I used to buy Yahoo domain names as cheap as $1.99 dollars for the first year registration, after that, the renewal price for a Yahoo domain name was an affordable $ 9.90 each year. But those days are gone away. Since this month Yahoo has increased the domain name prices to $34.95 dollars for one year renewal as you can see in red boxes that show $34.95 for renewals and $9.00 if you want a private registration.

I agree that prices can suffer an increment with the time, but change from $9.90 to $34.95 it’s a 353% increment. What is the strategy behind this movement? Recover what Microsoft offered for the company? That’s too much for a domain name.

GoDaddy Domain names King say, “A domain name is a domain name wherever you register it”, and that’s true. But what’s the difference of having a domain name with Yahoo?

Since my point of view, besides working with security and the Yahoo brand itself, what I like about Yahoo Domains is the control panel, it’s complete and you can change easily whatever you want with no pains, like forward your domain, manage advanced DNS settings, lock and unlock your domain, set up an email account and even create a starter web page. Other systems are complex and for an average user it could be a difficult task to change settings. The next image shows the Yahoo Domain Name Control Panel.

Domain name prices change from time to time, that’s logical. An example, GoDaddy domain names are also suffered a little increment in prices recently from $ 8.95 to $ 9.95, that’s a reasonable price and you can have several extras with your domain name, but administrating the system is not as easy as Yahoo control panel for an average user.

Domain names are the heart & soul of a web page, if your domain name goes, everything else disappear immediately, and I mean everything, e-mail accounts content, your whole website and your brand will suffer all the consequences. So be careful with your web page heart. Renew a domain name with anticipation and make it also for several years if you are planning to stay online for a while . If for some reason you lose it or forget to make the renewal, you have the priority over it and approximately 45 days to recover it before some else try to grab it.

If you are trying to register a domain name for the first time, take in count these 5 advices.

1.- Try to register a .com domain name
2.- Keep it short and understandable as possible. An example. www.eFlowers.com
3.- Search engines results are based in keywords, use them in your domain name with no abuse. Anothe example www.FloridaPorfessionalPainting.com
4.- Search engines also rank web pages based in your TLD country. If your company is based in the United States and you are trying to export to Europe grab a .EU domain name, you will have a mayor exposure.
5.- Do not use hyphens or numbers. It will more difficult to spell it or write it

Finally a YouTube video with some tech talk about domain names registration that can be useful.