According to the inventors of this TLD, the .TEL domain is like a phone book on the Internet that helps you reach out to a worldwide audience.

For example, if your business has many web sites with different phone, fax and email addresses, you can use a .tel domain to display all of this information in one place. Since a .TEL domain is stored in the DNS, details and changes to your content can be uploaded instantly, at any time.

Unlike other TLDs like .com, .net and .org, the .TEL domain does not require a standard website. It is a designed specifically for access by mobile devices. When a mobile user accesses your contact information via his mobile, your telephone numbers will appear as hot links that can be instantly dialed on selection. Links are also provided for your business web sites making them easily accessible to mobile users.

The .TEL domain has been in existence for a few years but only businesses and registered organizations could apply for one. Since March 2009, they have become publicly available. This could mean more people applying for one.

If a .TEL domain suits your business needs, this might be the right time to get yourself one that matches your business name.  You might have to hurry before it gets taken by someone else.

More than the length of a URL, it is its stability that really matters. A stable URL structure is always advisable to avoid problems later. Here are a few ways to achieve a stable URL.

1. Construct the URL for each page logically and based on the page content. Try to use readable words instead of ID numbers wherever possible.
2. Keep your URL structure short and simple. Avoid displaying complex codes in the URL.
3. Avoid using session IDs whenever possible as these could result in duplication and a large number of URLs. You could try using cookies instead.
4. Remove unnecessary parameters which make the URL unnecessarily lengthy. Funky characters like “&” and “=” in the URL can make it difficult for search engine spiders to access the content easily.
5. Use robot.txl to prevent crawlers from accessing problematic URLs.

Make sure you have the optimal URL structure for your web site right from the beginning. This will also  improve your search engine rankings.

Domain forwarding is known by different names in the industry. While URL redirection and web forwarding are common variants, domain aliasing, domain mirroring, frame redirection and domain repointing are other names of this service that are lesser known.

Domain registrars and hosting companies often offer web forwarding along with their domain registration package. Such free services are useful but usually come with pop-ups or banner ads that have to be displayed on your website. Using these kinds of services may not be complementary to your company’s brand image. However, there are companies that provide professional web forwarding service with a variety of features. They provide different mechanisms for forwarding domain names.

URL redirection can be done:

• without masking
• with masking

Forwarding without masking: When a user types in a web address into his browser address bar, he expects to be taken to that web page. However, through URL redirection you can take him to a different web page. When forwarding is achieved without masking, the user sees the web page to which he has been forwarded to and his browser displays the new URL in the place of what he actually typed. Thus, when you type in www.google.net you will see the Google homepage and your browser address bar will show www.google.com.

Forwarding with masking: When domain forwarding is done with masking, the user does not realize that forwarding has occurred. The browser address bar will still display the URL that he typed in. For example, if someone types www.youandme.com the web page loading might be www.u&me.com but the browser address bar will continue to read as www.youandme.com.

Domain forwarding with masking avoids confusion to users and is often the preferred mechanism.  Nevertheless, sometimes companies may opt for redirection without masking as it helps to build a brand name.

You can prevent this from happening by opting for private domain registration. With private registration, alternate contact information will be used to register your domain thereby protecting you from all kind of threats. Some registrars also provide an email address that will filter messages for spam before forwarding them to your preferred email account.

Private registration also gives you the choice to decide on the kind of information you wish to publicize about your business.

It’s therefore a good idea to include private registration when you purchase a domain. Registrars might charge a small amount for this add-on service. However, this would amount to nothing when compared to the kind of security you would be getting in return.

Nonetheless, when a DNS lookup is done with a particular intention such as finding out the owner of a website, the process does not end with the return of an IP address or domain name. You will need more specific information such as the name and contact details of the domain holder or the location of the IP address. This is where the WHOIS database comes handy.

The Internet WHOIS system is a database that stores the registration details and contact information of owners of public IP addresses. For generic top-level domains, the ICANN requires the accredited registrars to record and provide public access to the data on registered domain names. This database is accessible by anyone, anytime and holds the following information:

• name and IP address of the registered domain
• list of nameservers associated with it
• the name of the domain registrar
• the date of registration of the domain
• the date of expiry of the domain registration
• the name and contact details of the registered domain name holder
• the details of the technical contact
• the details of the administrative contact

According to the ICANN, there are five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) that ensure a fair distribution and management of the Internet number resources. These are ARIN, LACNIC, AfriNIC, RIPE NCC and APNIC. These organizations along with many other websites offer WHOIS lookup services. Usually, a domain registrar will have this lookup service on their site to facilitate the domain registration process. A WHOIS search will easily establish if a domain name is available or when an already taken name expires. The contact details will be useful for people interested in buying registered domain names.

Sometimes for security reasons, you might not want your name and contact details to be made public through the WHOIS database. In such cases, you can opt to hide your details. Often domain registrars offer private domain registration at an extra cost. When you opt for private registration, the registrar replaces your contact information on the WHOIS database with alternate contact information which might include the registrar’s details. Using a proxy server can also effectively mask your identity on the Internet. Such measures are usually employed nowadays, to protect domain holders from spammers, hackers, identity thefts and the likes.

Within a particular top-level domain there are millions of domain names and each of these corresponds to a unique IP address. Similarly, there are many different top-level domains. So the domain name system maintains the details of all these different domains and their IP addresses on a distributed database. This is implemented through a number of name servers located across the world. These name servers can either be dedicated devices or software running on machines that perform a variety of other tasks. The name server(s) for a particular domain or TLD stores and manages all the DNS records for that domain including any subdomains.

One of the main functions of a name server is responding to resolution requests. When a web surfer types in a URL into a browser address bar, the browser will need to know its corresponding IP address to request the particular web page from the machine at that IP address. For this, the browser approaches the default name server of the web surfer’s machine with a resolution request. The name server then translates the URL into an IP address. This may be done in steps by contacting one of the root name servers first to get the IP address of the name server of the requested TLD and then asking this name server for the IP address of the machine hosting the particular domain. Finally, the browser has the IP address to request the web page from the machine at that address. This kind of mapping from a domain name to an IP address is the most common and is termed as forward DNS lookup.

The exact opposite of this process is known as reverse DNS lookup. This lookup returns the domain name for a particular IP address. Reverse DNS lookup is often employed in tracing out spammers and hackers.

Why Do You Need Web Forwarding?

Let’s say you have a website called www.mixnmatch.com. It’s highly probable that your visitors may misspell it as www.mixandmatch.com or use a different extension such as www.mixnmatch.net. Such errors could drive potential customers to other web sites thereby hampering your business success. In order to prevent this from happening you could register different versions of your domain name to include different extensions, misspellings and common typos and redirect all of them to your correct web site which is www.mixnmatch.com.

Here’s another example – You already have free web space provided by your ISP with a URL that looks something like www.yourname6767.freeserver.com. You now want a professional looking web address and opt for paid hosting where your new domain name is www.yourdomainname.com. When visitors type in www.yourdomainname.com. the pages from www.yourname6767.freeserver.com will be displayed although visitors think they are viewing the pages from www.yourdomainname.com.

These are some of the reasons why web forwarding is used. Some web site owners also opt for web forwarding, when their existing web address is too long and difficult to remember. A new domain name is created and the outdated one is redirected to the new location.

Web Forwarding – The Right Way

Web Masters very often misuse URL redirection by using a meta tag that tells the browser to move to another web location. This is done to mislead visitors by taking them to places they did not intend to go to. If search engines suspect you of misusing your URL redirection, they can penalize you or remove links that used this method.

The best practice is to use a ‘301 redirect’. This is a permanent redirect that leads both visitors as well as search engines to the correct page. The ‘301 redirect is also useful when you have incoming links from other sites that do not know there is a change or from bookmarks that users have saved in their browsers to an outdated URL. The ‘301 redirect’ ensures that these incoming links are sent to the correct location.

Web forwarding should never be done to steal the page ranking of a popular page and use it for a different page. This is punishable by search engines who will automatically reduce your page ranking and even exclude you from their search index.

• As an aspiring webmaster – You have just coined the perfect domain name for your online venture and found it to be available. You don’t want to waste time and lose it to someone else. So, the option is to register the domain with a registrar at the earliest. You can always have a default “Coming soon” or “Under construction” page put up for any visitor to this domain. Thus when your website is created and ready, you can easily host it.
• As protection against possible domain infringements – You are an online marketer who owns the site mysamplesite.com. By registering the alternate extensions of your domain (say, mysamplesite.net or mysamplesite.biz) you can protect yourself from competitors attempting to capitalize on the traffic to your site. Once you park such alternate domain names, you can provide a permanent 301 redirect to your principal site. Thus irrespective of whether a web surfer types in mysamplesite.com or mysamplesite.biz, they will be sent to mysamplesite.com. Parking domains with alternate extensions ensures that you do not lose any of your direct traffic.
• As a selling strategy – For marketing purposes you might want to use different domain names yet prefer to have a single website. Domain parking is the perfect solution.
• As a line of work - You don’t want to build and host websites yet you register numerous keyword-rich domain names. Your intention is to resell these valuable domains for a reasonable profit.

Domain Parking Service
Domain parking services are free services that run advertisements on your landing page and turn traffic into revenue. The parking services provide the content (advertising links and listings) with free hosting and pay you a share of the ad revenue. Usually, you get paid on a pay-per-click basis. The traffic to these domains can be the result of organic search, old bookmarks or residual traffic from the previous website. Sometimes domain registrars themselves provide the parking service. Domain parking services are popular because they help you earn revenue out of otherwise idle domains.

Consider this example: http://www.choosewebaddress.com/index.html

The various parts of this URL can be labeled as

• Protocol: http
• Host Computer Name: www
• Domain Name: choosewebaddress
• Domain Type: com
• File Name: index.html

While such web addresses are human-recognizable, machines find them baffling. Hence when a user types in a web address, the Internet’s Domain Name Server (DNS) first translates this alphanumeric message into machine-readable binary format and then navigates to the right website. The URL now takes on the format of a set of four numbers separated by periods.

Having said all of that, let us ponder a bit more over the human-recognizable format of web addresses. The format is human-recognizable because it is easy to read, understand and remember. The most dynamic component in this format is the domain name. As an entrepreneur trying to boost web presence, failure to employ the “RUR” tactic in domain name selection would be a cardinal error.

An easy-to-read domain name would be one in plain language avoiding numerals and hyphens as far as possible. Numbers cause mix-up and hyphenated words make typing hard. Inclusion of either of these in domain names makes verbal communication of the name difficult.

A domain name has the flexibility of being as long as 67 characters. I would say: short is sweet but too short may turn out stupid. Something memorable and of reasonable length that compliments your business should work fine.

Some do advise on choosing the company name as the domain name. This holds good for superstars or mega players who are well known and need no introduction. If yours is a relatively younger concern assaying to increase the market share, it will be best to have a name that aptly describes your services.

So, it’s pretty important to spend some quality time when structuring good URLs for your website.

In ‘Choose My Address’ Blog, we attempt to explain everything you need to know about a web address and how you can popularize your website with well formatted URLs.

To begin with, here are three important factors that attribute to a good URL:

1. Keep It Short And Simple: Keeping your URL short makes it easy for searchers to remember them and for you to communicate it to others. Lengthy and dynamic URLs usually contain too many parameters which search engines abhor. For example, using special characters like “=”, “&”, “?” not only look ugly but are confusing and difficult to recall. It is safer to keep your URLs static, simple, clean and both human and machine readable.

2. Use Canonical Script: Many websites have multiple URLs all leading to the same page. If www.mysite.com, mysite.com/, mysite.com, mysite.com/index/html and mysite.come/home.asp all lead to the same home page, Google would index all these URLs resulting in duplicate page content. This can affect your link popularity. What you can do is, redirect all forms of your domain name to a canonical or standard URL  If someone requests for one of the forms, your web server should do a “301 Redirect” to your canonical URL.

3. Don’t Change Once Set: Once URLs are set, it is advisable not to change them. Search engines would have indexed all the pages of your website. So, if you rename or delete a page, you run the risk of visitors to your website receiving an ‘Error 404 – File not found” message. Someone could also have bookmarked your page and when it breaks, they lose confidence in your website. If you need to change your URL for valid reasons, you can once again use the “301 Redirect” code to redirect old pages to new ones.

Implementing these tips not only enhances your website’s usability but also makes it more search engine friendly. Other articles in this blog will give you more insight into URL structuring.