Posts Tagged ‘Domain Names’
A domain name, to put it simple, is your address on the World Wide Web. This is where you put up your website and it is what internet users will type in their address bar in order to locate your site while online. Your domain name should be short, simple, and easy to remember. But, one must keep in mind that domain names are only available for one individual or business. This is to maintain uniqueness and to avoid confusion among the millions of websites and internet users.
A most common example of a domain name is www yahoo.com. The first part, the www identifies the server name of the domain. Yahoo, the second element, is the name of the company, individual or organization; and the suffix .com is the domain name extension, which identifies the purpose of the website.
The most important part of the entire domain name is the second element, which states the unique name of an individual, an organization, or a company. This is what sets it apart from all the other addresses present on the web, as some people would try to change a part of the domain name in order to direct traffic to their site instead.
Another example of a domain name is www nasa.gov. This is the NASA website, and since it is a government office, it uses the extension dot gov. Users need to bear in mind that the domain name extensions are there for a purpose. It indicates the purpose why the website exists.
I come across sites all the time that are obviously hosted for free. Why obviously? Because they have no domain. Having no domain can cost you big time.
You have taken the time to put together a great website. You have collected pictures, designed or bought a nifty template, and filled it with great text. Your website is ready to go. Everything looks great – until you decide to host your site on a free hosting account provided by your ISP. Big mistake.
Having no domain name is no big deal if all that you will ever do with the website is post family pictures. A domain name is mandatory though, if you plan to do business online. If you don’t take your business seriously, why should anyone else?
Domain names build trust in your website visitors
One of the biggest barriers to doing business online is the lack of face to face communication. When people can’t look into your eyes and size you up in person, they are slower to trust you. In the absence of being able to talk face to face, your website and everything about it, communicates trust, or the lack thereof.
Registering a domain name is an important first step to building the trust your visitor has in you and your company. Always keep in mind that trust is much easier to lose than it is to build in the first place. It takes a long time to build trust but it takes no time at all to destroy it.
Domain names are portable
When you go with a generic website address from your ISP, the few dollars you save per year are far less costly than the lack of mobility to you get with a free website address. You may have hopes that your part time web project will one day lead to a full time income. When you have a free website address, you are stuck to that ISP. In contrast, when you own a domain name, you can take your domain name to any web hosting company you choose.
As the traffic to your website builds and your website climbs in the search listings, changing its name later is impossible without taking a big traffic hit. When you have a domain name however, changing hosts will have very little effect on your traffic. This is even more important if your website is suddenly hit with a major increase in traffic. You may need to change web hosts but if you don’t have a domain name, that traffic may disappear. On top of that, if you start using too much bandwidth on your free hosting account, your provider will most likely pull the plug.
Domain names make it easier for your prospects to email you
When you have a domain name, it looks more professional. Having an email like jack@yourdomain.com looks far better and is easier to remember than jack.lastname@yourisp.com. Easier for your prospect translates into more money earned for you.
Domain name registration is a no brainer and something you should do right away.
Have You Made This Domain Name Mistake?
When I accidentally evolved into a writing coach for folks on the web, I struggled with creating an identity for myself. I had already built a pretty popular site and brand in one particular niche and people called me by the moniker that I gave myself in that niche. I was stuck for weeks like that. I just didn’t know what to do.
I worked with a coach who recommended that I use my name as my branding position as a writing coach. She thought my last name was memorable and not many people were going to have it on the web. She was right about that. What she didn’t tell me though, was that I wasn’t a celebrity, so people were not going to naturally search for my name yet. They didn’t know me. They were going to find me through other keywords such as “writing” or “article marketing”.
So without that knowledge, I went on to make the same mistake that I had essentially made with my first business as well…So what was my domain name mistake? I did not secure and buy a keyword rich domain name for my main site. I reserved my name.
Even years later when I check my website statistics, most people that find me organically – find me through keywords that I have optimized my site and articles for. Not my name. So that even furthers my proof that I should have reserved a keyword rich domain name rather my first and last name.
Okay, So Why Is This Important?
Through my years of article marketing, I have become somewhat of an SEO expert, and now know just how much importance search engines like Google place on having a keyword rich domain name. In case you are wondering, they place a LOT of importance on it.
What this means is that if I had reserved a name like articlemarketing dot com, my articles would have fared a lot better, and ranked a lot faster, in the search engines.
Now when I write and publish an article to my site, my articles are ranked within 24 hours, but it took a long time to build that type of traffic and importance with the search engines. That didn’t happen right away. I know that if I had had a keyword rich domain name – it probably would have happened a lot faster.
Next time you conduct a search, notice the domain names of the websites that appear in the top results. Sure there are a few whose URLs are completely off topic but they are usually very high traffic authority sites like major newspapers, television, encyclopedia sites, etc. The others are keyword rich (not so famous) sites that could be one of ours!
Last Advice
1 – If you are new to the internet and have not yet built your website/blog, then make sure to secure a keyword rich domain name right away and make that your PRIMARY URL.
2 – If you are already on the web but your website is only a few months old – I’d make the switch to a proper URL.
3 – If you have been on the web for awhile and have a lot of content like me, it wouldn’t make sense to switch your URL now because your content has probably already been crawled and appears in the search engine results. Changing the URLs could mean broken links and a lot of frustration. Trust me – I tried it.
So what you could do is purchase keyword rich domain names that you can use for landing pages, squeeze pages, redirects, sales pages, etc. Having those pages pointing to your main site will help your standing in the search engines, and are almost as good as having a keyword rich primary domain name.