Starting an online business starts with a good domain name. Without one you are putting yourself at a severe disadvantage to your competitors when it comes to ranking well in the search engines.

Doing business online involves a bit of art and a bit of science. By this I mean you will need a simple, executable plan to execute in a somewhat mechanical fashion with consistent effort. You will need, however, on occasion to adapt to changing circumstances and a particular site or blog of yours that is not just giving you a return that you would expect from the traffic you are generating will need a bit of art, a bit of flair, which will require you to make some changes to maximize your return.

Choosing a good domain name is not one of those occasions though because you only get one chance and you do need to rely on a bit of science, that is, cold hard statistics. The statistics are those provided by keyword research which will give you a key phrase that gives you sufficient searches and low enough competition.

Depending on the market you are after and on the product you are selling or other desired outcome you will need to do some keyword research and identify a key phrase that you can realistically compete for and for which you will rank on the first page of Google.

You can do your keyword research manually with the Google External Keyword Tool and identify possible choices which you can download to a spreadsheet. You then put each of these key phrases into inverted commas like this “” and put the key phrase together with inverted commas into the Google Search Engine and see how many results you get which will be identified on the right hand side of the results page.

This identifies how many competing pages you will face, that is pages which are optimized for that key phrase. If the figure is below 50,000 then it will be quite easy with some decent article marketing to rank well for that key phrase.

Having carried out this research for all your potential key phrases you then download the lot to a text file and head over to GoDaddy.com. You will see that they have “bulk registration” checker. Dump all your key phrases into this tool and see which ones are not registered already.

Choose the key phrase with the most searches that has not been registered and go ahead and try to get either the .com, .org or .net in that order. If I can’t get the exact key phrase as a domain name I move on and forget about it; if I can I know I will get a huge advantage over my competitors for that key phrase in the search engines and will go ahead and register it.

Starting a new business online is easy to achieve..but success with your online home business is more elusive.The best online business is one which suits your skills and experience but there is no doubt that there are plenty of online resources for free online which set out many online business opportunities when starting an online business.

Rather than looking for the best online business you might be better off working with a business plan template which best reflects your personality and skills and which you have thoroughly researched.

Related posts:

1. Starting A Business-Starting An Online Business
2. Domain Name Disputes and Law
3. Online Business-Is Adsense the Best Online Business?

And infringements occur regularly in the shape of trade mark disputes, cybersquatting and related issues.

It is crucial for any business to have a smart commercial strategy regarding their trade marks and domain names.

Domain names can usually be registered quickly and inexpensively. Top Level Domain(TLD) is the suffix such as ie or uk or fr-it denotes the country.

Within TLDs there are 2 sub-categories

1. Generic TLDs such as .com,.net,.org,.biz. These domain names do not have to be distinctive and do not indicate geographic origin.

2. Country Code TLDs which are administered by the domain registry of the relevant country; in Ireland this is IE Domain Registry ltd (www.iedr.ir).

In Ireland you must display a real and substantive connection with Ireland when applying for a domain name before iedr will approve your application. You may also need to show a connection with the business that you are referring to in your domain name application.

Domain name disputes

Domain name disputes have been resolved generally in one of 2 ways-either in court or by reference to the alternative dispute resolution procedure provided by ICANN.

This body has adopted the UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy) which apples to generic TLD name disputes.

Some country code administrators have incorporated this procedure into their registration agreements.

This UDRP procedure has been very successful and has resolved many domain name disputes; however it does not provide for damages and so a company that needs immediate injunctive relief and damages will be advised to head for court rather than the UDRP procedure.

Generally the relief provided is simply to have the domain name transferred to the plaintiff.

To win relief at the UDRP you will need to show 3 things

1. the complainant must show that the name is confusingly similar to the name in which the complainant has rights
2. the existing holder has no legitimate interest or rights in the domain name
3. the complainant must show bad faith on the part of the holder of the domain name.

The holder of the domain name can reject the complainant’s case if he could show bona fide use of the name, non commercial use with no intention to profit, evidence that the respondent is known by the domain name.

UDRP also recognise the phenomenon of ‘Reverse Domain Name Hijacking’ which is the occasion when the plaintiff uses the policy in bad faith in an attempt to deprive a registered holder of a domain name of that name.

In ccTLD disputes the domain name registry require further proofs before they cancel or transfer a domain name.

They would need to see some aspect of passing off or trade mark infringement also.

These disputes can be litigated before the appropriate courts as occurred in Jan. 2009 when Sean Dunne, Property Developer went to court in a dispute to obtain D4Hotels.com from John Brennan who had registered the domain name in his own name whilst running D4 hotels group in Ballsbridge.

Conclusion

It is clearly impossible to register all domain names and trade marks which they may feel they need to protect their intellectual property.

Sometimes it is more cost effective to purchase the name from the ‘offender’ rather than go to court or UDRP.

It is important to recognise the difference between trade marks and domain names and it is prudent for a company to register each of their domain names as a trade mark.

Because otherwise their domain name could be registered as a trade mark by a 3rd party.

Related posts:

1. Intellectual Property Law | Copyright,Trade Marks,Patents
2. Intellectual Property-What is it?
3. Tenancy Disputes in Residential Letting Agreements