What is a domain name and how domains work?

Creating a unique domain name can be such a tricky task. It should sound good, be never-to-be-forgotten and be the go-to card for a website. However, most often, the owners of brands or companies when they have to deal with registering a new website for promoting a business cannot even say what a domain name is, they may even confuse it with hosting. To start and register a web platform is a rather complicated and time-consuming process, so it is important to know all its details. Let’s start with the domain name. 

What is a domain name? 

In short, a domain name can be explained as the mailing address for your site if it were a building. In more complex terms, people write it in the browser to find your site.

The Internet is called the ‘web’ for a reason. The Internet is an enormously large net of billions of computers, and each computer has its own address – IP. It is a unique set of numbers corresponding to a specific computer. However, it is hard to remember a random numbers, that is why there are domain names.

Agree, memorizing a few words that are identical with the name of the company, brand, blog or person you are looking for in the Internet is much easier than memorizing a hundred IP addresses of each site you are interested in.

How do domain names work? 

When writing a domain name in your Google Chrome or Firefox, the site is usually found instantly, but in fact, in a split second, there are several exchanges of information and requests between your and other computers.

So, we already know that the domain name is the so-called mailing address to the site that is stored on the computer. Sites are most often served by hosting companies. They provide clients with their servers or, in other words, computers in which websites and their information are stored. When the domain names are entered on browser page, your computer requests the server to find unique domain names you have just entered. The server finds them and transfers the information back to your computer.

Going deeper into the topic, then several processes that occur between users’ computers and servers search for a site by its name. The search takes place using the IP address. “Translating” of the IP address into the domain name and vice versa is possible with Domain Name System (DNS).

Types of domain names

When you get a domain name, you must also select its extension. These are letters that stand after the dot. There are several types of such extensions, here are a few examples of them.

1. TLD 

Top-level domains are considered to be the most widely spread and are located at the top of the DNS. These include such well-known domains as .com, .org and .net. In addition to these, there are many other possible options such as .biz or. club that are less common and often not the best options to use.

2. ccTLD

Country-code top-level domain is used by sites whose activities are focused on the audience of a certain country. An example is .lu domain for Luxemburg or .ru for Russia.

3. sTLD 

Sponsored top-level domain used for sponsored sites to serve a specific segment of the population, for example .edu for educational establishments or .mil for military.

There are plenty of other less popular types of domains. When registering a site, it is better to stick to the domain extension corresponding to the activity of your site.

How to choose a domain name for your site? 

It is crucial to understand that the domain name is the business card of your site. It should be simple, understandable and memorable, otherwise. your potential clients or visitors will quickly forget it and will not use your services or read your blog. Here are some useful advise on how to find perfect domain name:

• Extension. If you are not a government or educational organization, or you do not need to work with the target audience of a specific country or region, it is recommended to use the .com extension. The explanation is simple – it is the easiest to keep in mind. Now there are a huge variety of especially attractive domains, but if a person sees it for the first time, most likely he will not be able to remember it. Moreover, there are many people who do not get involved in this topic at all and write .com whenever they are looking for the site they need.
• Keywords. If you do not have a world-famous company that is known in every corner of the world or you are not a blogger with a multimillion audience, it is better to use keywords along with the name of your site so that people who do not even know about you, but need your goods or services, could find you.
• Keep it short. Again, back to imperfect human memory, long domain names are also hard to remember. Try to include the keyword in the title, but it is better not to exceed the limit of 14-17 characters.
• Spelling. The perfect domain name is not only effortless to remember but also easy to write. Do not use a lot of words in the title, because they write everything together and sometimes it can be difficult to write. It is also best not to use words from different languages in the same name, especially if you are targeting an audience of a specific country or region.
• Uniqueness. Among other things, make the domain name special, which would differentiate you from the competition. It can be a simple, laconic and effective brand name, or you can use humor to it, which is especially suitable for personal blogs.
• No hyphen. Coming back to spelling, hyphens in domain names are a guaranteed typo for many users. In addition, hyphens are often used in the names of spammer sites that are automatically generated by the computer and the hyphen is a good tool for creating unique domains.
• Domain Name Generator. If you have already read up to this point, and you still have no idea for a domain name, then use a domain name generator. You can set the direction of activity of your site and the generator will offer you the best options.
• Hurry up. There are many stories of companies failing to register their domain names because someone else has already done so. There are even more stories of how people sold unique and original names, and they were bought by companies for big money, sometimes even seven-figure sums. Isn’t it the best example of how momentous a domain name is in order to be found on the Internet among billions of other sites? 

By following these tips, you can have range of pretty good idea for a really attractive domain name so that it is catchy, memorable, easy to enter and responds to the focus and services of the site. A domain name is the very first thing people see when they search for a site and the name can be easily turned into a business card that attracts attention and interest.