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Arguably, the most important part of a website is, quite simply, its name. This seems like a relatively mindless statement, but when you really think about it, the name is very closely related to the website’s reputation, and to the amount of web traffic it will attract. This is why, when building your own website through a professional hosting company such as Network Solutions, your first and possibly most crucial step will involve your domain name registration. What this means, if you are inexperienced in the world of web design, is simply picking and securing the name of your website (such as mywebsite.com, or mywebsite.org, etc.).

To begin with, the option to register your own legitimate domain name is one of the biggest benefits of using a professional hosting company to design your website. This way, you will not belong to some smaller host, and your website will not look like “webhost.com/my website.” It will be more personal and, as a result, more professional. With the help of your hosting company, you will simply be able to enter the name you’d like for your website and run a search to see if it is available on the Web. If indeed the name you’d like for your site is available, you can set about purchasing it for yourself, and can then go about building your site upon it. However, depending on your preferences, there may be more to it than this. Here are a few tips to consider when choosing a domain name:

1.) Simplicity – While this may seem obvious, it is always a good idea to make your website’s name as simple as possible. Even the difference between “my-website.com” and “mywebsite.com” is substantial, as the second option is the more simple and basic, and is therefore more likely to be used by people looking for your site. The simpler your domain name is, the easier it will be for people to find your website online.

2.) Broaden Your Reach – If you care particularly about generating a large amount of web traffic (for instance, if you are starting your website for business purposes, etc.) you may want to consider buying a few separate domain names. Using the example from above, you may want to purchase both “my-website.com” and “mywebsite.com,” as well as other similar options, in order to prevent competitors from buying up similar platforms and taking web traffic from you. In fact, you can even have your excess domain names set up to link automatically to your actual website (meaning that a visitor who goes to my-website.com will be redirected to mywebsite.com), which can go a long way toward increasing your traffic.