It may not be obvious, but your online presence is made up of separate parts, like separate parts of a machine, all working together.
Each part serves a specific purpose and they interconnect to give you your overall online presence.
Here are the main parts:
Your Domain Name
The most important piece is your domain name, and there’s an art to choosing the right domain name so that it works nicely with the other parts of the machine and does your business justice.
- Domain: example.com
We’ve written a free guide to called the Ultimate Guide to Domain Names to help you choose the best domain for your business and ensure it’s set up correctly.
Your Website
Your website works very closely with your domain name and usually uses the prefix www. before your domain name as its identifier.
- Website: www.example.com
This is your most obvious and public presence, but in truth requires a domain name, usually preceded by www. in order to be able to find out more about your business. Websites need hosting – which is the space on the Internet where your website resides. Your domain name can point to any hosting anywhere and be changed in a matter of hours to point to a different host and so a different version of your website hosted elsewhere.
Find out more about the benefits of good hosting here:
Your Email
Similarly, your email also works closely with your domain name and uses prefixes of anything@. before your domain name to ensure mail is correctly routed and delivered to your inbox
- Email: anything@example.com
Although often sold with web hosting or domains, each of these systems works independently and sometimes there are good reasons to separate them.
In most cases, business email is better served with a professional email solution such as Google Workspace which can give you one or more email addresses using your chosen domain name.
Find out more about business email here:
