A company called “Domain Registry of America” (DROA) is targeting customers of all domain providers with deceptive early renewal reminders by post. Usually, the domain name owner will receive a letter asking them to renew their domain name. When you sign such a letter and provide payment details, you will actually move your domain name to a different provider. If you are in doubt about your domain name renewal, please contact us and we will happily provide information about your actual domain name registration company.

Domain names are relatively cheap to buy. A “.co.uk” domain name is normally in the region of £3 per year, a “.com” domain name is normally around £10 per year.

Check the www.123-reg.co.uk website to see current domain name prices.

Anybody can buy a domain name! You don’t need to be a specialist or a web designer to do so. It’s as simple as buying a book on Amazon!

If you feel unsure about your domain name, please give us a call on 01506 66 86 85 and we can help you find the right domain name for your business.

Try to find the shortest domain name you can – bear in mind you might want to print it on a business card, or on your car. For example, www.robert-smith-joiners-and-building-services.co.uk is far too long to be printed in a decent size on a van or a car! Instead, try to register www.smith-joiners.co.uk. The domain name does not have to be your exact business name or trading name! It also does not need to include any legal endings, such as Ltd.

There are numerous companies out there that sell domain names. It is important, however, that you find one that can be trusted, one which has a good reputation, one which gives you control over your domain name.

A domain name can have many different settings, for example where emails are routed, where the website is called up from etc. So it is important that the company you choose gives you control over your domain name. When registering a domain name, you should be given a username and password so you or your web designer can access the domain name.

A company which gives you full access to your domain name is www.123-reg.co.uk. 123-reg is a reputable and well-established company selling domain names in the UK.

Purchasing a domain name for a business in the UK

When your business resides in the UK and mainly operates in the UK, it is recommended that you purchase a domain name ending in “.co.uk”. You may want to register a “.com” too, but it is better for the main domain name to be “.co.uk”. There are several reasons for this: One is that search engines recognise by the domain name where a business resides and trades. If there was a business out there called “beautifulflowers.co.uk” and you are determined that your business is called “beautifulflowers”, but the domain name is already taken, you might be tempted to just work with the “beautifulflowers.com” domain name. It is likely, however, that in a Google search for a UK flower business your competitor is higher in the rankings than you because they have the “.co.uk” ending.

You might want to check, if the domain name “beautiful-flowers.co.uk” is still available (a “-” between “beautiful” and “flowers”). This might just do the trick! Or you could add a small word, such as “beautifulflowers-uk.co.uk” – in order to get the “.co.uk” domain name.

Also, if you are mainly trading in the UK, your potential clients immediately see in Google searches that the website they are about to visit is a UK website.

Do I need to buy every domain combination? Such as .net, .com. .me?

We have been asked this numerous times. Some of our clients swear by buying them all, but we believe it is a waste of money!

• On your letterheads, there will only be one domain name, right?
• On your business card, there will only be one domain name, right?
• On your car or van, there will only be one domain name, right?
• When a client asks you for your website, you will only give them one domain name, right?
• Search Engine Results are NOT improved by having different domain names. Because search engines probably only know that you use mainly one domain name.

If you want to find out if your domain name contact details are correct or when your, or any, domain name expires, go to the Nominet Website. You will find a search field that is labelled “WHOIS”. Enter the domain name into this field, such as “bbc.co.uk”. Please omit the “www” bit. You will then be presented with a page that contains information relating to your domain name.

Please click here to see what a WHOIS search for the BBC.co.uk domain name will look like.

On the data page, you will see the registrant’s address if the registrant decided to display it. You will also see when the domain name was purchased and when it will expire.

Furthermore, you can find out the domain name server settings of a particular domain name. This will then allow you to find out about the web hosting company.

If you have lost your paperwork, this WHOIS lookup can be very useful to recover missing information about your domain name and your web hosting.

Also, if you want to purchase a particular .co.uk domain name and you know that it is not in use, you can wait until it becomes available and purchase it after a certain period it has to lapse without being renewed.

Several features can be controlled for a domain name, such as the IPS TAG and the DNS.

The IPS TAG determines the company you registered your domain name with. I.e. the company you pay money to for buying/renewing your domain name (such as www.123-reg.co.uk).

If you want to change the IPS TAG because you would like a different company to “look after your domain names” (for price reasons for example), you need to contact the company you registered the domain with and ask them to change the TAG to the TAG of your new provider. Some companies will charge a small fee for this change and are reluctant to “let you go” and want reasons for the change. The company you change your domain name to will provide you with their IPS TAG which you need to hand over to the current company, so that they can make the change. The new company might charge a small fee too for transferring a domain name to their business.

The Domain Name Servers (DNS) (usually two) determine to which web hosting company the domain name points. If you have a domain name with www.123-reg.co.uk, and your webhosting is with www.plugsocket.com (for example), the domain name servers would have to be changed to ns1.plugsocket.com and ns2.plugsocket.com. Your domain name needs to “know” where your website files are. By pointing the DNS to the servers of Plugsocket, your website will be displayed.

Some companies provide you with an extensive control panel that allows you to make changes to the Domain Name servers yourself – as often as required – and without any extra fee. Check out www.123-reg.co.uk if you want to buy a new domain name.