How to register a DOMAIN NAME for your UK business? (part 2)

have you ever wanted to make just a simple website for your business but you're just not sure where to start well hopefully this series of videos is for you welcome back to the small business toolbox where we look into the nuts and bolts of self-employed life in the UK I'm Andy mark and I've been self-employed for nearly 25 years which makes me feel very old in part one of this series I explained some of the fundamental concepts of setting up a website for your business if you haven't already watched that please watch that first also if this is a brand new business you're setting up you might also want to watch my video all about picking a name for your business and there's links to both of those videos in the description below today we're on the first step of our journey to get the actual website for this YouTube channel up and running buying a domain name for your business is going to be one of the biggest decisions that you're going to make since that name will probably stick with you for the rest of time I'm going to take you through some of the things that went through my head when I bought the domain name small business toolbox UK for this site I'm also going to give you some tips for things like the physical address you registered against your domain name when you purchase one I'm going to use one two three wrench to register my domain names I've used them for many many years and their support has always been brilliant obviously you can use whoever you want but if you want to use 1 2 3 reg there's a link in the description below and I think it gives you a little bit of a discount I'm not sure if it expires at any point but it tells 1 2 3 reg that you've come via me and they'll check a couple of pennies my way it doesn't cost you any extra and it just helps me to make more videos like this so we're going to rewind a little bit back to August 2018 when I started this project and you can see exactly what's involved in buying a domain name right here we go totally hyped thought of the name of this project were gone for a small business tool box or business tool box or something around that kind of gist I would suggest you know I've been thinking about this for quite a while and I've had it narrowed down to probably about twenty different names or something but this has came to the one that I'm settling on so first thing to do is check the domain name is available and you really you want to do that as part of your narrowing down process there's no point in getting really stoked up about a particular name for your business and then find out that the domain names already gone it's pretty key that you want to apart from anything else you don't want to run into any like trademark problems especially if someone's already running business very similar to yours and they've got an existing domain name and then you go for a very very similar domain name you could run into problem so I'm gonna go to one two three reg to check the status of this domain that I want so I wanted like business toolbox or something like that I think business toolbox will be gone because it's yet to word domain forget about a one word domain name unless you're really lucky but even most of your two word variants are gone let's have a look so all I'm really interested in this is going to show me a giant list of domain names and quite like on the one two three reg site is that gives you alternatives like let's have a look What's it telling us well normally it does basically they're all business toolbox for some reason it hasn't shown a tee let's try small business small business to or votes so yeah so it's given things like little business toolbox as an alternative there so it does sometimes come up with like variation small company toolbox but we don't really want that the other thing is well you can filter it I'm not particularly interested in well really I just want dot uk' and potentially a.com as well we'll see what sir so get small who don't want small business tool and that's another thing to bear in mind make sure you're not getting a domain name that has some sort of combination of letters that can end up spelling out something else in the middle of their name especially if you're from Scunthorpe I'm just gonna stick for now at a small business tool box so we've got small business toolbox uk's available and small business tool but stock code at UK is available don't come doesn't seem to be available but that I'm not that bothered about the dot-com for this one to be honest this is going to be largely UK orientated anyway so if you can get the dot-com it's always an added bonus another thing I could do is the business toolbox but the business toolbox is already gone now that's interesting let's have a look I'm just gonna copy and paste that and go into a new tab and have a look who's there nobody said it's a domain squatter the business toolbox code at UK yet domain squat has got that you'll find loads of domain names gone and have been registered by domain squatters it's very frustrating don't pay the prices that they're asking for just pick a different name the business tool box calm what says don't know it's in a different language but not too bothered so I can't go further the business toolbox but I can go for small business tool box that isn't registered and if I go back there here small small business toolbox is definitely available and for some reason it's free we'll come back to that and let's just have a look at the dot-com [Music] out of the matter of interests small business tool box another domains squatter has got that and they only want a mere thousand dollars for it they can get stuffed as I say for this particular one I'm quite happy with just having the co uk and I'll probably get the the UK the dot uk' one as well but you do need to think how are you gonna use this domain name if you are potentially going to use it for international traffic in any which way shape or form I would suggest getting your comm and making sure you find a domain and you're coming up with a business name that that is suitable for a.com domain the.com has a few advantages when it comes to search and thinking clever things that you can do that I'll come on to on a separate video to do with like the Google search console and things like that if you're happy with it just being UK you're not planning on running things outside the UK just go for the dot UK and the dot code at UK domains that should be absolutely fine if you want to go for something more exotic like yeah Ltd's and all that you can do but you've just got to be careful that you're not going for a domain that someone's that if someone's already got an established domain name on the code at UK and then you get I don't know dot business for example are you potentially going to run into trademark problems or anything like that later down the line I would just try and go for something that people haven't already taken so small business toolbox is looking good let's just double check business tool box business toolbox don't code it UK I wouldn't expect that to be available to be honest spurt and business toolbox is going to as this best no idea what this is but it's based in South Korea so that doesn't really bother me at all and what about dot uk' and that's something weird going on so again it looks like a domain squatters got the domain but we can't get on that website for whatever reason just a couple of things to throw into the mix here just to complicate matters somewhat where it's not going to complicate it but you do need to think about this I'm not gonna cover off checking your domain or your business name is available on every social media platform known to mankind that would take forever but for example if you're gonna have a business that's heavily reliant on one particular platform like Twitter or Facebook or whatever it is a good idea to check whether or not your username is available on there or some sort of derivative of your username is available on there before you start with this so if you want your Twitter handle to perfectly match your business name then this is something you're gonna have to take into account so one of the things I do want to check is whether or not there's anyone on YouTube because obviously this is going to be pretty key that it's all linked in with YouTube so I'm just going to do a quick search on YouTube for small business toolbox it's a good sign that it's not really coming up on search so I've come up to small business tool and we're getting small business tools but not a small business toolbox until I can get all the way there so that would tend to suggest it's not really a thing on YouTube and let's have a quick look we've got one channel here but it looks they've only done one video three years ago and they have one subscriber so that is of no concern to me whatsoever what else have we got and I'm looking here at the channel name I'm not looking at the video name I'm looking at the channel name so this is Meredith Dale Mariah Crawley but there's no channels coming up and hitting me in the face called small business toolbox so that's kind of the main thing just scrolling down what I've forgot we've got business toolbox here let's have a look at that again the it's not done anything for four years and doesn't look in any way related to what I'm doing yeah we're fine on YouTube so I'm quite confident to go with that as a name and I think it'll work pretty well another thing that I want you to bear in mind as well be careful when you're searching for domain names because there are some unscrupulous companies out there not your big names and your big players and stuff but you need to be careful when you search for a domain name if you go to some weird unknown site and do a search on a domain name sometimes what they'll do is they'll grab that domain name before you get a chance to buy it which that does happen so if you're in the UK probably your safest place in the world to search for a domain name is nominate nominate is the registrar in the UK for dot UK domains or anything that ends in UK so the easier thing to do just go to the who is on nominate and the who is by the way it's just a an easy way of searching for a domain name to see if it's available I'm gonna go on to nominate UK slash who is and search for the domain through that and that's a relatively safe place to search for a domain where you know no one else is gonna grab it on the back of the the search results that you've you've just done another thing I wanted to show you here as well just talking about the address that you're gonna use for the domain name and I'll show you on one of my other domain names okay is that as of I think the 22nd of May 2018 I can't remember but as of the GDP asked of one really positive benefit of GDP is a nominate on new longer publishing your full address for everyone to see on the internet which is a brilliant step forward because I always thought that that was a really bad thing to do but you'll see that we've got this nominate was unable to match the registrants name and address against a third party data source all that is because I use an alternate address for all of my domains you might want to use like a solicitor or an accountant and stuff like that that's absolutely fine and if you check on the nominate website it does say how does nominate validate data and it says so it will attempt to validate so for example it'll try and check it against the electoral roll and stuff like that but it does say it's important to note that a link between the registrants name and address is not required we understand that the address given as a point account that may be different to the address that the registrant is directly associated with for example they may wish to give a solicitor or accountants address rather than the address of their home which is absolutely fine and I still think that there's a better route to go down I do get a little bit nervous in case they decide to change their policies on whether or not they're going to show personal information such as that on on the Whois results hopefully they'll just leave it the way it is now and that's it all done and dusted but you never know I'd rather be on the safe side but it does say it's important where does it say it is however essential that the registrant can be contacted through the address given and that is really key because you might get some sort of official documentation sent to that address and if you don't get it if it's especially if it's for like I don't know a domain suspension or something like that it trust me you don't want your domain to get suspended and you don't know anything about it so make sure whatever address that you do use you can actually get mail through that address somehow and just to show you as well on the data validation thing this is where it covers it off as of the 22nd of May 2018 the UK who is in other words the Whois database that keeps all the record of domain names in the UK will no longer display the registrants name or address unless they have given permission to do so which is awesome that might not be the case for domains that end in other things so things like comms and Ltd you know that's different process for how that works so we're just sticking to dot UK domains here so that's all good so I think small business toolbox I think's good I like that as I say you can always if people have squatted your domain name think about adding like the in front of it you could even go hyphenated if you really want it it just means then whenever you tell someone your web address you're gonna have to say it's small - business - toolbox and it becomes a bit annoying but there's no harm in doing that you know you could you could just - it I'm gonna go for this let's go for it so it's exciting could I get the com I can't remember don't think so gonna do add to basket for small business toolbox and we're gonna have the dot uk' is well small business toolbox don't you okay cool right we're gonna purchase these domains check out I've already got an account with one two three reg so I'm gonna log in and then here's where you're going to put all of your registrant l's in I would also suggest you set up a separate email account for everything to do with domains or especially the email address that you have to put against the domain name on the public record it is an account that you're gonna have to occasionally check because you do sometimes get really important things sent to it but it is unfortunately a target for spammers so don't use like your personal email address or anything like that okay so at this point it'll probably ask you if you want to buy a whole lot of extra things that you probably we don't need at this stage we're going to sort our email and everything separate so ignore all that don't add anything else to the basket at this stage because we're going to cover all that on on a separate video at this stage we've got the domain name small business toolbox code at UK and small business toolbox UK we're registering both of them for two years for $9.99 which is pretty good and we've got about 23 quid basically for two years that's all right go no go away okay it's still trying to add extra things at this stage you don't need will come to all that in a separate video as I say at this stage all we're doing is buying the domain name under that is that I've already got a card registered on the system that I'm putting it against done and it'll send a confirmation email through to you all we need to do now is wait a couple of days for this to kind of sort itself out because it'll take a little while for the domain name to kind of replicate around the internet and do all the technical stuff behind the scenes that's it our first step on this little journey to get this all set up is done we've got our domain names ooh there's a link in the description - one two three reg if you could please use that link that would be totally awesome because then they'll know that you're coming from this video and they'll check a couple of pennies my way it won't cost you any extra at all but it just helps me to make more videos on this channel thank you for watching you awesome awesome people and thank you for being with me on this first stage of this really exciting journey there you go folks this project is officially off the ground if you come back in the next part I'm going to be showing you how to set up a gmail account and also me actually setting up this very YouTube I know a lot of you probably don't need a YouTube channel but a gmail account is very handy for any business and apart from anything else I thought it might be quite interesting for you to see how long it takes to grow a YouTube channel from literally zero views and zero subscribers anyway we'll cover all of that next time for now take care folks and tatty bye

Channel: Small Business Toolbox

Views: 4,639

Keywords: domain name, how to choose a domain name, domain name registration, domain name for my business, business domain name, registering a business domain name, what is a domain name, small business, new business domain name, domain names explained, domain names beginners, domain names and web hosting, domain name registration and hosting, domain name registration process, domain name registration tutorial, register domain name, 123-reg, domain name uk, domain names

Id: oA-Qw7nYZGo

Length: 20min 18sec (1218 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 26 2019