Five Things To Consider When Registering Domain Names

Published by James on July 29th, 2011 - in Domain Names

Domain name registration is a necessary, easy and important first step in establishing an online presence, whether it is for a business purpose or otherwise. A well chosen domain name can help your website be a success in several ways, particularly when it comes to being found within search engines. It can also help with brand consistency if you can match it closely to your business name or service.

Registering your domain name is easy, but some important decisions are needed before you make the final choice.

Below are five factors that can influence your decision and determine just how successful your domain is in driving traffic to your website.

Domain extension:
The original and still the most popular domain extension is the .com. Most people having been very familiar with this extension for a long time. Many people associate the .com extension as the standard extension for a business and it is the tendency of many users to look for the .com version of a website, whether it exists or not, before checking for other extensions. The .com is also one of the most sought after extensions when it comes to premium domain / aftermarket sales, where owners privately sell domain on for inflated prices.

Thinking towards extensions has been changing in recent times, with less emphasis being placed on the extension and more on the words used before it i.e. ‘yourcompany’ .com, ‘mycompany’ .com because this is will have bigger impact on brand consistency and search rankings to a certain extent rather than the extension itself.

However, the correct extension is still important. Nowadays there are a significant number of other domain extensions to choose from including .co.uk, .net, .org, .biz, .me, .tv, .eu, .teland many more. Most domain extensions today are just as likely to be spidered by search engines as any other.

It’s also worth considering name protection, by registering your chosen name in multiple extensions. Some of the most popular extensions are .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .co.uk so, if you do want to protect your domain then it would be worth checking it is available in these extensions as well.

Keywords
Your chosen domain keyword(s) (the part before the extension) is an important aspect to consider when choosing your domain name. You should try where possible to embed a main keyword or phrase into the domain name. This keyword or phrase could be your company name, a service you offer, the name of a local group etc but should, where possible (and if available), be relevant to the focus of the website. For instance, if you sell red widgets, look at domain variations such as yourcompany.com, redwidgets.com, widgets.com and remember to try in different extensions.

Relevant and well thought keywords within your domain can have a significant impact on how your website will perform in search engines, not just for brand searches, but also for searches related to the service you are offering.

Hyphenated Domain Names
Should you get a hyphenated domain name? Hyphenated domain names are slightly more difficult to remember and to communicate correctly. There is a tendency to forget the hyphen or mention it in the wrong places when information is passed by word of mouth and hence it is wise, if possible, to avoid them. This is purely a communication issue so, if there is no choice but to choose the hyphenated version, just do so. Search Engines do not discriminate against hyphenated domains, you just need to make sure you communicate the domain correctly.

Short and Memorable
Choose a domain name that is memorable, short and easy to pronounce. A shorter domain name is always easier to remember than a long one. Word of mouth advertisement is considered to be one of the most popular forms of advertising in a business so a short and memorable domain is ideal for people to remember your website and pass the word around. Try to keep your domain name registration topically relevant, whether it be brand or service related. As search engines get smarter and smarter, sites that display total relevance will rank higher than catch all sites.

Trademarks and copyrights – Be sure to avoid other companies’ trademarks and copyrights when choosing your domain name. Legislation has been passed making "CyberSquating" illegal. Be ethical in your domain name registrations to avoid possible legal pitfalls.

Finally, treat your domain name as an asset. Keep your domain name passwords and all other details safe. The last thing you want is for somebody to steal your domain name and redirect it on the internet.

Rakesh Packer is a consultant for a domain names registration company in the UK.

Article Source: Five Things To Consider When Registering Domain Names

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Pay Per Click Advertising: The Number One Way to Learn This Marketing Medium

Published by James on July 29th, 2011 - in PPC

In order to become proficient with any task, you have to do it repeatedly. The same is true for pay per click (PPC) advertising.

At first glance, starting a PPC campaign might have you questioning if this will work for you. But, practice makes perfect with pay per click advertising; with a little hands-on experience and remembering the tips outlined below, you can become a whiz with your AdWords campaign in no time at all.

Individual Bids For Each Keyword

It is extremely important where your ads appear. Most search engines show 10 pay per click ads on a page and most people do no look past the first page of the search results, so you want to be on the first page.

By adjusting your bids for each keyword, you can have your ads appear in third or fourth place. Now you may be thinking, you want to be in first place, but this is actually the worst place for your ads. Because so many people click on the first ad out of sheer curiosity, you will get unwanted clicks that cost you money. When it comes to ad placement and PPC, you don’t want to be No. 1.

Create Two Versions of Your Initial Ad

By creating two versions of your ad, eg, split testing it, you can test the ads against each other. FYI, split testing is running the same type of ad, worded slightly differently.

Once your ads are running, you will begin to see which keywords are working for you and which ones are not. You can then take the keywords that work and create ads focusing on a more targeted group based on the results you receive from your split test campaign.

Apply Google Analytics to All Web Pages

Using Google Analytics on each of your web pages, you will be able to track your web traffic. This can provide you valuable information such as keywords used to land on your website, where your traffic is coming from, as well as the ability to track and compare your ads, affiliate campaigns, referrals, paid links, and other search engines.

Google Analytics is a piece of code placed on your web pages which tracks the traffic you receive. Google Analytics is free, so there is no reason not to use it.

If you are pay per click shy because you don’t know how to get started, read the tutorials, visit forums, or consider hiring a consultant to learn how the program works. Then, you too can benefit from pay per click in your online business.

Want to out perform your competitors and build your business? PPC Summits teach you how to not only write traffic-generating pay-per-click headllines, but how to be among the best search engine marketers on the net. Get full details at http://www.PPCSummit.com.

Article Source: Pay Per Click Advertising: The Number One Way to Learn This Marketing Medium

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Social Marketing Meets Search Engine Optimization

Published by James on July 28th, 2011 - in Social

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is simply a means to engage your prospect in a more relational non-official manner while attracting link popularity as you pepper the internet with your site’s URL.

Thus far, it seems SMM and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) only meet at link popularity, but there is more. There are social sites that are being able to drive direct SE (Search Engine) traffic while still giving the usual social traffic as well as the link love that is so badly needed in the SEO. These sites are not only high in link popularity but they also highly rank within SEs by themselves. Sites like Squidoo, HubPages, ClipMarks and others will literally rank within the first pages of SEs for even fairly competitive terms in a matter of days.

Now, if you have been in internet marketing for at least 3 months that last statement should have taken you aback. In old school SEO, it took even a week just to get indexed. This basically means that from that point on, SE know that your site exists and have included it in their database. It would then take more weeks just to get listed in the SERP. And of course they will first place your site so deep in the list you will even have a problem locating it yourself. Then slowly your pages will graduate moving up in the SERP list as they attain increasing link popularity.

This process may take you a couple of months before you can see your site in the first pages of the SEs for your targeted keyword. All this time you will be receiving zero or very little traffic. A ranking position below the third page of SE listings will rarely get you any appreciable amounts of traffic.

But with some social sites this process happens in a matter of a day. You post your content and the next day you will literally find your content listed within the first pages of SEs attracting hordes of traffic. You actually get stumped the first time this happens to you if you have been marketing the old way. There is an explanation to this phenomenon.

SEs are always looking for new content to include in their results. On the other hand social sites are always churning out new content as their users blog, comment and update their profiles. So SEs camp out on these sites and slurp up the new content as it comes, indexes it and ranks it ASAP.

Just think about it, by tomorrow, today’s blog post in a social site like Xanga will be stale. So the SEs need to quickly rank this content so it can be found today. This is why they expedite the process.

Unfortunately there is a notable disadvantage with these fast SE ranking. There had to be, this is already too good to be true. With such fast ranking one could literally make truckloads of cash. The disadvantage is that these ranking go as fast as they come and here is why.

Remember that blog post at Xanga that got quickly ranked, tomorrow it is stale news. Tomorrow we will be interested with what’s new then. So the SEs quickly reduces the value to that blog post as it ranks newer post higher. Usually such content will drop down the SERP like a stone after a few days. But for those that have their SEO basics right there are ways to susutain these ranking at those high levels.

The author recomends an All-in-One Small Online Business solution by SiteSell called SBI for your small business ideas. Use it to create a website.

Article Source: Social Marketing Meets Search Engine Optimization

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