Your domain name probably isn't something that keeps you up at night. That is, until it suddenly quits working.
We've seen businesses locked out of their own domains, websites disappear, email stop working, and business owners discover that the domain they've been using for years isn't actually under their control.
A domain name isn't just the address of your website. It can also control your business email and other services connected through DNS. Losing access to it can become a much bigger problem than simply having a website go offline. If something has already gone wrong, our website repair services can help track down domain, DNS, hosting, and website problems.
Fortunately, most domain disasters are preventable.
Don't Use an Email Address You Never Check
Your domain registrar needs an email address it can use to contact you. Use one you actually monitor. Expiration notices, billing problems, security alerts, account recovery messages, and verification requests aren't particularly useful if they're being sent to an inbox nobody has checked since 2019.
Make sure the registrar always has current contact information.
Don't Use Your Domain Email as Your Only Recovery Email
Suppose your domain is example.com and you use an email address associated with that domain.
Normally, that's fine.
But if something goes wrong with example.com, your email may stop working too. Now the registrar is sending recovery information to an email address you can't receive.
That's an avoidable problem.
Use an email address outside the domain as the registrar account's recovery address. It could be Gmail, Outlook, or another account controlled by the business owner. The important thing is that the recovery method doesn't depend on the domain you're trying to recover.
Use a Password Manager and Turn On MFA
Don't reuse the same password for your registrar, website, email, bank, and everything else. Use a password manager and generate a unique password for your domain registrar account. Then turn on multi-factor authentication.
Your registrar account is one of the most important accounts your business owns. Someone who gains access to it may be able to change your DNS, disrupt your website, interfere with your email, or potentially transfer the domain.
Protect it accordingly.
Don't Let Your Web Developer Own Your Domain
This is where we've seen some of the worst problems.
A business hires a web developer, marketing company, friend, employee, or somebody's nephew who "knows computers." That person registers the domain through their own account because it's faster.
Everything works fine. Until the relationship doesn't.
Now the business owner wants to change web developers and discovers somebody else controls the domain.
Maybe the developer is cooperative and transfers it immediately.
Maybe they've disappeared. Maybe their company went out of business. Maybe nobody remembers the login.
Or maybe they're angry about being fired and suddenly aren't particularly interested in helping.
Don't put yourself in that position.
Your business should control its domain registrar account.
Your developer may need access to DNS and other technical settings, but they don't need to own your domain to do their job. When we handle web design and development, the client's domain remains under the client's control.
And web developers: stop registering clients' domains under accounts only you control. You're not doing the client a favor. You're creating an unnecessary dependency that somebody may have to untangle years later.
Turn On Auto-Renew, but Don't Completely Trust It
Turn on automatic renewal.
Seriously.
A domain is too important to rely entirely on somebody remembering to renew it every year.
But don't assume auto-renew makes the problem disappear forever. Credit cards expire. Payment methods change. Employees leave. Emails get ignored. Accounts get forgotten. Know where your domain is registered. Know how to log into the account. Keep the billing information current. Make sure the expiration notices are going somewhere that somebody actually checks.
Make Sure You Can Access Your Domain
Finding out where a domain is registered is easy. Getting into the account that controls it can be another story.
We've worked with businesses where the domain was registered years ago by an employee, former web developer, marketing company, or somebody else who is no longer around. The website may work perfectly fine for years, so nobody thinks about it until something needs to be changed.
Make sure you know how to access the account where your domain is registered, what email address is attached to it, and how to recover the account if you lose the password. Ideally, that account should be controlled by the business, not an outside vendor.
You don't need to understand DNS records or know how nameservers work. You just need to make sure that when somebody does need to make a change, you can actually get them access.
Your Domain Should Belong to You
A website can be rebuilt. Hosting can be replaced. A web developer can be replaced.
Your domain is different. It's part of your business identity, and after years of use it may be connected to your search visibility, email addresses, advertising, printed materials, customer accounts, and countless links across the internet.
Treat it like a business asset.
Tucson SEO Pros will never register your domain in our name or use ownership of your digital properties as leverage to keep your business. We may help you configure it. We may work with your DNS. We may help you figure out what went wrong when something breaks.
But it's your domain. You should own it.
If you're not sure who controls your domain, where it's registered, or how your website is currently configured, contact Tucson SEO Pros and we'll help you figure out what you're looking at.