I live about a five iron outside of DC and made my living on radio. Helen Thomas, one of all-time great White House correspondents, would always be chosen by President Reagan to ask questions at press conferences. Here's why:..She found out that President had a fondness for color red. So, Helen started wearing a red blazer to press conferences and he would always pick her out of a press room packed with other reporters.

So, in other words... put a red blazer on your web site, drop 50 bucks registering your domain name for several years and show Google, along with other search engines, you are serious about sticking around and wanting to improve search engine rankings.

3. EMAIL ADDRESSES

When you get your own domain name, you can set it up so that you have email addresses containing your domain name. For example, yourname@yourcompany.com

Doesn't that look a lot more professional that an ISP, hotmail or yahoo address?

4. SEARCH ENGINE POSITIONING

If you get a domain name contains keywords that describe your site's topic it can help boost your search engine rank (and thus help you get more visitors).

5. SEARCH ENGINE INDEXING

Search engines can sometimes be sensitive beasts. For example, they don't like being spamdexed with lots of junk pages, and to stop it they either penalise sites which contain junk pages, or may place limits on maximum number of pages that can be indexed per domain.

If you don't have your own domain name, other people's web sites who simply share same hosting service with you, can cause your site to drop down search engine results - or even disappear from search engines completely!

On other hand, if you have your own domain, you won't have these kinds of problems: you're responsible for and only affected by your own web site's content.

6. DIRECTORIES

Lots of folks don't consider a site serious, if it doesn't have its own domain name - and that includes some directory editors.

Go look for yourself in Yahoo! and see how many commercial sites you can find which don't have a domain name... Answer: Not many.

7. CREDIBILITY

When new people encounter your business through web, they only know you from what they see. Do you really want to look some fly-by-night who can't afford $20 per year to register their own domain name?

8. PROTECT YOUR IDENTITY

When you register a domain name, it identities you (or your business). Do you really want somebody else grabbing domain names that identify you, your business, your products, or (if applicable) your trademarks?

Sure, if somebody else does register a domain name that infringes your rights, you might be able to call lawyers in, and perhaps get it back... but wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to avoid this hassle in first place by registering domains yourself?

9. TYPOS AND MISSPELLINGS

When people type in URLs, they sometimes can make typing errors or misspell URL. You might consider registering most common spelling errors of your URL, so that these people still end-up at your site (ask your web host if you need help with setting this up).

10. INVESTING FOR THE FUTURE

Some people have made a lot of money registering and trading in domain names. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that provided that they don't infringe others' trademark or proprietary rights ("cybersquatting").

So there, exactly as promised, are 10 good reasons to register a domain name... but I'll add one more, and it's a reason that you should act today:

11. GET IT FIRST

As already mentioned, domain names are being registered at a truly incredible rate. You know what that means? If you wait, domain name you want could soon be taken - so register it today.

This article is Copyright (C) 2005, Answers 2000 Limited.