8 Steps to Take After Registering a Domain Name

8 Steps to Take After Registering a Domain Name - Image #1

Registering a domain name might seem simple, but it’s nothing to sneeze at. It can take months to come up with the perfect domain name – one that rolls off the tongue, captures your brand, and is easy to type and spell. So, before we get into the next steps you need to take, be sure to give yourself a hearty pat on the back.

Now that you’ve locked down your perfect domain, here are eight things you need to do to start attracting visitors to your website and to solidify your brand.

What to do after registering a domain name

1. Register your business

You’d be surprised how many people get so excited at the prospect of snagging cheap domain names that they forget to properly establish the company connected to those domain names. This is a sure way to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

As soon as you’ve taken the prudent step of securing one of the internet’s many cheap domain names, make sure your business is legal. This process varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but a good attorney should be able to help you. If you’re not friends with any attorneys and don’t have the budget to hire one, try calling up your country’s version of the Companies Office and asking them what steps you need to take to register your business.

2. Get web hosting

If you bought your domain from a place that doesn’t offer web hosting, you’ll need to get hosting for your domain. (In case you didn’t know, you can’t have a website unless you store that website on a server from a web hosting company.)

If you bought your domain from our platform, you’ve saved yourself a lot of time on this step. We offer cheap domains and hosting. Some of our domains are even free!

Having your domain and web hosting at the same company saves you a lot of hassle. If you bought your domain somewhere else because you were attracted by their cheap domain names, but you love our brand and want to host with us, all you have to do is adjust your nameservers to reflect your current web hosting. (If you don’t know how to do this, you can ask our customer support team to help you.)

3. Get WHOIS privacy

When you register a domain name (whether it’s one of the cheap domain names or you paid top dollar), your information is immediately visible on the publicly accessible WHOIS database. This means that anybody who wants to know who owns your website can perform a search on the WHOIS database. They can potentially get access to sensitive contact information like your name, telephone number, and mailing address. To keep this information private, ask your web host how you can get WHOIS privacy.

If your domain registrar only offers cheap domain names but doesn’t offer WHOIS privacy, ask us about transferring your domain.

4. Create a matching email address

Much of the communication you do for your website will happen over email. And when you send those emails, you’re going to want to come across as professional as possible. (Yes, even if your brand is slightly irreverent or thumbs its nose at convention.) If you want your emails to avoid the dreaded Junk folder, you’re going to need an email address that matches your domain name. This means, for example, that if your domain is something like www.porcupinechairs.com, your email address should be [email protected].

A custom email domain will work wonders for the efficiency of your marketing campaigns and for your response rate when you reach out to other webmasters to collaborate. Luckily, it’s really easy to create a free custom domain email address using your MonsterHost cPanel.

5. Snag matching social media handles

Your website is half of your online presence. Your social media is the other half. Even before you launch your website, make sure you snatch up all the matching social media handles, so you don’t run into any hassle later. Try to keep your social media handle the same across all platforms, to make it easy for your visitors to find you.

6. Secure your domain

Now that you’ve secured your domain, it’s time to make your domain secure. The easiest way to do this is to install an SSL certificate, which encrypts data that passes between your website and your visitors’ browsers. SSL certificates are important for a lot of reasons. Not only do they keep your website safe, but they also:

  • Improve your SEO ranking;
  • Make your visitors feel more comfortable navigating your website;
  • enable you to collect your visitors’ credit card information if you run an eCommerce website; and
  • Make your website look more professional.

This is why you want to avoid cheap domain names that are incompatible with SSL certificates. These certificates are crucial for the success of your website. If you see a company that offers suspiciously cheap domain names that don’t allow SSL certificates, choose another domain provider.

7. Create your website

Once your domain is secure, it’s time to start making your website. (You can create a website in minutes using our easy-to-use website builder.) After you’ve chosen one of our gorgeous templates and customized it to suit your brand, you can start adding content to your website.

Tip: Start with the most important webpages:

  • Homepage
  • About
  • Contact
  • Hire me! (Depending on the type of website you’re running.)

These pages will vary from website to website, so just think about which pages your website absolutely couldn’t exist without and add those. There’ll be plenty of time to create the other pages later.

Note: MonsterHost’s sitebuilder plans already include web hosting. So, there’s no need to subscribe to hosting with any of the plans.

8. Add Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a professional-level tool that analyses your website to give you answers to these questions:

  • Which websites are sending traffic to my website?
  • How many visitors are accessing my website on their cell phones?
  • What amount of traffic comes from Facebook and Twitter?
  • How many visitors enter my website and then leave immediately?

These questions are great for making important marketing and layout decisions for your website.

Conclusion

Registering your domain name is a step in the right direction to building your brand! Now that you’ve taken that important step, it’s time to use our checklist to really establish your brand as a force to be reckoned with. Good luck!