Most businesses don’t spend much time thinking about their domain name until something goes wrong. A renewal notice gets missed, login information becomes difficult to track down, or a suspicious email raises questions about account security. In many cases, the company domain itself quietly becomes one of the company’s most important assets without anyone really stopping to think about how it’s being managed.
What business owners are usually trying to figure out isn’t just how to register a domain. The bigger question is how to protect it over time. Your domain connects your website, email, marketing, and online reputation together. Losing access to it can create problems quickly.
The good news is: protecting a domain name usually comes down to a series of practical steps, not anything overly technical. Our guide below walks through some of the most important things businesses should pay attention to. This includes registrar selection, renewal settings, security features, and account management.
Steps To Take To Protect Your Domain Name
Acquiring a Domain
Use a reputable registrar to purchase your domain name from. Do your due diligence and a little research because your customer experience and the company’s user-friendly policies will matter as much as their security features. Choose a registrar that offers both a reasonable renewal and expiration policy as well as robust security features.
While you’re at it, go ahead and set up auto-renew. Then add that future date to your calendar, setting a reminder for your future self to verify information ahead of the renewal date. Once a registration expires, the time to recover an expired domain can vary, but it is typically about a week to ten days.
Time is of the essence if a domain has entered a grace period with the registrar. You may be charged a fee to recover an expired domain. Learn this information ahead of any potential expiration event so you are aware of the fine print. Make sure to keep your contact information up to date, reviewing it at least once per year.
Add additional methods of payment in your registrar account if possible. Using both a credit card and a linked PayPal account or a linked bank account are recommended. Add a secondary credit card so that if the first fails, the second is automatically attempted.
Additional Security Measures
Enable the registrar transfer lock on your domain, prohibiting unauthorized transfers of your domain to another registrar.
Set up 2-factor authentication and include multiple methods if possible, including a cell phone number for an SMS code or an authentication app. Add a secondary email address which does not use your domain whenever possible–if the domain expires and your email no longer works, a company email as a method of authentication is worthless.
Enable privacy protection. While some registrars include this at no cost, many will charge an additional fee to withhold your name, email, and telephone number from the public database. This will help reduce spam in your email account as well as your exposure to phishing attempts.
Register top level domain (TLD) variations if possible. Purchase similar domains with various extensions (.org, .net, .us, for example.) If a word in your domain is commonly misspelled, purchase both variations, such as debtrelief.com and debtreleif.com and then redirect the misspelled domain to the primary. This can help prevent domain squatting.
Consider purchasing or enabling additional security policies for your domain such as domain protection or DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) when available. DNSSEC provides cryptographic authentication of DNS records to help prevent DNS spoofing, man-in-the-middle attacks, DNS cache poisoning, and other unauthorized modifications to DNS data.
Email Marketing
Use a reputable service for email marketing. Your customers must opt in to any marketing emails you send them. Don’t allow the sending of spam emails that may hurt your business and domain reputation. This is more important than it looks.
Finally, use a strong, unique password for your accounts. Not just on your domain registrar account, but on all accounts. Your passwords should be no less than 12 characters and should include letters, numbers, and special characters. Do not include your street name, your dog’s name, or any detail that anyone could look up about you.
Choosing a Registrar to Use
For the most part, a domain is not typically locked to a particular registrar. Once you purchase a domain, you are usually free to move it to another registrar if you like. This process, called domain migration or domain transfer, is relatively easy.
Some of the more well-known registrars include GoDaddy, Wix, Bluehost, Porkbun, Hover, Ionos, and DreamHost. There are really too many to list. Some registrars provide more services than others. Take the time to review your needs and decide on a long-term registrar for your domain. This is not wasted time. Some registrars will offer a deal such as “first year free” but in general, domain registration will run around $12-20 per year, depending on the TLD in use. Usually, locking in a domain name for a longer term (5-10 years) will result in a lower cost-per-year than a one-year term.
Your domain can be locked against transfer in the dashboard and must be unlocked before transferring to another registrar. You’ll want to avoid making any changes to your contact information if you are planning to migrate a domain; changes to even the contact phone number may result in a 60-day waiting period before the transfer can occur.
Domain Name Information Checklist
Your domain name is one of the most visible parts of your company’s assets, so you should take the time and effort to protect it. Create an information checklist (or use our handy PDF checklist) for your domain. This will include:
- How to access the account
- The recovery method should something happen
- The main contact for the account
Make certain that key employees in your company or organization are aware of how to find this information. Keep it in a safe, accessible location. This should not be on a sticky note under your keyboard.
If you’ve delegated access to your domain to your IT company or marketing firm, make sure that contact information is up to date. Review their level of access. Are they able to help you restore access should you become locked out, for example? Add a secondary and tertiary method of payment to the account, if possible, and enable multiple 2-factor authentication methods. If you are able to, add a second administrator, but make sure your contacts are trusted members of your team.
Recovering access to a domain after it has expired or been locked can be stressful, time-consuming, and in some cases expensive. Businesses are often surprised by how difficult the process can become once account access is lost or important contact information is no longer current. Taking a few extra steps ahead of time can prevent a great deal of disruption later.
Treat your domain as a company asset, and it will pay dividends for years to come.
