How to choose and own a domain name for your business

A domain name is the address people type to reach your website and the part after the @ in your business email. It appears on vans, menus and invoices, so it is expected to last for years.

Choosing one is partly a naming decision and partly an ownership decision. The costly mistakes come less from the name than from who registered the domain, whose email address is attached to it and who renews it. This guide covers both.

What a domain is, and what it is not

A domain is a name you register for a set period and then renew. You do not buy it outright. You hold the right to use it for as long as you keep renewing it and follow the registry’s rules.

It is also separate from the website. The domain is the address, the hosting is where the website files are kept and the DNS settings connect the two. One company can look after all three, or three different companies can, provided you know who does what and the domain itself is registered to you.

Choosing the name

A few habits help.

• Keep it short. A shorter name is easier to type, say aloud and fit on a sign.
• Make it easy to spell after hearing it. Say it to someone and ask them to write it down. If they get it wrong, customers will too.
• Avoid hyphens, numbers and unusual spellings unless they are part of the brand.
• Use the business name where you can. People who already know the business will try that first.
• Do not squeeze in every service or town. A long name that lists what you do and where you work reads badly, and it becomes wrong if the business changes.

Before you commit, check that no other business is using something confusingly similar and that you are not copying a registered trade mark, which you can look up using the GOV.UK trade mark search. This is practical guidance rather than legal advice, so take advice if the name matters commercially.

.co.uk, .com or something else

For a business serving customers in the UK, a .co.uk address is familiar and widely understood. A .com is the usual choice for businesses with an international audience, and it is what many people type by default. Plain .uk addresses are also available, as are many newer endings.

None of these is automatically better for search. Google treats country-specific endings such as .co.uk as a hint about the audience a site is aimed at, but a common ending does not lift a site above another. People recognise and remember the common endings, and the name matters more than the ending. If both the .co.uk and the .com are available and affordable, it can be worth registering both and pointing one at the other, so a customer who guesses the wrong ending still arrives. If the exact name is taken, a different name is usually better than a very unusual ending that people will not think to type.

Register it in the business’s own name

This is the most important section of the guide.

When a domain is registered, one party is recorded as the registrant: the holder of the domain. That should be the business, or the person who owns it, and the contact email on the account should be one the business controls and will still have in several years’ time.

Problems arise when the domain is registered in someone else’s name “for convenience”, whether a designer, an agency or a friend. If that person stops replying, closes their business or disagrees with you, getting the domain back can be slow, expensive or impossible.

A few rules help:

• Register the domain yourself where you can, using an account the business owns.
• If a supplier registers it for you, ask that the business is named as registrant and that you control the account.
• Where practical, use a shared role address rather than one person’s personal email, so access survives staff changes.
• Turn on two-step verification for the registrar account.
• Keep a record of where the domain is registered, when it renews and who has access.

Renewals and auto-renew

Domains are registered for a period that depends on the ending and the registrar, often between one and ten years for a .co.uk, and they have to be renewed before it ends. Nominet, which runs the .uk registry, explains why renewal matters. If renewal is missed, the website and any email on the domain can stop working. After a grace period that varies between registries and registrars, the name can eventually be released for anyone to register.

Practical safeguards:

• Turn on auto-renew if the registrar offers it, and attach a payment card that will not expire first.
• Send reminders to a monitored address, not someone’s old inbox.
• Note the renewal date in a calendar in case an automatic payment fails.
• Be wary of unexpected invoices. Messages pretending to be your registrar and demanding payment to “renew” or “transfer” a domain are a long-running scam. Check any notice against your own registrar account.
• Check the renewal price, not only the introductory one, because they can differ.

DNS basics

DNS records are the settings that tell the internet what to do when someone uses your domain. You do not need to be an expert, but it helps to recognise the common types.

• A or AAAA records point the domain to the server that hosts the website.
• CNAME records point one name to another, such as a subdomain to a service provider.
• MX records say where email for the domain is delivered.
• TXT records carry short pieces of text used to verify ownership, for example when setting up Google Search Console, and to help show that email really comes from you.
• Nameservers say which company’s DNS settings are the live ones. If they change, the records at the old provider stop being used.

Two cautions. Changes can take anything from minutes to a day or more to be seen everywhere, so make them calmly and check afterwards. And changing MX or TXT records without knowing what they do is one of the quickest ways to stop a business’s email. If the domain is registered in one place and the DNS is managed in another, note both.

What can go wrong if a supplier holds the domain

• The supplier stops trading or responding, and renewal notices go to an address nobody reads.
• A disagreement arises and the supplier refuses to release the domain, or asks for a fee not mentioned at the start.
• The domain lapses because the supplier’s payment card expired.

Moving a domain between registrars is normally possible once you control the registrant account. For a .co.uk it uses a change of registrar tag, which Nominet describes, and for a .com an authorisation code, both set from the account. Without control of that account, you cannot do it on your own.

The simple protection is to ask anyone who offers to arrange a domain three questions. Who will be the registrant? Whose email address is on the account? Can I have full access at any point? A reputable supplier will answer all three easily. The questions to ask a web designer cover this alongside hosting, code ownership and ongoing costs.

How this works with Page & Place

Page & Place follows the same principle. The domain remains registered to you or your business and you remain the registrant. Page & Place can manage DNS settings and renewals while providing Website Care, but the domain remains yours. Domain administration and renewal coordination are part of the Website Care plan, and domain connection is part of the standard website package.

Once the website has been paid for, you keep the domain, and the website is not held to Website Care. Paid domain services are third-party costs, which Page & Place identifies before setup and shows separately unless they are expressly included. The guide to what website care includes and the Website Care page set out the rest.

Changing domain later

Changing a domain after a rebrand is possible, but it is a larger job than it looks, because every link to the old address has to be redirected to the new one and search engines need time to follow. Keep the old domain registered and redirecting for a long time, and plan it as a website migration. The guide to moving a website without losing search traffic explains the steps.

A short checklist

Before you register or accept a domain, check that:

1. the name is short, easy to spell and unlikely to be confused with another business;
2. the business, not a supplier, is the registrant, using an email address it will keep;
3. auto-renew is on, with a card that will not expire and a calendar reminder as a backup;
4. two-step verification is switched on;
5. you have recorded the registrar, the renewal date, who has access and where the DNS is managed.

All of this is easier to set up now than to fix after something goes wrong. If you are planning a new website and want to talk through domain, hosting and ownership, you can get in touch with Page & Place.