How To Protect Your Business Website Domain

It’s easily one of your most valuable business assets, so it’s only right to consider ways to protect your website domain. This preventative measure isn’t just against unwanted activity, but it’s also helpful for any accidental oversights.

Whether you’ve been using your website domain for a number of years, or plan to buy a domain name soon, there’s a couple of smart moves you can take to ensure your fully protected.

Stay locked in

By locking your domain name, you are protecting it against being transferred to another registrant. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, simply visit our KB article on locking your domain and change the settings to ‘locked’.

Auto-renew

This one’s a no-brainer! Whether you’re about to buy a domain or currently own one, you can choose to ‘auto renew’ your domain before its expiry date. Be sure to update your payment settings and put a note in your diary, to avoid missing the deadline.

Own your property

When you check domain names, there’s an option for the length of ownership period – usually between one and ten years. Although it can be costly to reserve your domain for a longer period of time, there are savings to be made in the long-run. If you know that you’re going to be operating your business for a number of years, this will guarantee that no-one can take your website off you.

Contact details

While it may seem obvious, the details you include in your profile should be kept up-to-date. It is possible to register several e-mail addresses to reach you on – this covers all bases, should your circumstances change, such as moving jobs. Be sure to periodically check your junk mail to ensure you don’t miss any crucial messages either, that might notify you about renewal information.

Consider variations

While it’s impossible to plan for every eventuality, some due diligence can be taken to protect your intellectual property. Consider buying domain name variations for the markets your business operates in; for instance .ie domains, as well as .com. You may also want to own variations on the spelling (e.g.; gogle.com as well as google.com), to protect your brand and prevent others trading off your reputation.

Be consistent

In the early stages of launching your business, don’t just check domain names for availability – check your business name too. Both should be unregistered, and both should be consistent (eg, LetsHost is the company and letsthost.ie is the domain). Not only is this good business practice, but it may help you if you decide to trademark your name too.

Enable 2 Factor Authorisation

Quite literally protect your domain as best you can by opting for 2 Factor Authorisation in your client area. Please visit our KB article for instructions on how to enable 2 Factor Authorisation.

Be wary

Unfortunately, spam messages are all too common, and it’s easy to click on a link that comes from an unauthorised user. If in doubt, check the integrity of the email address to see that it matches a known email address, or forward it in to our team and they will be happy to advise you on it.

The old-fashioned way

If you’ve bought your website domain for a select amount of years, but aren’t sure if you will renew it, put a note in your diary ahead of renewal. Old fashioned maybe, but you’ll be grateful for the heads-up if all else fails!

If you own a small business and don’t have an ie domain name or WordPress hosting, then visit LetsHost.ie for a selection of affordable solutions for your enterprise.