uk, you will always appear to be "within the UK" in the Google search engine, even if your site is physically hosted outside of the UK. However, if you choose a .com, .net, .org., .info or .biz domain and want to target a UK audience, you will need to physically host your domain on servers that are based in the UK. This can restrict your choice of web hosts, as traditionally UK hosting services are less competitive than their US rivals and offer less features. If you have already bought an none UK domain and want it to show up in the UK search engine results, then I would recommend 123-reg as a UK host. They do not offer the same number of features as Hostgator, but have generally been a reliable web host for one of my other web sites, ShoppingTrolley.Net. To clarify, if I hosted ShoppingTrolley.Net with Hostgator, this site would not appear as being "within the UK" on the Google search engine listings, which would be a shame as it is a site that targets UK shoppers! Certainly, within the UK 123-reg are hard to beat as a web host, and have won numerous awards for web hosting including the Number One Unix web hosting provider, Oct 2007 and the Number One Budget web hosting provider, Sept 2007 in the UK Web Host Directory Awards.

Note that some other country specific names can show up as being "within the UK" if they are hosted in the UK, and others do not. There doesn't appear to be a lot of logic to this process. For example, if a .tv domain, or a .nu domain are physically hosted within the UK, then they will show up in the UK search results. However, .me domains and .st domains currently do not show up as being physically hosted within the UK. Would you like to be able to check this for yourself? Here is the search command in Google: site:.me and choose "within the UK" - no domains show up. Just change the .me into whatever other domain name ending you want to check.

So should I stick with a .uk domain name then, to be safe?

As with all things, you can please yourself domains and choosing domain names. If you want to target a worldwide audience, go with a .com or whatever. However, if you feel your business would benefit from that advantage in the UK search engines, I would recommend a domain name ending in .uk. Note - this does not include the domains .uk.com and .gb.com - those domains are not true UK domains, but subdomains of .com. However, they have recently started to show up in the "within the UK" search engine results even when physically located outside of the UK.

You appear to be plugging 123-reg for domains. Why?

I register all my .uk domains through 123-reg. Their prices are cheap - £6.56 including VAT for a two year .co.uk domain name registration - to my mind, you can't go wrong at that price. In addition, the control panel has everything you could need. You can change the domain servers whenever you want, or set up web and email forwarding, all at no additional cost. 123-reg are owned by Pipex / GX networks and are a plc listed on the London stock exchange. Unlike some of the smaller domain registrars, you can be sure that they will be around in years to come and you won't have hassle accessing your domains in the future. Register your domain today and keep checking this site for more help and advice in setting up your own, profitable online business.