Posting tweet...
Perhaps you have attempted (maybe more than once) to have a website. You may have signed up late at night on one of the countless web hosting plans that are on the web and for only $7.95 you were up and running. Or maybe you went all out and hired a web designer spending a thousand dollars or more having them build your site and shopping cart.
You dreamed of that customer hundreds of miles away logging into the Internet, searching on Google or Yahoo and easily finding your offering. You thought of how many more clients you would have and you thought to yourself, "if I could just get one extra client per month from my site, then I would make $XX, XXX.XX more money." So you built your site and waited and waited.
But no one showed up. You haven't even gotten one single customer from your efforts and expense. You failed on the web. You joined the ranks of millions of others that have gone before and will go after you. Your website failed.
You are not alone. Out of the almost 56 million websites on the web, fewer than 500,000 of them have any real traffic to speak of. Let me say that another way. There are over 55 ½ million websites on the Internet that are complete failures because they have no real traffic. (People coming to the site). So if you have been one of those 55 ½ million, don't worry, it happens to all of us.
What is failure?
What is failure? Quite simply, a website with little or no traffic is a failure. Without traffic on your site, then how could anyone ever contact you or hire you? How can they find out about your offering or product? How would they know where you are located and that you have the exact thing that they are looking for?
Let's examine the reasons that websites fail on the Internet and begin thinking about how we can avoid these normal pitfalls in creating our new site or revamping a current site. Below you will find the 10 main reasons that websites fail.
1. Websites fail because of lack of content. In my opinion, there could not be a bigger reason of why websites fail on the Internet today than lack of real content. Content needs to add information to the web. It needs to add value to the web and be something fresh, new, or a differing opinion. Content is writing about your particular subject or offering in such a way that it helps your rankings with the major search engines.
I am not talking about sales pitches here. I am talking about writing real content on your site that answers a question for a searcher. You have to remember that people on the web are looking for information, not you. When they put in a search phrase like "homes in Charleston, SC" they are looking for information, not a particular real estate agent.
Search engines will analyze your site to see if it offers answers to particular searches that are made through their services. If it does, then for that set of keywords, you may be ranked (and ultimately get more traffic.) If it doesn't, like the great majority of sites on the web, then you will never be found.
2. There is a general lack of planning before signing up for a domain. There are so many people that sign up for a domain by selecting domain names like, "haylorchurch.tv" or "bobsmithscrealty.net".
There are almost no bigger mistakes to make than to sign up for the wrong domain. Why? People on the web are not searching for things like "Bob Smith"; they are searching for "Charleston homes for sale." And in the above example of Haylor Church, the domain screams, "the .org was taken, so I took the .tv that was available." Both of these examples are big mistakes. Your domain name should answer a question that is being asked and describe your offering. It should describe action, not identity.
Sure, Yahoo and Google don't have a name that answers a question, but you are not Yahoo or Google. You are just someone who has a site and you would like to make some money off of it or draw new church attendees or meet new people. Whatever the case, you should choose a domain name that is descriptive of your offering and the overall theme of the site.
3. Most website owners don't update or proofread their sites. I know that it is hard to believe, but there are lots of people who spend thousands of dollars on a website only to let it sit there and do nothing for them. I cannot tell you how many sites I have visited with glaring mistakes in language, verb usage or vocabulary. I have seen the English language torn apart on supposedly professional websites. I have visited sites with tons of broken links instantly turning me away, never to come back. When people click away, they won't come back.
Not much will make a surfer click away from your site faster than errors and broken links. Those problems are so easily fixed, but people fail to check their sites on a regular basis. However, just having a grammatically perfect website is not enough. You have to be constantly adding and updating your information to it so that the Search Engines will want to keep putting you at the top of their lists. When the Search Engines visit your site with their spider programs, they look for the last time the site was updated. The more it is updated, the better ranking you will enjoy.
4. Websites fail because of too many banner ads, colors, flashy text or external links. Websites that look (and are) one huge ad or one big sales pitch will usually fail. Why? People see hundreds of ads each and every day on billboards & TV. They hear them on the radio while they are driving and they see them all over the web. If your website is not focused on what you do, then surfers will click away.
There are tons of other websites that will create banner ads for you to place on your site. Don't do it. They don't work, they won't make you any money and you are just helping that company's search ranking. Only provide external links on your site that help your business because an external link is a way for the surfer to leave your site. They can get distracted and not ever return to your offering.
5. Way too much money is spent for a website, hosting, setup and domain name. There are some web designers who are making an absolute fortune on the public just because they don't understand how the web works. Hear what I am saying here. Your investment in your website should be like other business investments that you make. For example, let's say you are a water ski retailer. You consider bringing in a new line of water skis. Would you immediately buy thousands of dollars worth of skis without knowing if they will make you any money? Of course you wouldn't. You would bring in a few, test the waters (pardon the pun) and as they made you more and more money, you would increase your inventory.
The same applies to the website, which is just an advertising medium. Start out with a simple, but professional design. Don't spend a lot of money on it at first. $500 for your first year is very reasonable. Then, as the website brings you customers and clients, you increase your offering perhaps by adding a shopping cart, or more fancy graphics.
6. Website owners don't spend enough time researching keywords. Keywords are an important part of how a Search Engine finds your website. Choosing the right keywords doesn't mean coming up with a list in your head. It means spending some time using web-based tools to help you find what people are actually searching for when using the Internet. Wouldn't you like to know what people are searching for before writing pages on your website?
There are so many tools out there that it is beyond the scope of this article, but as a reason for failure, this is one of the big ones.
7. People do not spend time optimizing their pages to be found by search engines. Many people will pay for a "Search Engine Optimizer" (SEOs) that will get them to the top 10 on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. They do this before writing good content, analyzing their own keywords, and making their sites user friendly. The S.E.O. companies that offer these services are keying in on the fact that most people are ignorant about how a site gets into the top positions on the major Search Engines.
Let's get something strait. Search Engine Optimizers cannot and will not get you into the top ten for the words and searches that you want. If they could, then everyone would use them and everyone would be in the top ten. Please remember that only 10 can be in the top ten for each keyword search and those are the ones who have built their pages with the content that puts them there and keeps them there. If an S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimizer) does get you to the top ten for a day or so you won't stay there long.
The best computer engineers in the world work for Yahoo, Google and MSN and they will not be tricked into letting you into the top ten, the top thirty or the top 1,000 for that matter. They will let you in if your page offers relevant content that their searches are looking for though. And, once you make it into the top ten the honest way, it is really hard to drop out of it.
8. People that have websites don't respond to visitors in a timely manner. It simply baffles me, people do not respond to inquiries on from their websites. Recently, I contacted several real estate agents when I was moving. I was relocating to Charleston from Denver which is 1,600 miles away and I found some agents that I thought could help me out in finding a home. I sent emails to them all (about 5 of them) and only one emailed me back within 24 hours. The others either waited over a week or did not email at all. That is a whopping 80% with poor response times.
I cannot tell how this will kill your business. Of course I chose to work with the one that did contact me and we were in a home within 60 days. Point is, you have to email visitors back quickly or they will find someone else. Not only do you need to respond quickly, you need to respond professionally and you need to let them know that you read and understand their email. You should include all of your contact information and you have to use 'spell-check'.
9. People fail to register their sites on the local search engines: Did you know that the major Search Engines are pouring millions of dollars into developing their local searches? What does this mean? I believe that in three to four years, the major SE's will overtake the Yellow Pages as the number one medium for searching a local business. Engineers are working around the clock now to create formulas that will point searchers in the right direction and towards local vendors that can meet their needs.
Everyone from dentists to hair salons who don't show up on the local search will be at a disadvantage. In my estimate, a full 90% of sites are not showing up in the local searches and will be passed by their competition very soon.
10. The biggest reason that websites fail is when people do nothing. Yes, there are so many things you can do wrong that will make your website basically useless, but the worst one of all is not having a site. Today people surf the web. This is just a fact. The Internet is no longer a luxury; it is used daily by millions and millions of Americans. They are searching for your help right now and if you don't have a place on the web where they can find you, then they won't.
Bill Nixon is a website designer, owns a hosting company and manages several sites for businesses and nonprofits. His latest project is here http://www.coastalvideography.com You can also visit his main site at http://www.sc-site.com for more insight on making your site better.
"Profit in business comes from repeat customers; customers that boast about your product and service, and that bring friends with them."
The above quote by W. Edwards Deming author of "Out of the Crisis" (1984), is relevant to my discussion on Domain names. It is I believe also relevant to anyone in any business. OK, now I have got my pontificating off my chest let me get started with my discussion on domain names.
Contrary to what another writer has published, no reputable Domain name registrant, who intends staying in business will sell you a domain name for $2.00. The Registrant has to pay a much higher wholesale price than this for the domain name in the first place, and would be making a big loss by selling for a mere $2.00. The Domain name market is very competitive, and if you shop around you will be able to purchase a Top Level Domain (TLD) name for under $10.00, but certainly not for $2.00.
Now, I have seen advertisements for Domain names for under $2.00 for $1.99 actually. But the firm in question was making this offer on the proviso that some other product or service such as a hosting account was purchased with the domain name. So the domain name part of the purchase for this particular firm would be a "loss leader", but they would be more than compensating for this with their profit an the other products or services.
What some firms may be selling for $2.00 are not domain names, but sub-domains of someone else's domain name. The ethics of selling these even for $2.00, I personally would find very questionable.
Earlier I mentioned Top Level Domain (TLD) names and sub-domain names. I shall explain the difference.
A Domain Name consists of several different parts. The first part is generally "http://" , for secure sites it may be "https://". The "http" is an acronym for "hyper text transfer protocol". The next part of a domain name is "www.". The "www" part of course stands for the "World Wide Web". Then there is a bit in the middle "IanMcKenziesLinks". This middle bit can not have any spaces and needs to be written as one word, as I have done above. It is this bit that you choose and complete the appropriate searches for availability, before you plan to register a domain name. Now, the final part of a TLD name is the suffix at the end of course. This traditionally is ".com", but it could be several other suffixes in addition, such as, ".net", ".org", ".biz", ".name" and so on.
Now, I know that some article sites do not like domain names listed in the article, so I won't do that. But, if you put the first two bits "http://www." and the middle bit "IanMcKenziesLinks" together and add the suffix ".com" at the end, you have an example of a Top Level Domain (TLD) name.
Top Level Domain names such as I have exemplified above, can have any number of sub-domains. For example, you could have the "http://" part and replace the "www.' part with for example "iansblog." . This would then become a sub-domain of the Top Level Domain described earlier. There could also potentially be thousands of others.
So, if you purchase a "domain name" like the first example in the paragraph above, you are not really purchasing a domain name at all, but a part of someone else's Domain Name over which you really don't have any control. If the owner of the TLD name of which yours is a part for example chooses not to renew their domain name registration, then too bad,all of the "suckers" who purchased sub-domains of this TLD will lose their sites.
Why would anyone purchase a sub-domain, when Top Level Domain names are so inexpensive?
On the issue of money and costs, I would like to pick up on one other point another writer has made. This writer slammed free hosted sites. Why? I ask?
The TLD site above, in addition to the sub-domain "blog" site associated with it are both hosted free of charge. The only financial cost involved was the two year registration of the TLD name costing me a total of $17.64. That fee also includes the ICANN fee. In exchange for the free hosting there are some unobtrusive advertisements across the top of each page. Now, these ads., are related to the content on the pages of my site. There is amongst the ads a Google search bar on each page also, which i think can be quite handy. In my opinion, it certainly is a small price to pay in exchange for totally free hosting.
I reckon having both a web site, and a blog site published and "on air" for two full years for an all up cost of $17.64 is pretty good value. What do you think?
Ian McKenzie is Director of Ian McKenzie's Domains, and Professional Performance Australia. He has a work history background in education, motivation and health promotion. His web site [http://www.ianmckenzieslinks.com] contains links to his various company and personal web sites.
This is the last part of a three part series dealing with guidelines in how to plan, present and develop your company's website. In part one we explored the importance of having a professional website to represent your company online. In part two, we identified the quality approach of planning your company's website.
Now in our last part of these series we will take a quick look into the website design, development & marketing aspects and your company's image.
Company Brand
First step when looking into website design, development and marketing is concentrating in your company's logo. Your company logo should be the focus point of your website - remember: it is all about your company. Your marketing material should all look similar - business cards, printing materials, online PDF's - all should deliver the same message and have the same connection.
The mainly objective of your website design, development and marketing is to connect prospective clients with your company. They are all alone there, without any sales person to guide them and explain how the company works so make sure it can stands on its own merit. Your website must present your company well as there will be no human factor once a visitor comes around.
Search Engine and User Friendly
A website is not a brochure! When concentrating in your company's website design, development and marketing, all materials should be created accordingly with online marketing. The copyright for a website is not the same as used on your printing materials, images have a special format and size, colors should be wisely used, and navigation should be easy with absolutely no dead ends.
Building a search engine friendly website is not a task that every website design and development company can manage, so make sure you do your home work before hiring a web site design, development and marketing expert. To create a website that is search engine friendly, the team of professionals working on your website need to have the knowledge and expertise on search engines; how they work and index websites. If a website is not built taking into consideration how search engines work and the criteria used to index sites in their database, it will probably be invisible to search engines robots. They will not be able to index your site properly or maybe not to index it at all.
Another common mistake is to hire a website design and development company that has not enough knowledge on search engine algorithms and might put your website in a great risk using spamming techniques. With the incredible growth of websites being indexed -- about 11.5 billion websites indexed with search engines -- you want to make sure the company working on your website has the expertise to build it to be seen.
Search Engine Optimization [SEO] & Search Engine Marketing [SEM]
If you offer products or services that Internet users are searching for, you certainly should look into having your web site indexed with search engines. Building a search engine friendly website is just the beginning; you need to make the website will be found by potential users searching for the products and services you offer.
Potential customers are more and more using the Internet and search engines to look for products and services they need and want and having a website that no potential customer can find is a waste of time and money. Use your website as a marketing and online sales tool.
Over the past few years of the web's evolution as a key business tool, shows that an effective website mines prospects that other vehicles do not reach, shortens the sales cycle - in many cases dramatically so - and delivers early and consistent ROI.
Monitoring and Measurement of the Product
The capability of being able to evaluate, validate and verify if the effectiveness of your SEO campaign is critical. Reputable Search Engine Optimization [SEO] & Search Engine Marketing [SEM] companies will provide you monthly reports showing your current status and suggestions for areas to that need improvement (number of visitor per page, time spent, referrals, exit pages, high traffic pages, keywords being used, etc).
Use the information above as guidelines and always use common sense. Your website should be an extension of your company's image online and present the same standards of quality and customer appreciation.
Now that you are ready to start, don't forget that creating a website has lots of work involved but also lots of excitement. In the process of building your website, you are also expanding your company and giving it new form and shape.
You must be full of enthusiasm to start or redesign your website now. Have fun!
Carla Reis President Quest Quality Solutions ---------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2005 - Quest Quality Solutions. This article can be reproduced in its entirety, if the author credit is retained and there is a prominent source link to www.questqualitysolutions.com.
Carla Reis has a Bachelor Degree in Arts and a Diploma in Web site Design; she also has several years of experience in Web site design training, Search Engine Optimization, and management. Carlas experience with Web site design and Search Engine Optimization [SEO] began when she was the training manager for one of the biggest Search Engine Marketing companies in North America. She developed the companys training manual and SEO certification exams to better qualify the staff and deliver high quality services to the companys clients. After managing the training department and organizing the working flow and distribution for the company, Carla decided to venture on her own. She started her company in 2004 Quest Quality Solutions. What began as a one-person business has expanded to a team of professionals and has been growing in a steady pace.
Domain names are how people find your nonprofit on the internet. Determining your domain name is a very important decision. You domain name should be something easy and memorable. Something like [http://www.chicagocatshelter.org] is easy to remember and instantly communicates where you are and what you do. Good domain names all have a few things in common:
Short Nonprofit Domain Names
As a rule of thumb a good charity domain name should not be more than 30 characters. A domain name like [http://www.chicagocatshelter.org] is a perfect size. As always, the shorter the nonprofit domain name the easier it is to remember.
Describe Your Charitable Organization
A perfect domain name should describe what it is you do and where you do it. Here are a few examples of domain names that do just that (these are fake nonprofits domain names):
utahbirds.org
savejonesbay.net
floridamanateerescue.org
helptallmanpark.net
501c3 Domain Name Extension
The .org domain name extension is used primarily for nonprofits, .net is also an acceptable extension. The .com extension is used primarily by for-profit organization but can be used in the case when the .org or .net extension is unavailable. There are no legal laws that say you have to use a certain extension for your nonprofit website.
Easy To Remember
When trying to make your charity domain name easy to remember think about the person seeing it on a billboard while they are driving 60 miles per hour, you only have a couple of seconds so make it count. Also, when people are talking about your charity your domain name should not need explanation or to be repeated on the phone.
Here is a test. Which domain name is easier to remember?:
tampacares.org OR 100best-free-web-space.com/FL-Users/TampaNonprofit%09.html
The answer is easy, tampacares.org is a lot easier to remember and communicate with people. As an example, one of the easiest nonprofit domain names to remember is http://www.one.org.
Make Sure Your Charity Domain Name Is Available
No matter how good the domain name is, if someone else owns it - you can’t use it. To find out if the domain name you want is available, you can visit http://www.godaddy.com and type your desired domain name in the search box and hit the “GO!” button. This will query the domain name and let you know if it is available or not. You can also buy your nonprofit domain name at GoDaddy.
BONUS TIP: If you have brainstormed a lot of domain names and want to see which ones are available – you can use the “Bulk Register” feature in GoDaddy to query them all at the same time. You can query up to 500 domain name choices at once!
Bad to Good 501c3 Domain Names
Below are a few fake charity domain names with better domain name alternatives. Use this to evaluate your (good and bad) charity domain name choices:
protectthetexasblackspottedhawk.org
Much too long. People will have a hard time remembering all of that. Here is a better alternative: texashawkprotection.org
blackmanateesaredying.org
You should stay away from having negative words in your domain name - such as dying, death, murder, toxic, etc… give it a positive spin instead: perfectmanatees.org
donatetothesickchildren.net
Try not to beg for funds in your domain name. It might also help if the location of these sick children were in the domain name. The word “sick” could mean different things to different people. “sick” could mean “brain cancer” to some people or it could mean runny nose” to other. Use something like this instead: helpbostonsfuture.org
Your Charity Website
Now that you have a great domain name that is memorable you’ll need to create a nonprofit website for it. Your website should educate the general public about who you are and what you do. Your website should also be able to accept Donations to your charity, process online ticket sales to your charitable events and allow people to join/renew your Membership.
Ian Anderson is co-founder of Intersection360. Ian specializes in hosted application architecture and GUI design. Intersection360 offers a wide range of non-branded web applications for the small business/non-profit markets. Some of Intersection360 products include: CharityHelper360 - secure forms processing for non-profits (Get a 7 DAY FREE TRIAL - limited time offer), WebEdit360 - an online website editor and more.
Learn more about how you can sell Intersection360 products as your own with the Intersection360 Partner Program at [http://www.intersection360.com/partners/index.htm]
Domain names are the new real estate. They are cheap, which makes them a low risk investment, and they are unique, which makes them valuable. This is a great reason to jump on bandwagon and sell domain names. To start investing and then sell domain names successfully, you need to go out and register a domain name first, and base this registration on keyword research and domain valuation techniques (I suggest that you read an informative ebook). But the one thing that most people wonder is where to sell domain names. In this article I will go over some of the most popular places to sell domain names.
The large majority of high profile domains sell on domain brokerage sites. These are specialized sites which sell domain names in exchange for a share of the profits. This commission generally ranges between 2% to as high as 18%, depending on the services that you use from the brokerage. So what services do these brokerages offer in order to justify their commission? Firstly, they make it easier to sell domain names by putting buyers in contact with sellers. Your domain names will be included in a searchable database of domains. The high prominence of these sites attract many high profile buyers and big investors, who are attracted by the large selection of domain names and the ease of finding domain names through search. Secondly, brokerages make it safer to sell domain names by providing escrow services.
Escrow services are an important element of the process to sell domain names, especially for large transactions. The way that escrow services work is that when you sell domain names, the buyer sends the money to the escrow company, instead of sending it directly to you. Upon receiving notification from the escrow company that it has received the money, you then transfer the domain to the buyer. After informing the escrow company of the transfer, the money is transferred to you. This is an important process for anyone wanting to sell domain names at high prices.
Once you are comfortable with brokerages, you should look for other, less formal places to sell domains. Domain name forums will help you sell domain names while gaining knowledge on the industry at the same time. But beware: domain name forums offer no escrow services, and scams are pulled off often. When you use forums to sell domain names, never transfer your domain before receiving your money. Always check the domain forum to grasp an understanding of the buyer's attitude: does he post informative posts? Is he a constructive member of the forum? Has he scammed anyone before? Finally, favor forums which offer a rating system for domain name transactions. Most forums do, but stay away from those who don't: if you sell domain names, you need to be sure of your buyer before starting a transaction.
Where ever you sell domain names, you need to invest in the correct domain name from the start. There is no point in selling bad domains, no matter where you plan to sell them. In order to be sure that you chip in on the best opportunities, I highly suggest that you invest in, and obviously read, a domain ebook. Good Luck!
Check out http://www.DomainCashSecrets.com and you wont be disappointed.
Zach Bastick is an administrator of a major domain forum and an active investor. He recommends http://www.DomainCashSecrets.com as a good ebook for learning how to sell domain names. Check out http://www.DomainCashSecrets.com now!
Probably, you have heard about making money online. Also, you have seen lots of different programs and systems that help you earn cash on the Internet. It could be selling stuffs, being an affiliate, running a website, etc. Now, there is another surprising concept: making money with your own domain names. But, is it really true?
Shortly, I have to say that it is possible to earn a living with domain names. Today, there are lots of people starting their own businesses based on this kind of opportunity. But, first of all, you will need to know how it works.
Basically, there are 3 different ways to make money with your own domain names:
1. Buying domain names at low prices, then selling them higher:
Believe it or not, one of the most important secrets of a powerful and popular website is having a good domain name. Thus, many website owners are looking for such domain names and willing to pay a lot in order to own them. Suppose, you had registered that domain name earlier, so you are the person who sets the price and win the deal. That´s it. You have purchased the domain name at a very low price and have sold it many times higher. But the secret is that how you could get those good domain names. Actually, several years ago, it was not difficult to register a good domain name. But, today, it has become harder and harder. Yet, there is one promising solution: buying expired domain names. Everyday, thousands of domain names are being expired due to forgetting the payment of annual fees. After a while, the expired domain names will be deleted and then be available for everybody who wants to purchase it. Among those expired domain names, you can find some valuable, well-established and attractive domain names.
There are some sources on the net where you can find the needed information about expired domain names. On the other hand, you can find some sources to put your domain names for selling. At those auction places, you will see how the customers are bidding and competing in order to grab your domain name. Doing this business properly with working carefully can bring you a lot of profits.
2. Selling advertisements on your parked domain names:
Another way in this approach is to put advertisements on your parked domain name. You register a domain name, then park it on a specific marketplace. Besides, most of them allow you to choose some keywords related to the topic of your domain name. Afterwards, you can see the related advertisements on your parked domain name as sponsored links. These ads are often based on pay per click action and you will get paid whenever someone clicks on the ads. This way is a good idea, even if you intend to sell your domain name later. In fact, the earnings depend on the amount of your visitors. So, it would not be a huge amount of money. However, it could help you earn extra money with your own domain name.
3. Redirecting your domain name to a specific page:
The third method is actually an accessory way. For example, you are an affiliate, a person who sells the others´products or services. In most cases, you, as an affiliate, have a web page like the seller´s, but the difference is your URL address, that is to say your domain name. It is too long and full of various numbers and letters. Sometimes, it would be difficult to market or advertise a page with the URL address like that. Thus, you may need a better web address. So, it is time to register a related domain name and redirect it to your affiliate page. It means, whenever someone types your domain name in the address bar, the page will automatically be forwarded to the affiliate web page. In this way, you send traffic to that web page and if a sale is made, you will make money. So, it could be another way to make money with your registered domain name.
The above mentioned methods are the main ways that help you make money with your own domain names. But, naturally, it is business and there is always risk with any businesses and don´t forget that the whole process of making money depends mostly on your ambitions, individual capacities, expertise, business experiences and desires.
Good Luck!
Hooshmand Moslemi is the Author and Owner of "Make A Website Now", (Make-A-Website-Now.com) a very helpful guide full of information, tips and resources for creating a web page in easy steps.
1. Introduction and Meaning.
For selecting the best domain name suited for your web business you need to first understand the meaning of domain name and the types of domain name available in Internet. Domain names are actually URLs used to identify particular Web pages. A domain name is divided into three parts: the second section is kown as domain separated by a "dot" and the third section is a TLD. TLD means Top level domain i.e third section and thus the second section is called as second level domain. Every domain name has its own TLD. TLD differs according to the categories and types of websites.
Most common top-level domains:
com - Commercial, for commercial websites & profit organisations.
net- Networks, for organisational websites.
org- Organisations, for non profit oganisational websites & individuals.
edu- Education, for educational websites, degree granting colleges & universities.
info- Information- for informational websites.
gov- Government, for websites ruled by Government, federal government agencies.
uk- for United Kingdom websites.
us- for United States websites.
ca- for Canadian websites.
2. Selecting the correct TLD.
.com TLD is the most popular and common domain TLD used today nationwide. You can select a particular domain extension according to the category of services offered by your websites as mentioned above. However .com TLD is the best for commercial websites looking ahead for online profit making businesses.
3. Domain names are preferred to be small.
Domain names are usually preferred to be small as short and snappy domain names just explaining their product brands or categories are easy to remember and to pronounce. You should make sure yourself while selecting a domain name that the name is clear enough to spell and make sure that it can be easily pronounced over the phone calls or on the radio.
4. Seo friendly domain names.
The most important search engine i.e. Google gives lot of weight to keywords in the domain names. So it is more efficient if you select a domain name which is small and explains the name or category of your product or if the domain name is the name of the important keyword itself. On the contrary I would prefer that you keep your domain name elegant and user-friendly. When page ranks come into priority Google gives higher ranks to Domain names having TLD as gov, in, info, org, and then com. The reason after this is that search engines gives importance to websites offering enormous data even termed as guide, dictionary, webopedia or encyclopedia as this helps visitors to study things online thus hitting huge traffic on their serach engines.
5. The domain name sholud be checked by trademarks.
Many times customers are fooled by the web hosting companies by giving them domain names which look similar to trademark rights and protection but actually are not the registered trademarks. The second level name in the domain names are many times copied or similar to other names. So before selecting a domain name make sure yourself if the domain name offered to you is of registered trademark. You should not buy domain names of recognized brands or trademarks that actually does not belongs to you, even if they are available in the market. It's a violation of copyright law and you might owe an punishment for this in court of laws.
6. Check the domain name availability.
Your web hosting company is a very important part of your online presence in Internet. Check availability of domain names from here..
Log on to www.domains.creativewebhosting.net for booking your domain names & web spaces.
http://www.creativewebsols.com/web-hosting-articles.htm
http://whitepapers.creativewebsols.com/seo-tips.htm
