I know that may come off as a bit over reaching - but its true. From email to news, search, video or anything else on the Internet - you have to know where you’re going which is only achieved by a domain name.
The ABC’s of domain names, which as a title may come off as a little corny to you, is an exercise that makes you think about your industry or business, what you’re doing in it, and how you go about doing what you do as it relates to domain names. The use of the ABC’s format is to provide a simple, back to basics approach to deliver fundamental concepts that provoke thoughts, ideas and questions on domain names and how they are a part of your world.
So, whatever all of that means - lets dive into the ABC’s of domain names and find their relevance in your line or work, personal life, hobbies, educational background, experience or special areas of interest to see what jumps out and comes naturally to you:
A: Advertising - domain names offer the perfect venue to advertise your product or services or to provide potential revenue by domain parking and/or affiliate programs.
B: Branding - the brand is in the name. Having a great targeted domain name can really build a brand, or can actually be the brand (eg: Google.com)
C: Community - the Internet is all about an interconnected community. Through domain names, you create a real destination and an identity for what can become a community.
D: Direct Search - having a generic word based domain name is your best path to direct search traffic. Direct Search is here to stay and will likely take an increasing share of the overall search marketplace. Direct search bypasses the likes of yahoo.com and google.com as the user types in the destination site directly into their browser (ie: www.computers.com).
E: Ecommerce - want to conduct business online - you need to start with one primary thing - a domain name. Ecommerce is one of the leading uses of the Internet.
F: Friends & Family - connect with your friends and family with domain names - either by email, your favorite websites, or photo sharing sites and videos, etc.
G: Global - synonymous with the Internet - domain names (particularly .com) have mass broad appeal on a global basis, with global potential.
H: High Returns - where else can you buy a piece of virtual real-estate for $8.00 and sell it within a matter of weeks or months for over $1000? Fund.com just sold for $9.99 Million in March of 2008.
I: Investment - domain names are appreciating more than any investment for the price. Similar to investing in stocks, bonds, real estate or insurance - domain names offer what I believe to be stable long lasting appreciation with the potential to create astonishing returns. Want to learn more about domain investing - you can always check out www.domainprofitsbook.com.
J: Justify - Justify your web presence and online business with a great domain name that demonstrates who you are and what you do.
K: Keywords - domain names can be based upon major key words for your industry or target market. Just the same, the key words you use in your Internet marketing can be generated from the domain name you choose and how it relates to your target industry/product/service/noun/verb.
L: Localization & Location - targeting niche audiences by location and a specific geography has proved to be a very strong, identifiable marketing opportunity for anybody online. Embracing localization for your domain investment objectives is a great path to consider.
M: Monetization - making money and creating multiple sources and streams of income are the cornerstones to the potential and reason why people buy savvy domain names.
N: New Markets to seize - new products and services are always being launched, just as new companies and markets are being formed. Finding with a good strong domain name to capture the essence of your business or target market for your online presence is always a great starting point.
O: Organization - a domain name is the perfect way to identify with your organization. Whether it’s a product, service, or brand - your domain name is your face on the Internet.
P: Profits - Domain are a great way to make money and profits. Invest wisely and you can find yourself with a great windfall.
Q: Quest - Like any business venture, you are on a quest to explore, learn and make money.
R: Revenue - domain names offer a myriad of ways to generate revenues. There are numerous ways and avenues to generate revenues with domain names, however, in some cases are closely held ideas and resources. Becoming educated about domain names and being focused on creating a long lasting business is a great path towards generating revenue.
S: Search Engines - Search engines are the gateway to choices on the Internet and essentially, a directory of domains classified by the type of information, product or service they offer. Search engines are a powerful marketing tool and a source of traffic for the domain name owner.
T: Technology - simply, without technology, there are no domains, websites, search engines, email or the like. The beauty of domain names is that you really don’t have to understand or learn too much technology to get started, or to make money.
U: Unique Users - people coming to your website/domains generate traffic. The more unique users that visit your website - the more traffic they create. The more traffic - the greater the value. The best way to create long lasting value with domain names is creating a venue where a consistent and growing base of unique users visit your domain name/website.
V: Virtual - Domain names are virtual real estate. Some represent ocean-front property while others can represent sky scrapers, apartments or vacant land in the middle of a barren desert. Build your portfolio of virtual real estate for the longer term or flip your domain name for a quick sale and profits.
W: World Wide Web - The world wide web and its beginning started with domain names and/or their underlying numerical identities. With the advent of the world wide web, email, search engines and the increasing convergence of communications and media - business and industry has created high demand and appreciating values for good domain names.
X: The X Factor - there is a mystique and certain unknowns regarding the true value of domain names, how to create revenue and profits, and what strategies are best to create traffic to your domain name or website. The more knowledgeable and prepared you are to dive into the domain name world - the better off you are in managing the X Factor when it rears its head.
Y: You - buying, selling, and owning domain names is a reflection upon you, what your goals are, where your interests lie, and how you want to make money with this virtual real estate. You need to decide what your objectives are and how you are most comfortable in approaching your investment and dedication towards making money with domain names.
Z: Zeal - approach your domain activities with passion and enthusiasm. The more positive your thinking and focus is with domain names - the better you will be able to manage it, be prepared, and have an open mind to seize new opportunities and make money with your domains.
We hope you enjoyed this article and find that each time you read it you take away something new and different that can add value to your world of domain names.
source: Entireweb
My nephew can build me a web site can’t he?
Yes, I won’t deny it your nephew or distant relative can likely create a "functional" web site but let me ask you, will it be positioned for success? Will it be bloated with useless markup or worse yet lack the essentials for organic search results? I don’t know about you but having a web site should be considered with marketing in mind before you just say, "…heck with it let’s just throw something online and see what happens". I can almost hear the crickets chirping from lack of activity and visibility online.
What you see is what you get!
Are you looking for your next web site builder tool to do-it-yourself a real all-in-one service that will meet and exceed your every need? Sadly to say most web site builders out there leave little to be desired in the way of features, flexibility let alone search engine readiness. Most tools like that of WYSIWYG editors are quite similar as you will be able to add content but have little control of the overall display or general structure which can be challenging for global changes.
All we need is some relevance and a little patience.
So you want to embark on a new web site venture and want to know which avenues are the best online to sell your product or service yet in the most cost effective manner? Let me indulge you a bit on a few things that will save you a lot of money and hassle trying to get free organic rankings on Google and other top tier engines.
- Know your competition - Research your target market, analyze your competition and see what they are doing for search engine rankings.
- Refine the focus - Define avenues to reach your customers through marketing and demographics but also see what it is they are searching for online to find you. Consider all the variations and misspellings or keyword combinations that will help make your web site more relevant.
- Deploy the terms - Now it’s time to deploy these new keyword sets and phrases throughout the web site from our findings and research. Be sure to keep in mind the top ranking terms as you will want to spread them throughout your Meta tags, headlines, anchors and more.
- Patience is a virtue - I never said this was going to be instantaneous did I? Ok this is the hardest fact to swallow but when all this effort is said and done and the web site is launched in all it’s search engine optimized glory now begins the submission process! Submissions can take weeks to show up depending on the engine or directory you are submitting to, it is common to see web sites being indexed on Google within 4-6 weeks but can be longer.
Now it’s time to Pull some Rank!
One thing you must do continually is put yourself out there just like in the business realm how important networking is to thriving startups is how important continual online marketing is to a successful dot com based business. A few was to achieve higher rankings and link back to your site would be to trade links with other sites or list your site for free on a high ranking directories. You will see how amazing traffic will continue to flow through these outlets and how a few hours a week can really help maximize these efforts into profitable results.
Monitor and Adjust
The key thing to knowing what your customers want is to constantly ask them and monitor their activities online. One sure way to do this is using Google Analytics and by signing up with a Google Account you can be on your way to getting the code snippet you will need to inject to your web site ( preferably before the </body> tag). Now you can begin to track your visitors behaviors online and which pages they are entering and leaving from and how long they are staying on your web site. There is a TON more of valuable data you will gain from this and the best way to filter it all is to set recurring reports to be emailed directly to you based on the data you are looking to review. PDF reports are a fantastic way to review quickly the data and see how the web site is progressing.
Helpful Links:
Let’s just start out by saying a phrase I heard a while back, "Everything Google touches turns to gold". I find myself using Google services quite frequently and figured what a good blog post to describe all the great tools I have found and use. This is by no means a complete list but rather the ones that stood out to me and could help you become more popular, well I can’t promise that.
Google Analytics has been re-designed to help you learn even more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site.
Create and share your work online
- Create, edit and upload quickly
- Access and edit from anywhere
- Share changes in real time
Gmail is a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful.
Simply describe your items on Base to make them as easy as possible for people to find when they search. You don’t even need a website to put your stuff online.
Google’s advertising platform offering both cost-per-click and cost-per-impression pricing for advertisements served on Google.com and partner sites. Something I found recently was Audio Ads which seems like a great way to get radio exposure.
Social networking and discussion site operated by Google.
Google AdSense matches ads to your site’s content, and you earn money whenever your visitors click on them.
Shared calendars, quickly add events and see your friends’ and family’s schedules right next to your own.
This new upcoming service seems intriguing, "Your work deserves to be seen. You’ve made a great video. Now who will watch it?". Just make sure you own the rights to it and pending their approval you could have your video on Google. If you are a big shot producer with 1,000 + hours of vide you can sign up for their "Premium Program".
"OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. Built from standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps with OpenSocial that access a social network’s friends and update feeds. By using a common API, developers can extend the reach of their applications more quickly, yielding more functionality for users."
"According to Google’s statistics, OpenSocial applications are already used by over 200 million users across participating social networks like Engage.com, Friendster, LinkedIn, Six Apart, and more. Next Tuesday, hi5 will be joining the fold, and the OpenSocial Foundation itself should be up and running within the next 90 days."
Undertaking any new advertising campaign should also entail the optimization of your landing pages. These pages need to be set up primarily to convert the visitors that your advertising generates. No matter the method of marketing or advertising you use, even offline advertising, you should have a clear understanding of the visitors that it will produce.
- What keywords, if any, led a visitor to your page?
- Are your visitors looking for information or products?
- Where are your visitors likely to be from?
The first step to landing page optimization is getting to know the resulting visitors. With paid search and even organic search you should have a good level of knowledge of the keywords that those visitors have used to visit your site. Consider whether the keywords and your campaign in general is geographically targeted, whether it will lead to visitors that want more information or are ready to start the buying process, and their general demographics. The more information you can determine about your new visitors, the more effective your landing page can be.
- Have you included the most relevant keywords in your page?
- Are the images relevant to the topic your visitors want?
- Are ALL of your page elements relevant?
The landing page should be optimized so that it is relevant to these visitors. Page relevancy is always a popular topic. The more relevant a page is to its visitors, the more targeted those visitors will be, and the more targeted a visit is, the more likely they will convert and perform your desired action. Including keywords is a part of page relevancy but generally matching all of the page content to the needs of your visitors is vital.
- Why did a visitor choose to visit your site?
- What did you promise or infer in your advertisement?
- Do your visitors want information or do they want to buy straight away?
If you promise information in the advertising link then you should provide that information. In contrast, if an advertisement implies that your visitor will be taken to a purchase page, then that is where they should be taken. Most searches are done by surfers looking for information on a topic - this may or may not lead to an immediate purchase. By providing the information that a visitor is looking for it provides you with the opportunity to increase brand awareness, and even make an immediate sale.
- What makes your product better than your competitors’ products?
- Why should visitors use your website rather than the next one?
- What do you have to offer that no other service, or very few services, also offer?
A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is what makes you stand out from your competition. It’s the reason that your visitors should choose you over any other site. It’s also one of the most powerful conversion tools you have available to you. Many websites do not include their USP because they have yet to identify it - virtually every website and every company has a USP and promoting it early or prominently in the content of your site will help to increase conversion rates.
- Does the first paragraph of content include a summary?
- Have you got all of the important information on the page before the fold?
- Have you used an appropriate web content writing format?
Reading from a computer screen is very different to reading from paper based media. We can’t read as quickly, we digest less information, and we comprehend fewer facts and less information. As such, it is good practice to write differently for the Internet than we would for a magazine or other publication. The very first paragraph needs to be a concise and informative summary of the rest of the page. Sentences and paragraphs should be shorter in length and, therefore, simpler in their reading. Headlines and titles, as well as other formatting, should be well employed in the relevant areas.
- Have you removed any unnecessary links?
- Is advertising kept to less visible sections of the page?
- Have you moved distracting page elements below the fold?
The more external links that appear at or near the top of the page, the more likely that your visitors will leave your site. Similarly, distracting advertisements that aren’t a part of your CTA (Call To Action) need to be placed somewhere less distracting, along with other potential diversions. While these page elements all have a place on websites, they shouldn’t detract from a well optimized landing page.
- What do you want your visitors to do next?
- What will your visitors want to do next?
- Have you clearly defined and implemented your CTA?
The Call To Action, or CTA, is the online vehicle that will drive your visitors to take the next step in the process. What this step is will differ according to various factors. If you sell your own products then the next step for your visitors could be to make the purchase. Alternatively, the desired action could be to sign up for a free newsletter, click an affiliate link, or download a free ebook. Identify what it is that you want your visitors to do next as well as what you believe they will want to do next. Once you’ve identified your CTA you need to implement it on your page so that visitors recognize what they are expected to do.
- Do you have any special offers, reductions, or discounts?
- Do you have any promotional giveaways or other incentives to offer?
- Have you pushed these incentives above the fold?
Incentives are a great way to persuade undecided visitors to take the plunge and move on to the next step. Either have a creative ad made that is relevant to the incentive, or at the very least ensure that it is mentioned in or around the first paragraph of your page. It should also be considered one of your USPs so it is a critical part of optimizing your landing pages.
- Is there any way you can make improvements?
- Are you tracking results?
- Are you prepared to make changes according to those results?
Your landing page is all about getting results. This means you need a powerful analytic package so that you can track the performance of these pages. You should have this software installed on your site anyway, in order that you can track the results of the advertising campaign itself, determine your most successful and least successful pages, and gather important data. Make small changes in a bid to improve page performance, and ascertain the success of those changes before making any others. Keep monitoring and optimizing until you get the best possible results.
source: Entireweb.com
The goal of the search engines is to provide the most relevant information to its users. It’s in the best interests of the search engines to be relevant because if the information returned is not relevant, the web user will use a different search engine and this will take money out of their (massive) pockets.
The majority of searches worldwide are conducted on 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN).
Are you familiar with algebra? The search engines use mathematical formulas called ‘algorithms’ to evaluate your website’s relevance in relation to ’search terms’ or ‘keywords’. Each search engine uses different algorithms (which are not disclosed to the public), which focus on 2 main areas which I call: Content and Link Popularity.
The term ‘link popularity’ as I refer to it, means: "How authoritative your website is in the eyes of the search engines according to the amount of links you have and the quality and relevance of those links." (When compared to the content on your website and your competitors’ websites).
This means any content in your website including: all text, images, audio and videos.
PageRank™ is a series of algorithms that was invented by Serge Brin and Larry Page, (the billionaire founders of Google) in 1998 and is constantly evolving.
Google’s description of Pagerank:
"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes or links a page receives, it also analyzes the pages that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important’."
PageRank (from here on I will refer to it as PR) works on a scale from 0 - 10, with 0 being lowest and 10 being highest. The higher your PR is, the more authoritative your site is.
Each website that links to you will give you some of their PR (if they have any) and vice versa. A great analogy is that PR is like water. The higher the PR of the website that links to you, the more water that they will give you. It’s important to remember though that if that webpage is already giving water (linking) to lots of other sites, they will not give you as much as they would if they weren’t linking to so many sites.
Most websites have the highest PR on their homepage because that’s where the majority of their incoming links point to. A common theme is that a website will have a high PR on their homepage, but low or no PR on most of their internal pages.
It is important to have "deep links", these are links going to a page in your site other than your homepage.
FAQs:
Do I need to have a high PR to get into the top listings of the search engines?
That’s a tricky question, my answer is Yes and No! Each of the search engines has different criteria when it comes to listing your website on their first page. It is possible that you could have PR of zero and get the first listing. However, this would most likely be only on a keyword with no competition. Example: "vanilla carrot croisants" Obviously this is not a word that anyone is typing into the search engines, (as of now lol).
If the keyword you are trying to get high rankings on is competitive, usually the top spots go to relevant sites that have the highest PR.
As the PageRank formula is an algorithm, how many links would it take from a PR 4 site webpage to equal one link from a PR5 site?
The answer to this is kept top secret by Google and Yahoo, but some industry experts predict that you would need between 8-10. So if that is true than it would take from 60-100 PR3 links to equal just 1 PR5 link based on PR alone.
Personally I think this is just a vague guideline that doesn’t hold true in many cases. A PR5 link will be more or less valuable depending on: how many pages it is already linking to, it’s relevance to your website theme, and other hidden factors.
How do I get onto the first page of Google?
Getting onto the first page of Google (and the other search engines) for a particular keyword or keyword phrase depends on 3 factors:
*Content - what your webpage contents say that it is about in relation to a particular keyword.
*Link Reputation - what other web-pages say your webpage is about (based on the words in and around the links that point to your website) and the determined quality and authority of those web-pages.
*Authority - how important your website is in the "eyes" of the search engines based on the amount of links and quality of links pointing to your site (PageRank)
The position that your site will get depends on the ’score’ that it receives based on these factors. Remember that this ’score’ is always in relation to a particular keyword.
If your website is about "chocolate cake recipes" (are you getting hungry yet?), your website can achieve rankings related to this keyword. You won’t be able to rank for "banana pudding" or "creme brule" unless you have that content in your website.
If you would like to get higher search engine rankings I suggest you start to learn about how to optimize your content and how to get quality links to your site. Happy Optimizing!
source: Entireweb.com
Remember The Graduate when Benjamin Braddock was advised to go into plastics. The clip is here. It seemed like a safe bet at the time - and it was.
Today the web maybe "the new plastics." It seems like every brand is building a new site or microsite. The Internet feels like Dubai. Some are big, ambitious projects. Others are smaller initiatives like a blog that a small group can manage themselves.
I don’t expect organizations to stop building sites anytime soon. However, the Picture-in-Picture Web (what some would call the web services promise of "Web 3.0") is coming on strong. And I believe most brand web sites may not matter in 2012 - unless they have satellites that make the mother ship stronger. The Attention Crash (or what Iconoculture calls "choice fatigue") is accelerating the pace of change. Fred Wilson has a similar point of view.
The leading players on the web all see the train coming. They are wisely creating APIs and turning themselves into plug-and-play services, not just big destinations. YouTube is just the latest to do so today. Amazon has S3. Google has OpenSocial and an extensive library of APIs. As does Microsoft. Facebook is allowing its applications to live outside the site. Twitter is an API first and (eventually) a business model second. Finally, the booming widget economy shows the promise of small content that can go anywhere.
These are the leaders. But everyone - including marketers - will need to think of their online brands not as sites but as portable services that can go anywhere and everywhere the consumer wants. Without such appendages, no brand will ever be able to break through the online clutter such unlimited choice offers.
source: MicroPersuasion.com
Three recent link building articles have appeared on Sphinn that are worthwhile for link builders. I’ll walk through each of them and explain why they are important.
In Squeezing the [Link] Juice out of Low Hanging Fruit, Bob Massa talks about how hard work pays off. He emphasizes many points but stresses that you should carefully select quality directories to submit to and submit properly. This way, you don’t have to pay for links.
Matt Cutts wrote a post with SEO advice on links in 2005 and published it on the 11th. He suggests that you should become a resource, provide an ongoing service, be valuable, and keep your product open. Quality content breeds links naturally. If you think about it, has much really changed?
Another post is Loren Baker’s explosive organic and paid link building tips. In this post, Loren says that you should aim for relevancy, selective anchor text, and says that you should not be concerned about nofollow. Sometimes, he acknowledges that you may have to pay for those links and you may want to take advantage of new sites to build your links on. It doesn’t hurt and they will eventually age.
Do you have anything to add? Forum discussion continues at Sphinn (Bob Massa), Sphinn (Matt Cutts), and Sphinn (Loren Baker).
Source: seroundtable.com