Tip 1. Did you know that you can order a private domain registration that will hide your personal information from public Whois records. That's right! A private domain is the same as a regular domain registration. The only difference is a private registration keeps your personal information hidden from the public whois records by replacing your information with your registrars information 'Domains by Proxy'. A public domain registration is flat out public record, this allows anyone to look up your web site domain and retrieve your email, phone, address and name in less then 30 seconds!

Tip 2. Did you know you can use multiple hyphens in your domain name. Yes, you can use as many hyphens in a domain name as you desire. Lets say you wanted to register a key word domain like i.e. domainhosting.com and discovered it was taken, now try domain-hosting.com or domain--hosting.com or even domain---hosting.com and so on.

Tip 3. Did you know you can register a domain name up to 63 characters in length. When the internet was first released you could only register domain names up to 22 characters long. This changed in late fall of 1999 and opened the door for new domain name registration opportunitys. Business owners can now register their company slogans and long business names.

Tip 4. Did you know that Google search engine looks at how many years you have your domain name registered for? Yes, a 10 year domain registration will rank better then a 2 year domain registration. Search engines look at this to determine if a website is in business for the long haul.

Tip 5. Did you know that by using keywords and hyphens in a domain name will boost your web site rankings? A registered keyword domain name with hyphens is very search engine friendly, but is not user friendly. To get around this small problem you can register 2 domains. One domain would be hyphenated and the other domain would not. Use the hyphenated domain for your main website and simply forward the non-hyphenated domain name to your website. Now you have the best of both worlds. By using this technique your website will gain better rankings much sooner.

We hope you enjoyed these little known secrets about domain names and you can apply them to your web site strategy for better rankings.