If search engine ranking is important for your business and the competition is tough, every little step helps. Renewing your domain name for a longer period of time, seems to be such a step. Although only Google knows exactly how&what, it is believed that registrations for 5, 10 or even 100 years help your search engine rankings. So, if you plan to stay ahead of the crowd, you might consider spending a few more bucks upfront and select the 5 of 10 year period.

Especially if your domain name and your site proved to be a winner, its good business sense to register a domain for at least 5 years.

There is also the benefit of not having to bother with renewals for a couple of years. By renewing your domain name for several years, your domain name won’t expire for a while, and it won’t be opened up to expired domain name buyers.Trust me, you will not be the first or the last who ‘forgets’ to renew his domian and see a competitor buy the fruits of your hard work for a meassely 8 or 9 dollars. Yes, you can lose critical positioning in the search engines if you don’t reregister your domain name in time. You may have to start the SEO process all over again!

There are approximately 70 million .COM domains registered. The most common few letter domain names are all taken. And here is the funny part: a lot (a lot!) of these names are parked in some obsolete corner of the internet, gathering digital dust.

Their owners are just waiting for the right offer. What would you do if you own a domain name like money.com or profit.com?

In the early days of the internet, it was possible to buy a two letter domain name. That’s not an option any more. Since the internet really took off, registrars mandate a 3-character minimum length.

Let’s be honest here: many if not all of these 3, 4 or 5 letter domain names are taken. Even with numbers added, like eat1.com, probably all the way up to eat999.com.

Give it a try. Go to www.eat.com and you’ll end up on the website of Ragu. Go to www.eat2.com or www.eat”whatever number”.com and you’ll land on a parked domain with some ads on it.

Like it or not, if you need a good, premium domain name, you either need lots of cash or have to settle for a longer domain name.

Bad? Not necessarily. Longer domain names let you put in a keyword. And that’s extremely important for your search engine rankings.

Quick: what does it say: thedolphinsmakemecry?

I bet that took you a second to read and understand. And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to get across when it comes to choosing a good domain name.

The days of 3 or even 8 letter domain names are over. They’ve simply become too expensive for the average internet marketer. What we see happen now, is a rush on so called keyword rich domain names. So if your website is about the dolphins, you want that word in the url.

At any price?

That’s up to you. If you are going for free, organic traffic, coming from search engines, it is probably the best way to go. But if you want to brand your company or website and rely more on repeat visitors, it helps to pick a domain name that is logical, catchy and easy to remember.

Oh, and just to make sure: I wouldn’t choose thedolphinsmakemecry in a million years…

No, that’s not a dumb question. A domain is a name that identifies IP addresses on the internet. They are used to identify Web pages. For example, in the URL http://www.jasonsdomains.com/index.html, the domain name is jasonsdomains.com. You use your domain name to create an identity on the World Wide Web.

You register a domain name by registering with a domain name services registrar. The domains listed at www.jasonsdomains.com are registered at www.fabulous.com. There are lots of others. Another well know registrar is NameCheap

The domain name industry is regulated and overseen by ICANN. ICANN is responsible for providing standards and procedures for certifying companies as domain name registrars.

Domain name registration has grown over the years. The first one ever was Network Solutions. That was only ten years ago. Now there are hundreds, if not thousands, of accredited registrars, doing what Network Solutions started. Only a certified domain name registrar like Network Solutions or Fabulous.com is permitted to access the domain name master database.

Easy question, easy answer. If you can, secure a .com URL. I really, really, really, strongly recommend purchasing a dot-com domain name as opposed to a

.net, .info, .biz or anything else. As a matter of fact, on www.JasonsDomains.com 99,99% of all available domain names are dot-coms.

Why? Not just at the aesthetic reasons. Although a dot-com really does look more professional. I recommend dot-com’s over any other extension because of

search engine friendliness.

Google is known to rate .biz, .us or whatever (except for .edu’s en .org’s) significant lower then .com’s and it is being said that Big G even sort of

ignores dot-info’s because these domains are often misused by spammers.

So if you can, grab that .com as soon as you can and never let it  go!