Domain Name Registration

On July 1, 2010, VeriSign®, the registry for .COM and .NET, will increase prices – .COM will go up 7%, and .NET by 10%.

The increase will be passed to registrars like GoDaddy, Netfirms, and BeaverWebHosting and then, unfortunately, to consumers and business owners like you.

If you wish to avoid this price increase, you can renew your domain names by June 30 and add another year to your current expiration dates. You have the option to register or renew for multiple years and lock in long-term savings. Of course, should you have any questions, please give BeaverWebHosting a call at 1-480-505-8821.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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)
4. 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.
5. 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.

Click here to learn what makes a good web site, what additional tools you need to make an online presence an effective marketing tool, please come to one of my monthly seminars. Ask me how you can save 20% on tuition.

If you have a domain registered in Canada (this very likely happens in other countries as well) you may receive a letter in the mail, such as this one shown here, informing you that your domain name registration will soon expire, and that you should renew it as soon as possible.

Be very careful – it may be a scam. This letter usually looks very official. It may list the domain or domains you have registered, along with their expiry dates. On the surface the letter looks like it’s coming from your domain registrar, but upon closer inspection you realize that this is in fact a letter from a domain registrar with whom you have no prior relationship. The letter is from a competing registrar trying to trick you in transferring your domain registration to them.

Although in most cases the registrar may be a genuine business, most likely the prices offered are much higher than the regular price you’d pay to your original registrar.

Why is this happening? You may not be aware of the fact that your name and postal address are publicly available from your domain registrar, and unscrupulous companies may abuse this system by sending you offers which in most cases are not in your best interest to pursue.

In Canada, due to the recent changes to the dot-ca WHOIS search tool, if you registered a domain as a private citizen your contact information is kept private, however, if you registered as a business, then your postal address and possibly other information, such as your name and telephone number may be available for “harvesting.”

Keep an eye on and protect your important business assets: your domain names. My personal recommendation for domain registration is 1&1 who offer free “private” registration, which is usually an additional fee of at least $10 annually per domain with other reputable registrars such as GoDaddy.com and NetFirms.com. A private registration hides all of your information from public view.