Buying a domain name - do I need hosting?

MPM said:

Hi all,

Quick question.

I am just about to buy a domain name, which I want to set up a redirect to my .co.uk.

Do I need hosting or can I just buy the domain name and set up a forward without the hosting?

Secondly, how do I tell where the site will registered?

The name server is ns2.csnmreg.com and it is a UK site (the site I am buying it from).
Thanks,

John

Click to expand...

1. No
2. If you buy the domain at 123 -reg.co.uk you can forward the domain name to any name server you want.

Nameservers aren't required for web forwarding, so you shouldn't be looking in the change nameserver part of your control panel. Have a look for web forwarding, and if your domain registration company supports this (most do), just web forward to your actual domain. For instance we have non-framed web forwarding of our domain (purchased at 123-reg.co.uk) to redirect www.awebapart.co.uk to www.awebapart.com - you don't need hosting for a redirected domain.

MPM said:

Hi all,

Quick question.

I am just about to buy a domain name, which I want to set up a redirect to my .co.uk.

Do I need hosting or can I just buy the domain name and set up a forward without the hosting?

Secondly, how do I tell where the site will registered?

The name server is ns2.csnmreg.com and it is a UK site (the site I am buying it from).

Thanks,

John

Click to expand...

Be careful with the forward some hosts do it differently you want it to be SEO friendly no doubt!

Regarding site registered do you mean which provider?

Yes, that should be fine. The tld and hosting location are more important factors

MPM said:

With regards to where it is registered I was thinking that it needs to be a UK registration and not an American one, or does it not make much difference?

I went with 123 in the end as they had web forwarding very easy to set up. Yes I do want it to be SEO friendly but I am not putting anything under that website or promoting it at all. Have I made a good decision with what I have done?!

Thanks,

John

Click to expand...

Indeed you shouldn't have any problems, unless 123-reg have DNS issues!

MPM said:

I went with 123 in the end as they had web forwarding very easy to set up. Yes I do want it to be SEO friendly but I am not putting anything under that website or promoting it at all. Have I made a good decision with what I have done?!

Click to expand...

Yes. If you have just purchased the .com equivalent of your main .co.uk domain for redirection purposes (in case people type in .com instead of .co.uk) and for brand protection (to prevent others buying the domain) then this should be fine. There isn't any real SEO advantage to this approach and there shouldn't be, since you are not doing it for SEO you are doing it for other reasons.

Whilst what you have done wont give you any SEO advantage, you have done it the right way to avoid any detrimental SEO effects so in that respect it is SEO friendly. For instance if you had both domains hosted showing the same website there would be duplicate content issues and general confusion by others when providing inbound links (which site to inbound link to, this confusion can also be caused by framed forwarding). As long as you don't start to promote the .com as a brand and as long as you solely focus on inbound links to the hosted .co.uk domain you should be OK.

'Web forwarding' for SEO advantage or increased traffic is mainly used for feeder websites which have different domain names (usually targeted keyword specific domain names) and have some hosted content before encouraging the visitor to go to your main site (123-reg's domains can be good for this too since you get a free 1 page instant site hosted website as part of the domain purchase).