Day 4: Secure a Domain Name & Set Up Your Business Email
Welcome to Day 4!
Secure a domain name to use for your website, and set up a business email address.
Assign the domain name to your website, and update your marketing profile with your new business email address.
Secure A Domain Name
As you learned yesterday when you create a website you are provided with an automatically generated URL, also known as a subdomain.
The URL is long, and hard to remember. With that said, you need to select a domain name to use in place of the automatically generated URL.
If you don’t know what a domain name is, it’s simply the URL or web address of your website. For example, the domain name for REI BlackBook is www.reiblackbook.com.
During this chapter, you will learn how to secure a domain name for your business, the best practices for choosing the perfect domain name, and how to buy your first domain name in REI BlackBook.
If you already own a domain name in another registrar like GoDaddy, HostGator, Bluehost, or others, you will learn how to transfer your domain name into your REI BlackBook account, so it can be used with your new website.
We are often asked “ How do I choose the right domain name for my website?”
In short, you should select a domain name that is easy to remember and instantly communicates what you do. It also can be the name of your company, (if that domain name is available).
When you are selecting a domain name for your website follow the seven tips below to find the perfect one.
- Make it easy to type
- Make it as short as possible
- Make it local
- Avoid hyphens
- Register the .com
- Use keywords
- Act fast
For a more in-depth explanation about the steps listed above, check out this tutorial video.
Download the domain name worksheet to build a domain name in just three easy steps.
You’ll want to create different variations, so you have options in case one of the names you come up with is not available.
When you have created different variations, go into your REI BlackBook account and purchase the domain name of your choosing.
Once you have secured your domain name, you will then be able to assign it to your new website.
Set Up a Business Email
After securing your domain name you are going to want to set up a business email. There are a couple reasons why you should do this.
Using a free email account, like Gmail or Yahoo, doesn’t look very professional.
It can affect your email deliverability if you’re sending bulk emails from a free account like john.smith@gmail.com.
We encourage you to use a service like Google’s G Suite to obtain a business email address.
You can create your business email address using G Suite here. At the time of this publication, G Suite is $6/month or $60/year.
You will need to follow the steps G Suite prompts you to take to set up your business email address. You’ll want your email address to be the same as the domain name that you just secured with REI BlackBook.
So for example, if your domain name is texaspropertybuyer.com, then your email address should be something like john@texaspropertybuyer.com.
As you go through the process of setting up your G Suite account, Google is going to ask you to verify that you own the domain name.
To do this. you will have to log into your domain host’s website, which in this case, is REI BlackBook.
So, you’ll log into your REI BlackBook account, and navigate to the domain manager.
From there, you will need to update the MX records in REI BlackBook that you will get from G Suite, or whatever service you decided to use for your email.
If the thought of MX records and domain name verification makes your head spin, don’t worry, REI BlackBook makes this process easy for you.
You can read this support article and watch the video that is included to walk you through the steps of updating your MX records.
Once the verification has been completed, you can complete the setup process for your email.
Now that you have a business email, go back into the marketing profile you set up on day #1, and change your email to your new business email address.
Day 4 Checklist
If you need assistance accomplishing each checklist item, click on the support articles.
- Secure Domain name
- Read This Blog Post:
- Set up a business email
- Transfer Existing Domain Name to REI BlackBook (If you don’t have a domain name already skip this step)
Thank You!
We appreciate you taking the time to accomplish Day 4 of the Getting Started Guide. If you are ready for Day 5, click here.
For questions, contact us at support@reiblackbook.com.