Promote Your Local Business Online and Offline

Nowadays, many people search online for services instead of reaching for the phone book. To increase your online exposure your pages should include your street address, zip code, phone number, and five-digit zip code. Include place names in the title tag such as “the name of your city and your service.” When you seek links to your site contact local businesses. A noncompeting local business should be interested in exchanging links with you. Make sure that the anchor text includes the name of your city. List your business within local business directories. If you are a member of you local chamber of commerce, ask for a link from their website.

Be Patient – Continue To Optimize

Search engine optimization takes time. If you expect overnight results you will be deeply disappointed. Quick results, especially for new sites, are not the norm. Even if you do everything right, it may take you several months to get any traffic from search engines.

A visit from the search engine spiders doesn’t mean that your site has a good ranking. All it means is that you site was noticed. It will take months for the search engine to build trust and refer significant traffic. The key is to monitor what’s happening with your site.

Don’t assume anything, view your log files and study patterns. Once you measure your site’s performance you gain intelligence that will help you make the right changes. Avoid making drastic changes. Fine-tune your site and monitor the results.

Hyphenated Domain Names and Similar Issues

Due to the explosive demand for domain names it is becoming increasingly difficult to get short meaningful web addresses. Chances are you are going to have to make some compromises when registering your domain name. If you manage to get a short domain name that is meaningful, easy to remember, sounds good, and simple to spell consider yourself very fortunate.

An additional advantage of longer domain names is that they are more room for your keywords. Long domain names that have your site keywords in them also have an advantage in that they fare better in a number of search engines. The latter give preference to keywords that are also found in your domain names. So, for example, if you have a site on San Diego Weddings with a domain name like sandiegoweddingadvicedotcom, it might fare better in a search for “San Diego Wedding Advice” than another site, gethitchedinthesundotcom.

For the most part, I would discourage the use of hyphenated domain names. Most importantly, it’s easy to forget the hyphens when typing a name. Many users are used to typing things like partyandweddingfavors.com but not party-and-wedding-favorsdotcom. Chances are people typing in your domain name will leave out the hyphens giving their business to your competitor.

When people refer your site to others verbally, having hyphens in your domain name leads to more potential errors than when the name does not contain hyphens. For example, how do you think your visitors will refer to your site if it is named “party-and-wedding-favorsdotcom”? They might say, “I visited Party and Wedding Favors dot com yesterday. It is such a great site, you should check it out”. The referred person, remembering that comment later, might type into their browsers “partyandweddingfavors.com”. Oops.

Hyphenated domain names are difficult to type. Who wants to insert a hyphen between each word just to get the proper domain name? It is simply too much work.

On the plus side, search engines may reward your site with better results due to the hyphen-separated words. Thus positioning your site more favorably in search results for those keywords occurring in your domain name. If the non-hyphenated form is no longer available at least you can get the next best thing.

Submit To Search Engines

Once your website has been properly optimized submit your homepage web address to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and the like. Search engine submission is less effective today than in the past, but it is not going to hurt your chances of getting indexed. Once you submit your site, expect a visit from the search spiders.

Note: Search spiders, aka web crawlers, or web robots, are scripts that visit web pages providing search engines intelligence. Based on the intelligence gained search engines index and rank websites.

Domain Name Complications

Some of the tell tale sites of domain name that may be easier to obtain are a home to low quality Web sites. If you find yourself in this situation, contact the registered owner and ask if they would consider selling it to you. If the price is right, you may be able to make a deal. To maintain a cool head during the process, don’t act desperate to own the domain.

If the registered owner is willing to sell you the domain name be sure to use an escrow company. There are reputable escrow companies that will guide you through the buying process while minimizing your risks. It is worth spending a modest amount to ensure that you don’t get burned in cyberspace.

Your Web address is part of your brand strategy, and you have to make sure it is easy to remember. Try to pick a name that is easy to remember. I once worked for a company called ZZYZX. The domain name was www.zzyzxdotcom. Even though it is a short name it is a terrible name, because nobody knew how to spell it or pronounce it. You want your customers to be able to remember and refer your brand to others, so make it as easy for them as you can.

Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters, but I don’t know why would anyone want a domain name 67 characters long. Your domain name can include 26 letters of the English alphabet, numbers 0-9, and hyphens (-).The domain name cannot begin or end with a hyphen but, it can contain one or more hyphens. Don’t settle for a short domain name that doesn’t compliment your business just to avoid a longer one. As a general rule, shorter domain names are easier to remember, easier to type and far less susceptible to mistakes. For example, “hellodotcom” is easier to remember and less prone to typos than “saygoodmorninginthemorningandgoodeveningintheeveningdotdotcom”.

Others argue that a longer domain name is usually easier on people because it is easier to attach meaning. A short but cryptic name such as zzyzxdotcom is not at all better name than a longer meaningful domain name such as raidsforlessdotcom.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO Secrets

Focus On Few Keywords Per Page
Don’t try to rank every page for every possible keyword. Instead optimize each page for one keyword or keyword phrase.

Practical Example: The San Diego print shop website we have discussed above should rank for several keywords. It is impossible to achieve high ranking for one page for many keywords. Instead your goal is to achieve optimal ranking for several pages for several keywords. For example, your homepage should be optimized for “san diego printer. Subsequent pages could be optimized for the suburbs of San Diego such as “la jolla printer, and “ocean beach printer, and so on. It is more realistic to attain good ranking for one keyword per page than it is for many.

How to register a domain name?

You may be wondering if you should get a .com, .net, .info, or .whatever kind of domain. So many different kinds of domain extensions to choose from, and so little time. If you are registering a domain name for a for profit business, you should always register a .com domain. From a brand perspective, there is no better domain than a .com domain. Most people associate business domains with the .com extension just like they associate school domains with the .edu extension.

It may not make any difference in the beginning, but the more successful you become the more it could hurt you. Let’s say you develop a new product idea and the .com domain name you want to call it is not available, so you register the .net domain instead. Sounds harmless enough. Now, let’s fast-forward a couple of years. You have spent time and money to develop your brand and people are searching for your product online with the .com extension simply because they expect you to own the domain with the .com extension.

Another reason to shy away from other than .com domain names is that someone may already have copyright protection for the domain name you want to register. Look further if the .com domain you desire is not available. Even if you don’t find the exact domain you initially searched for, you may find one that is better than your original idea.

Whenever the domain you desire is not available through the registrar, you can try purchasing it from the registered owner. Unfortunately, many people register domain names to take advantage of others. The common name for such a person is domain squatter. I only recommend buying domain names from domain squatters if you have money to burn. The more they know you want it, the worse your chances of getting a good deal.

In other situations, someone may have good reason to own your desired domain name. It is unlikely that you’ll be able to buy the domain name from a thriving online business. It is possible that you run across a Web site with the perfect domain name for your business.

Make Navigation Search Engine Friendly

The best site navigation system works well for humans and search engines. You site navigation architecture should enable search engines to easily crawl all of your pages. Web designers that disregard the importance of search engine optimization use frames that cause critical problems with search engines. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus are tell tale signs of ignorant designers because both technologies are invisible to search engines. By now, you understand that the last thing you want is for your site to be invisible to search engines.

If you absolutely must use graphics, flash, or java script for navigation, be sure there are html links somewhere on the page to help search engine spiders crawl your pages.

What’s In A Domain Name?

Branding your business on the Internet starts with your domain name. Buying the right domain name is an important part of your planning process. Even if you don’t plan on using the domain name right away you should purchase it anyway before someone snatches it. You can buy a domain for under $10 so it is one of the least expensive investments you will make. To put it in numbers, there are about 70 million .com, and about 10 million .net registered domains in the world.

Don’t think that all the good domain names are gone. There are more great domain names available to you than you will ever need. Even though there are about 100 million top-level domain names registered already, there are many more to choose from. Don’t believe it for a minute that you won’t be able to find a domain name that will work for your business. A little bit of research and creativity will go a long way in your efforts to the find the right domain name for your company.

The name registration is a simple process. There are many domain registrars you can choose from. Some of the larger registrars are godaddy.com, enom.com, and networksolutions.com. All registrars have simple a registration process; a few clicks and you are done. The interface is user friendly, and you could register your domain name in less than ten minutes.

Registering a domain doesn’t mean you own it permanently. Think of it as a car lease without getting stiffed with expensive lease termination fees. You have the right to use it, but you don’t own it indefinitely. You are simply registering it for your business or personal use for a certain duration. You can register your domain for one year or multiple years. It is best to register business domains for multiple years. For additional protection, select auto renew as an option. Auto renew ensures that your domain is renewed even if you forget about it. You’ve probably heard horror stories about companies letting their domain names expire. If it happens to you, it could have devastating effects. In the worst case, you may be forced to go out of business. If your domain name becomes part of your brand, losing it could mean losing your business.

Once the registration expires you have to either extend your registration or let it expire, so someone else can grab it. If you are forgetful, you may want to select the auto renew option, so you don’t let your domain name expire against your wishes. Don’t think nobody will want you domain name, there is an entire market that is dedicated to profiting from expired domain names. Don’t fall victim; take your domain name registration seriously.

All of the larger registrars are reputable companies, and you should have no difficulties registering your domain with them. A word of advice, watch out for the up sell. Most registrars make most of their money through the up sell such as providing hosting services, e-mail solutions, shopping cart software. I don’t recommend hosting your Web site with the registrars. Register your domain with them, but don’t fall for the up sell. Let the registrars do what they are the best at, registering domain names.

Use Keywords in Text Links

Search engines love links, and they pay close attention to the text within links. The significance of links on your site and on external sites linking to your site is evaluated based on the words within the link.

Practical Example: A link pointing to your site containing your relevant keyword is radically more effective than a link that states: “click here.” A website that links to your San Diego print shop should include “san diego print shop” within the body of the link.

Search engines consider hyper linked text within the body of the page text important. The key to effective links is to include your keywords within the anchor text. The anchor text is the area of the link users click to follow the link.