Archive for December, 2010

The first thing you must do, before you can set up a blog, before you can write killer content to bring the masses to your door, before you can get rich selling information products, is choose a domain name. Your domain is your address. It’s the map to where your site lives, and if it’s a good one, it’s descriptive of your business or your niche.

As more and more people begin setting up shop online, good domain names become harder to find, which leads people to come up with other ways to get the domain they want. But are these domain tricks a good or a bad idea?

.com, .org, .net

In the town where I live, the person in charge of naming streets is terribly uninventive. The old standbys are good enough, it seems, so we have 28th Street, 36th Street, 48th Street, and the like. The trouble is, we also have 36th Avenue and 48th Avenue. So whenever you give someone directions to a home or business on one of those streets, you have to be careful to clarify exactly which one you mean.

I see a lot of new Internet marketers who, when they find their idealdomain.com is not available, excitedly snap up idealdomain.org or idealdomain.net, then wonder, “Is the.org or.net okay for SEO?”

Actually, the domain name has very little value when it comes to SEO, but more on that later. What these newbie marketers should be concerned with whether they are sending potential readers to the wrong house in the wrong neighborhood. And that is exactly what they are doing, because a high percentage of Internet users, when entering URL into the address bar of their favorite browser, will automatically add.com on the end. Just like that, your traffic is landing on your competition’s site.

The moral of the story? Buy the.com or don’t buy anything. Find a.com you can live with, rather than choose a.org you love, because it’s not worth the loss of type-in traffic just to have a cute/clever/keyword-laden domain.

Dash Dos and Don’ts

Just don’t. Never use a dash in a domain name.

Imagine, you start up a nice little business, and you’re doing okay, but you want to branch out, get some more traffic. You decide to try podcasting, or video marketing. In your very first podcast you say “Hi, and welcome to Great Gardening Tips. I’m your host, Ginny Gardener. You can find our show notes at great dash gardening dash tips dot com.” Sounds a lot worse than it looks, doesn’t it?

Never buy a domain name with a dash in it unless you plan to never speak the name out loud. And even then, you’ll lose the type-in traffic, because people won’t type dashes any more than they’ll remember your domain is a .org.

You Have to Use Dashes to Get Good Keywords

You don’t need keywords in your domain name.

There, I said it. Let the debate rage. (Seriously, leave a comment. I’d love to hear your reasons why you must have keywords in your domain name.)

Here’s the thing. If you happen to have a domain that has good keywords then you will get some SEO benefit, but not from the Google gods directly. You will get a benefit because when people link to a site, they tend to use the site name. So if your domain is dogtrainingtips.com, people will most often link to you with the anchor text “dog training tips” which is a nice keyword phrase.

My advice? Use keywords if you can, but don’t sweat it if you can’t.

Avoid Clever Uses of Numbers and Odd Spellings

There’s a business near me that delivers food from local restaurants. Kind of a take-out delivery service. I’d use them, if I could remember the domain name. They advertise on billboards, so I’ve seen it a thousand times, but I cannot remember it, simply because it’s some combination of abbreviations and numbers that someone thought was clever. gr8dinner.com or something.

Think about it. I’m an Internet marketer. I live on the Internet. My Google-foo is strong. I brainstorm domain names for fun. If I can’t remember their domain name, I promise you no one else remembers it either. They’d be much better served with a boring old domain than one that’s clever but hard to remember.

The same goes for substituting z for s, x for ks, or any other phonics trick. Instead of being memorable – which I’m sure is the intent – you just make it difficult for people to find you.

Now I know you’re all out there whining that all the good domain names are taken and nothing is left but dashes and crazy number combinations. Not true. It might take a little longer to find a good.com than it did a few years ago, but there are still decent domain names to be had. You just need a little patience.

Millions of people all over the world are using the Internet on a daily basis, with more businesses and individuals creating and posting their own websites on the Internet than ever before. If you are new to the worldwide web’s capabilities there is the first initial step you will take before posting your newly created web page. In order to have a website found on the Internet you will need to choose and register a domain name for your website.

What Is A Domain Name?

A domain name is the base name in which you will choose for your website, an example would be “nameofyourbuiness.com”. Try not to mistake it for the URL which would prefix www to the “nameofyourbusiness.com”. Your domain name is actually inside the URL, not the actual URL. When choosing a domain name it is best to go with something simple and effective. You will want to use your company name; if it has already been chosen, try a different ending such as,.org or.net. Avoid using diluted names like “my-website-company-name.com”. Some people may forget the dashes and then they never find you.

Why Do I Need To Register My Domain?

You will need to register your domain name for the same reason as registering your actual company name with the state, so no one else can steal the domain name and then there are two sites with the same domain, which will not work. The use of having a website on the internet is as if we all lived on the same exact street, how would the post office know which house to go to if we all had the same address?

How to Register a Domain Name?

Nine times out of ten when you sign up for a hosting account, which is what you will need to park your website on the web, they will offer the ability to register a domain name for one year. The typical fee for registering a domain name for one year will range from roughly $10 to $40 depending on the name and where you decide to purchase it. You will need to choose a registrar to go through. A few popular ones are listed below:

Godaddy.com is the largest domain registrar to date. They offer a variety of domain endings to choose from like.com,.us,.biz,.info,.net,.org,.ws,.name,.tv,.co.uk,.me.uk and.org.uk. Their price is around $10 a year.

Dotster.com offers domains ending in .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us, .ca, .tv, .name, .cc, .de, .sr, .md, .co.uk, .us.com. There basic registration price is about $16 per year.

Moniker.com offers new .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us and .info domains at around $10 right now as a sale price, others are a higher cost.

Register.com offers domains ending in .com, .org, .net, .info, .mobi, .biz, .us, .co, .uk, and many others. The average cost per year to register the domain is $6 to $10 depending on the ending.

The bottom line is simple. The Internet has rules much like anything else and you will need to follow some very simple procedures. First, you will need to find an available domain that effectively and powerfully conveys your company, most likely the company name. Next you will need to register the domain by paying a fee and then the domain will be yours for the time the fee covers.

A lot of experienced internet business owners realize that purchasing a pre-existing domain name can provide them a sudden increase in web site visitors. Most of these domain names formerly had a web site developed and are getting visitors so when you purchase it, you essentially have an internet business in a box. The key is figuring out where to find a great name available as well as just what exactly makes a good domain name.

Regardless of what some individuals say you can still find excellent domains available. It’s just an issue of discovering the right key word combo. There are a couple of schools of thought about whether or not you need to use a.com domain name. Some people say unquestionably yes while some consider a.net is just as good. You need to make that evaluation on your own according to your business.

Before you start your hunt for the right domain for sale there are a few points you need to consider:

1. Be certain the domain does not include any excess words. Domain names which have words and phrases like ‘best’ or ‘easy’ etc. They’re filler words and they also make the domain name much less valuable (though, subject to the amount of targeted traffic the domain is receiving and the strengths of the different keyword phrases in the domain name, it could certainly be a good name to purchase it really merely depends upon the price).

2. Just how much traffic does the domain receive on a per month basis? If you’re in search of a specific domain which is rich in keywords and phrases, the web site connected with that domain needs to be one within your niche so you will be able to profit if that domain receives a great deal of searches. Receiving built-in targeted traffic can be an excellent benefit from purchasing a preexisting domain name.

3. Occasionally it just is practical to purchase a brand new name that has no visitors or a web page. This choice is particularly a good one for someone having a limited spending budget. You can purchase a brand spanking new domain for around 10 bucks and then you can brand it on your own. It’s going to take longer, however it is going to be less costly.

A very important thing to keep in mind is that you do not want to depend on a free blogging platform such as WordPress or Blogger for your domain name. It is important for the long-term success of your online business that you have your own domain name for two reasons.

For starters, when using the free sites, you never actually own anything at all. Not much of a base for your long term business. And two, you’re at the mercy of the (ever changing) policies from the company which is hosting your website, for example WordPress or Blogger.