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Friday, November 30, 2012

How to Choose a Domain When Launching a Website

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How Keywords Work With Domain Names

Choosing and buying your domain.

When building a website for your business start by taking care of 3 things before you do anything else:

Choose a domain name Decide where you want to have your site hosted Choose what software you will use for the physical pages and posts of your site

Before you can actually start your domain search you must know which network you want your site to be in. This isn't a difficult choice in my opinion since we all know the most popular network is.com.

If you need any reinforcement try this:

Think about the way you would feel if you had a great product but chose the wrong network because someone already had your choice of name on the.com network. Even if you had a small degree of success it could all go up in smoke if the other guy with the.com got wind of it. There are reasons to choose other networks especially if you are a non-profit but for what we are discussing here, online marketing, you should stick with.com. Below is a short list of networks, there are many more.

.com .net .org .info .biz .US

After you've decided the network you can start working on your URL.

The domain name is your web site's URL which means Uniform Resource Locator. You can pick any available URL for your site. To determine if a name is available you need to visit a domain registry, this is a site dedicated to selling URL's and assigning IP addresses to them.

A short list of domain registries:

godaddy.com 123cheapdomains.com dreamhost.com, hostgator.com

Finding a domain registry is the easy part, the hard part is searching for the domain that fits your market. When you're working to create a website for your online business you need to search for names that are related to the products and services you will be selling. To begin with use these three tips to get you closer. If you can do it you should create the name of your product while deciding which domain to use so that it will be SEO'd properly from the beginning.

If you've done your keyword research use what you've found to get as close as you can. If you haven't done your keyword research you need to do it. If you know the name of your product or service already use it as a guide. Think about what you would enter in a search in Google when you search for similar products and services. If you can't find a something with your product name in it you should choose a domain name that is closely related to your market. You want to make it easy to remember, something catchy and on topic The shorter the better but if you have to go long try to get a search term in there somewhere

Once you decide on a keyword phrase go to one of the domain registries and start searching. It costs nothing to search and all searches are private so you have nothing to lose if you put in some of your best ideas. Your first goal is to find what's available so do as many searches as you can until you get a couple of dozen or more available domains. Write them down and cull through them to get the best one. Sometimes it takes a day or two or even a week to settle on a good name. I would choose more than 1 you can always use the others as what Jeff Johnson calls "feeder sites".

When you do get a good domain or 3 you need to be invested in your business. What do I mean by that? I mean you should buy them for as long of a term as you can this will help you to be properly SEO'd in this department as well.

Buy A Potential Website Or Domain Name And Make Thousand Of Dollars From It Getting Free Domain Names Is Easy Domain Names - How Much Do They Cost? Discover How To Register A Domain Name Domain Monitor - How to Catch an Expiring Domain

Getting A Dot Com Dot AU Domain Name For Aussie Small Business In Australia

Getting Aussie small businesses online in Australia is not as simple as just registering your domain name and publishing a website. There are many rules specific to Australia that have to be adhered too and if you do not meet these requirements than you cannot register for a .com.au web address.

Australian must first have a registered business or be registered as a sole trader with a current ABN (Australian Business Number) before they can register for the .com.au domain space. The domain name chosen has to be relevant to the business name or in the case of a sole trader must reflect their name if they do not have a registered business name.

Registered Australian business can use their registered business name as the domain name. Sole traders must first register a business name before then can use it as a domain name. Sole traders without a registered business name must use their own name or something very similar for example; John Smith is a plumber so he can use johnsmithspluming or jsplumbing as long as it is closely related and not already in use it should be allowed.

Australia has an organization dedicated to use of the .com.au domain name space and at the end of year 2000, the Australian Government endorsed the .au Domain Administration LTD as the appropriate authority to manage the .com.au domain space and they will have any other information you will need to know that is not in this article.

If you are a sole trader or just starting a business it is inexpensive to register a business name and can be done online providing you have an ABN or are in the process of applying for one. The website that handles business name registrations is ASIC ( Australian Securities & Investments Commissions ).

Once you have your ABN then you can think about getting online and registering your .com.au domain name so you will need to decide what the best plan of action for you is.

Basically you have 3 choices!

1. Do it all yourself.

2. Find someone to do it all for you.

3. Work together with a consultant that can help and advise you.

Choice 1 is the hardest unless you already have the experienced and I would not recommend that for beginners.

Choice 2 is the easiest option but it will also cost you the most and you may not get exactly what you want, need or is best for you.

Choice 3 would be the most practical option because you have the advantage of getting help and learning as you go. That way you are not left dependent on others to keep you online and all the questions can be answered without paying a fortune.

Using Domain Names to Make Your Business More Professional

No matter what type of business you run, the key to your success will be making yourself stand out from the crowd. It's a buyer's market and this means that businesses all around the world will have to create a competitive advantage. If you don't already have a website and internet presence then you are already missing out.

Local not Global

Lots of people think that the internet is a global resource, and if their business only has local customers then a website isn't necessary. This isn't actually true. Few people bother picking up a phone book anymore, most people will visit a search engine like Google and type in the company that they are looking for.

Remember that people are impatient; they like to get the information they need straight away. If they can't find your company online quick enough, then they might start looking somewhere else.

Paid Hosting

Most internet service providers include a free hosting account with their services. The problem with these is that they are unprofessional and only normally designed for very small sites. In order o get the most out of your website you really need to have a domain name.

A domain name is the name of the website that people type in to access your site. It is the whatevername.com, or.co.uk, .net, and so on. Choosing a catchy domain name is key to making your site successful.

Choosing free hosting may be the cheapest option, but it won't help you to get the most out of your site. Free hosting accounts often have very long addresses like yourhostingcompany.com/freespace/username/ which doesn't look very professional. Being able to have yourcompanyname.com is much better.

Email

Another knock on benefit of having your own domain name is that you can start having much more professional email addresses. Rather than having a Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo mail account, you can have address @ yourdomain.com.

Easy and Cheap

Now you might think that getting this web presence would be very difficult and costly. Actually, this couldn't be further from the truth. By shopping around on the internet you should be able to find a fantastic deal for your business so that you can benefit from the internet.

As a domain name and website won't cost your business much, it's certainly worth investing in. The sooner you build a site, the sooner you can start benefiting from it.

Domain Name - Tips to Choose a Domain Name Wisely

Your domain name is a very important part of your site, whether it is a blog or website. It is your brand and will reflect on your site so you have to choose wisely. If your upcoming site is about you, you will most probably choose your name as a domain name so there is nothing difficult about that. However if your new site is about anything else, then there are some things you should take into active consideration. This will ensure that your site will be successfully branded and give the right message to would-be visitors.

So what is a domain? Think of it as your address details of your site. People who want to visit your site will type in your site's domain in the address bar of their browser. Most of the domains end in.com but other domain extensions exist. The most common, after.com, are.org and.net.

A domain name should only be chosen after keyword research. Once you have decided on the niche market you intend to target you should carry out keyword research to see which sub-niche you will be targeting. It is important that you find a low competition and high demand niche as this will help you immensely in ranking highly in the search engines. Moreover having the keywords associated with your chosen niche in your domain will give a further boost to your site's rankings. And the name of the game is getting your site on the first page of the search engines.

A domain name should have 2 parts. The first part I covered above is for the search engines. The second part is for humans. The second part should precisely define what you intend to write about in your site.

A simple example will make things clearer. Let's say that your chosen sub niche, after keyword research, is about dog grooming. This is for the search engines. But your site will be delivering useful information about the various shampoos available. And if you have thoroughly researched affiliate programs about the various shampoos available, you might also be able to earn some money online. So the human part of your domain name will include shampoos. Your complete domain name will therefore be dog grooming shampoos.

The placing of keywords in your domain name is also important. Always try to place the search engine keywords of your domain as close to the start of your domain name as possible. This is good for search engine optimization purposes. Last but not least, if the sub niche you are targeting, in our case dog grooming shampoos, was found not to be too competitive, you might rank highly by virtue of having chosen a domain name wisely.

Buy A Potential Website Or Domain Name And Make Thousand Of Dollars From It Getting Free Domain Names Is Easy Domain Names - How Much Do They Cost? Discover How To Register A Domain Name

When It Comes to Domain Names You Must Realize That a URL Is Not a Brand Name

The other day, I was talking to an online startup company that had some decent funding. They were interested in a little bit of consulting expertise from me and had inquired about the proper domain name strategies to help catapult their business. They immediately started looking at potential domain names which were for sale, and they were willing to spend quite a bit of money. Indeed, I'm not sure if that makes a lot of sense.

In fact, the domain name may not be as important as you think, and certainly not for the same reasons. You see, there's a difference between a hot property, or an easily memorable domain name and what is needed to capture brand name recognition from the online consumer. Okay so let's talk about this for second shall we because it is a decent question.

First, before I get into this I'd like to recommend a very good book to read which actually has a chapter on this topic. The name of the book that I'd like to recommend to you is;

"Deep Branding On The Internet - Applying Heat and Pressure Online to Ensure a Lasting Brand," by Marc Braunstein and Edward H. Levine, Prima Ventures Publishing, Roseville CA, 200, 380 pages, ISBN: 0-7615-2532-7.

In Chapter II titled; "A URL Is Not a Brand" the authors make some rather interesting comments, which really makes you think, that is if you are a branding and marketing person. The authors suggest that just because you cyber-squatted a great URL, doesn't mean that any company should buy it and assume that this will suffice for proper branding. Although some of these cyber squatted names did sell for millions of dollars such as "Business (dot) com" which was one example used by the authors, it doesn't mean that is a brand name, just as owning a domain name such as "sports cars (dot) com" is not a brand name.

Now this doesn't mean those aren't great "internet real estate" properties to own, they definitely are, but there is much more to it than that. After all, what is a Google, Yahoo, or Zynga, etc.? Today, those are great brand names. The reality is those domain names probably didn't cost much of anything, perhaps the owners or founders of those companies thought up a good name for a company, or something unique, and then registered those domain names for a very low price. They didn't spend millions of dollars to buy them. You see my point?

Far too often startup entrepreneurs believe that they need a specialized domain and can therefore make the business work. Some actually believe that if others have already taken such a domain name then there is too much competition out there and they will never be able to make any money. That's just not the case, that's not how works. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.