Registering your domain (in plain english)

Why should you do it?

Online Reputation Management (ORM) is all about managing your brand’s reputation online. In order to do this you must take ownership of your brand online – and registering your domain is a key step in doing this. 

To be frank, if you don’t register your domain, someone else will. This is something you don’t want to happen for a number of reasons namely:

• Traffic that should be coming to your website will be going elsewhere, never a good thing
• Once your name has been registered by someone else, it is their property, you will only be able to obtain that domain by buying it from them (it is so much easier to just own it in the first place!)
• Most importantly your domain may be used for a site that is extremely negative for your brand’s reputation e.g. a gripe site
• Check out the more here that end in “suck.com”

Some things to consider when registering your domain:

• Having your brand as the domain name is first prize.
• You can also use keywords & key phrases as your domain name .
• You should register many variants of your domain including common misspellings and abbreviations - these will automatically redirect visitors to your website).
• Register your domain with other extensions eg. .com, .net and .co.za.

How to register:

• Decide which domain you would like to register.
• Decide on a credible and reliable domain registrar.
• Register all versions of your domain with your domain registrar.
• Find a suitable host.
• Job done.

Registering your domain may seem like an extremely simple process, but one that will reap endless ORM rewards in the long run.