branding

21
Apr

Make Sure You’re Really the Master of Your Domain Name

Over the last few weeks I’ve met several small business owners who share the same problem: they don’t have full control and access to their business Internet domain registration.

In one case my client is the person who registered his domain name, but when he moved, failed to update his postal and email addresses listed under his account. Because it was a city-to-city move, he also changed Internet service providers, so his old email address expired. An email is the 1st choice for communication for any registration-related issues, so keep that current at all times, perhaps even use a Gmail or Yahoo! account for that.

Another client I’m helping had a different situation: he originally hired someone else to build his web site, and although the web designer registered the domain in my client’s name, it was done within the designer’s web hosting account, so my client didn’t have full access to his domain.

Here are the 5 tips on dealing with web developers:

Check your developer’s online “rating” by using this independent web site grading tool. You’re looking at a number that’s higher than 80, but above 90 would be better.
Visit Alexa.com and install their FireFox Extension (you’re not using Internet Explorer I hope :-) this tool will give you an idea how much traffic your web developer’s site is getting. Serious web sites have a rating of less than 1,000,000. If a site has an Alexa rating of 1,000,000 this means there are 1 million other web sites that have more traffic, so this is a relative number — and the lower the better.
Finally, check the site for Google Page Rank. You can to that easily by installing the Google Toolbar. PR goes from 0 to 10, the higher the better. Small business sites will typically have a rank of 0-2, so you’re looking for 3 and higher. (just in case you’re wondering, this blog site has PR2 which is pretty good for a site that was launched barely 2 months ago)
Next, you can check your small web developer on Linkedin. This professional social networking community has high standards for endorsements and recommendations, so you should check the person’s Linkedin profile, specifically the number of recommendations received, but also the type of recommendations, as the work performed may not align with your own needs.
Finally, pick a solid domain registrar and hosting company. I like to recommend BeaverWebHosting.com, which is a GoDaddy reseller, so you get the same world-class products and services, but you can also get personalized advice (for advice, simply call me :-) Once piece od advice, never call the hosting company directly as they’ll try to sell you services and products you may think you need and may sound tempting, but are largely unnecessary.