Do you actually own your domain name? It’s certainly worth checking….
Your domain name is extremely valuable – make sure it’s yours!
There are some well documented stories about businesses who failed to renew their domain names in time, resulting in their websites going off-line. Fortunately this is a rare event as the large majority either set their domains to auto-renew at the registrar or leave it to their marketing company to look after.
However, failure to renew is not the only problem to watch out for. In some cases, a business makes the mistake of allowing their domain name (their www address) to be registered in the wrong name. This may be the personal name of a staff member e.g. an IT support guy, or maybe the practice manager. Whilst to some this may seem like a trivial administrative error, it could actually present some quite serious difficulties. This is because the person who is recorded as the registrant of the domain, is, in effect its legal owner – at least for the duration of the registration.
There are some legal cases (fortunately few) where ex. employees have used the domain registration, in their name, as leverage in disputes with their former companies. Whilst these may be quite extreme cases, they have happened and serve to illustrate the importance of getting your dental business domain name registration correct.
Who should the domain be registered to?
There are a couple of options but ideally the named individual should be the dental practice owner – this way there is no ambiguity. A proficient dental marketer will be able to advise and guide you through the process or alternatively register the domain on your behalf and, importantly, in your name.
Pitfalls to watch out for
There are a couple of typical scenarios where dentists can mess up with their practice domain names as follows:
- their web designer or marketing company registers in their own name and not the name of the practice. Believe it or not, there are still a number of companies who do this with a misguided idea that it gives some form of financial control over their client. Check carefully and don’t fall for it.
- as part of a practice purchase, the domain transfers to the new owner but the registrant’s name is left unchanged. Ideally the name should be changed to the new owner before moving the domain to the new registrar. Unfortunately, this is all too prevalent and whilst it usually doesn’t cause any problems, it certainly could.
My business domain name isn’t registered to me – what should I do?
It’s easy enough to do a “whois” look-up on a domain name on the internet and in most cases you will be able to see who the registrant is. If you are not in control of the domain and if the registrant isn’t actually you, then you need to take action to secure it. This should be as simple as contacting the other party and initiating the change of ownership via the registrar. There are different processes to undergo depending on the domain extension (.co.uk .com .net .org etc).
Need assistance?
If you need to check out your domain name or find that you need to change the ownership and need some guidance, please call the Dental Media team on 01332 672548 and we’ll be pleased to help.
We also provide a professional and secure domain registration and management service to complement our business hosting.