A business website without a domain name looks extremely unprofessional. Customers will be given the impression that you are small, not well-established, and perhaps even not entirely trustworthy. A domain name, and especially a memorable and relevant one, will make a huge difference to the way you are perceived by your customers. If you are a small business just setting out, on the Web, a good domain name will set you alongside large and well-established firms. Nowadays the Internet is part of everyday business; your website is a place where your customers can learn about you, your products and services, anywhere in the world and even outside working hours. It is therefore vitally important that you present a friendly, appealing and professional "handshake" in the form of your domain name. It is the first impression that your customers will have of your site, so it needs to be just right.

Domain Names containing keywords can be helpful for gaining good search engine rankings. If the name of your business itself does not contain a keyword, you could consider adding the keyword into your domain name; for example, if your business is called A1 Ltd, and you sell beds, your domain name could be A1Beds.com or BedsByA1.com. It is worth noting that some online directories list their entries in alphanumeric order according to the ASCII chart, so placing digits or letters which come early in the alphabet at the beginning of the alphabet might be wise.

A major advantage of having your own domain name is that you can change hosting without having to change your domain name and thereby lose customers. If your domain name is http://internetserviceprovider/users/a1beds/index.html/, not only will it be hard to find both on search engines and for people attempting to remember your address, but if you change hosting, you will have to change your address as you will no longer be entitled to the free web space. If you have your own domain name, it comes with you whenever you change hosting.

Author: Natalie Catchpole