It seems that physical stores are not the only choice for shopping anymore.
These days, it can be said that many retailers are doing most of their business online and businesses that have not caught up with eCommerce are scrambling to create a web presence.
eCommerce sale revenues in America by year end are projected to go over a half- trillion dollar – and this means approximately three in every four Americans make at least one online purchase per year. So e-commerce’s popularity, it seems, will continue into our closer future as well.
With all the businesses that today are moving online, the registration of domain names becomes more of a competitive process. Your domain name is the name representing your online business and should be a brand you are building upon, so here is the road map to help you make a good choice of domain.
Exploring different categories of domain names
Selecting the right and valuable domain name for your site is the hardest one among the other Web designing choices you might encounter.
Choosing the name right—easy to type, inward budget, keywords-rich, and customer-innovative name will help in your business online success.
Was it already a surprise for you that there exists several types of domain names? An investigation of different types of domain names and the importance of having one that fits your business image is a must before you go ahead and look for a domain name that is unoccupied and your choice of extension.
What exactly are domain names?
So let’s start with the definition of the domain name of the website. Essentially, a domain name is the element that appears between the protocol indicator (HTTP://) and the first slash that occurs in a URL or web address.
For instance, in the URL: https://www.australianonlinecasino.io/ here, the domain name is: australianonlinecasino.io. The value of this field might be not evident to the most of users, yet, here, it is the placeholder for the IP address of the computer or web-site.
Every device that is connected to the Internet has an IP address and is assigned to the device and cannot be used by another device at the same time.
To make it easier, computer experts introduced the Internet Protocol Address System, which acts like a virtual address book. This system assigns a unique 32 bits or 128 bits digital number, known as an IP Address, to each computer or website for the identification purpose.
However, this system was efficient despite the fact that it created communication barriers among computer programmers and also, to the non-technologically savvy population. A follow up was the DNS or domain name system which allowed website owners to register a unique name that could serve as an alias or a substitute to the IP address.
The Domain Name System (DNS)
The Domain Name System works with the translation of the domain name to the IP address character set through the Domain Name System server. This system which is server-based, present in many countries, works as a single database.
When you enter a domain name in the address bar of your web browser, your web browser communicates with name servers to obtain the IP address that is associated with that domain name.
If an extension of a domain is not defined, the query is redirected to a server that is organized according to the Domain Name System hierarchy (DNS): from the highest to the lowest category. This is the way of short navigation that is in turn very convenient, and this is how the popularity of the internet increased.
Domain names are used for three main functions.
1. The domain name is the entrance door to the facilities where the customers will start interacting with your brand. The most effective domain name would be one that is catchy and addresses the clients needs while the unfit name can put off some customers.
2. Through a domain name, you can instantly communicate what you are about and what you offer to your customers. An appropriate domain name that relates to your product can also refer to your company, while a unique one can create a firm connection between your brand and product.
3. Keyword-targeting SEO practices are aimed at boosting your website’s position in the search engines. Though an exact match domain is not necessary, a domain that is related closely to your content will improve your SEO rank.
Varieties of domain names
Top-Level Domains (TLDs)
In 1985, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) introduced six primary top-level domains or simply domain name extensions which represent the highest node in the DNS tree.These include,
.com: In the beginning it only denoted the companies but .com soon became the most popular and sometimes only used top-level domain name, despite being initially meant for commercial purposes.
.net: Originally meant only for a few networking organizations, .net was soon adopted beyond its initial intended scope.
.edu: Designed with a focus on educational establishments, .edu first became closely identified with American schools.
.org: The .org was specifically developed for non-profit organizations, but like other entities it is now being used by businesses and communities.
.mil: Only US military services have access to . mil and thus using it exclusively for military purposes.
.gov: Reservation for federal government bodies from America particularly, .gov is used by diverse governmental agencies at various levels now.
Country code top-level domains (ccTLD)
Distinguishing between countries, domain names consisting of just two letters were introduced along with the linking to specific countries or regions; eg., .uk and .au stand for England and Australia respectively.
First of all, country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) were segregated for a few individuals who were citizens of that respective country. However, some countries, however, authorized external actors to register domain names with the corresponding country codes.
Internationalized country code top-level domains (IDN ccTLD)
This was a high-level designation that has a machine-readable structure built in, and so it allows you to use non-Latin characters or special characters without any difficulty.
Generic top-level domains (gTLD)
This was a high-level designation that has a machine-readable structure built in, and so it allows you to use non-Latin characters or special characters without any difficulty.
Generic top-level domains is a set of top-level domains in DNS that is a category of its own. In the present time, there are 21 generic top-level domains within the root zone, the highest level of domain name system structure.
Although there are more than 1500 gTLDs in working, these 21 are the most used by the people in Internet platform irrespective of their type.They include four sub-categories:
(.com, .net, .org, .info), of which the first one can be used generically without any specific purpose assigned to it.
Generic domains that have a restriction upon them and can only be used according to their respective objectives such as (.pro, .biz, .name).
Sponsored domains such as .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .aero, .cat, .asia, .mobi, .coop, .travel, .tel, and .jobs which are the ones that will only be used by businesses that are associated with the particular industry in concern.
Infrastructure (.arpa) which was one of the flagship top-level domains abstruse to the DNS architecture.
Second-level domains
Second-level domains are domain names that come after the top-level domains in the hierarchy.
For instance, in “Nike.com”, “Nike” is the second-level domain of the “.com” top-level domain. Part of the time, second-level domains, in fact, carry the name of the business or vendor that got their name registered at the registrar. The brand name , company name or the project name can be used as the identifier for the prospects.
Another second-level domain called country code second-level domain (ccSLD) is on top of those. When such domains are present, their country code domain will be found to the right of the period; for instance, in the domain of “nike.co.ca” the country code top-level domain is .ca” and the ccSLD is .co”.
Third-level domains
Where third-level domains come as a direct continuity of second-level domains in the DNS hierarchy. They can be accessed at the left of SLD, and are commonly called as subdomains.
Large organizations will identify third-level domains as their identifiers, which will help in distinguishing among different sections or just an entire site.
A domain name like “www” is generally categorized as the most common third-level domain. Similarly, in case a company employs several third-level domains, this often means those are used for some particular server within the company.
