Are you confused about the relationship between (and difference between) domain names and IP addresses? You’re not alone. If you’re familiar with the internet at all, which you likely are since you are reading this blog, you’ve no doubt worked with domain names before. It’s the address at the top of this page, in the URL bar. Between after the prefix (http://www.) of any website, you’ll find the domain name associated with that website, which we’ve acquired for our blog through domain name registration.

In practical application, a domain name is the “address” you use to find the website you’re looking for, but in reality, it has a much more static address, known as the IP address. What does this mean? Well, IP address is a unique combination of numbers that are assigned to every individual entity that’s at all connected to the internet. Your computer has one, and the server on which a website is stored has one, and even mobile phones that connect to the web are assigned one. They’re a way to differentiate who does what online, as well as where everything is located.

How Do Domain Name and IP Address Relate?

Well, it wouldn’t really do to type in a long string of numbers when you want to visit your favorite blogs, read the news, or find out about the weekend weather forecast, so domain names are used as more user-friendly locators of IP addresses where websites are stored.

So, for example, say you have a website. You therefore will find out the IP address for the server where you’re storing your files (or rather, your UK web hosting provider is storing the files). It might be formatted something like this: xxx.xx.xxx.xxx.

No one wants to type that into a URL bar, so you do a domain name search to find the perfect domain name for your site, and get your UK web hosting company to set it up so that when people type in your domain name, they’ll be taken to your site.

The great thing about domain names is that you can have more than one domain name directed at the same IP address. And if you change web hosts, you can build a new site at a new IP address (or move your existing site files to a new IP address), and have the domain name direct to the new address. Your website visitors don’t have to know that you changed servers: to them, they type in your catchy, user-friendly domain name and are directed to your UK website, the same as always.

Domain Name Registration · Domain Names · IP address · UK web hosting · UK website

When you set out to establish a brand new UK website for yourself, one of the first steps you’ll need to pursue is acquiring a domain name. After all, what’s the point of building a website if you don’t know what domain name it will be associated with? You want the two to correspond, so selecting a domain first is always a good idea.

When you start pursuing domain name search, you’ll have a variety of different factors to choose from. Both .com and .co.uk names will be available to you (as well as many others, including .org, .net, .mobi, .biz, and the list goes on and on). You’ll be able to choose from all sorts of different names and titles that are yet unclaimed.

But one choice you may not even be aware of when you’re doing standard domain name search is actually a choice that has a great impact on how search engine-friendly your website ends up being: the age of your domain name.

You might think that domain names don’t really ‘age’—after all, this isn’t a fine wine or cheese. It’s a combination of letters that people use to locate your website. But in reality, domain names don’t really exist until someone registers them for the first time. You could come up with a very unique name that has never been registered before, so when you register it, it then is created.

Or, you could look into buying the rights to domain name registration for an existing domain name. This means that someone already brought it into being, possibly months or (even better) years ago.

What’s The Advantage of Registering Old Domain Names?

Domain name age brings with it one key advantage: search engine weight. Search engines, and Google in particular, calculate many different factors when evaluating the strength and relevance of various UK websites and deciding which are most appropriate to provide to searchers.

Factors for search engine relevance include the content on the site, links directed to the site from external locations, the relevance of the domain name, and the age and reputation of the website itself.

When purchasing domain names, ask your web hosting UK provider to help you find some older domain names to consider. Your webmaster may even own some domain names that will be useful to you, or may have contacts with other webmasters with old domain names they are willing to sell.

Domain Name · Domain Name Registration · Old Domain Names · UK website · web hosting UK