| Hello again Name and welcome to your first lesson HOW TO GET A STRONG ONLINE IDENTITY (Or how I blundered and beat the domain hucksters!) You may have read about the so called ‘entrepreneurs' who make money by registering every domain name they can. They sell the names to genuine businesses at a vast profit – it's perfectly legal but the politest description that springs to mind is ‘hucksters'. You may also have heard that you should register your name with every possible suffix like co.uk, .com, .net so that competitors don't steal your traffic. The truth is that there's plenty of scope to get a good online identity and you probably don't need every suffix available. Even better, you can outflank the domain hucksters and get better search engine results with this little known identity technique. Let's take my business name: Incise Communications Ltd. My website business address is www.incisecomms.co.uk. Unfortunately, www.incise.co.uk had been taken when I registered. Even worse, incisecomms doesn't describe accurately what I do and is not a readable word. Why's that important? Because search engine ‘robots' read and recognise proper words. If your name is one that they can associate with keywords their visitors use, your site will get better search engine positions. How did I get round my own naming blunder? I registered www.net-marketing-help-4u.com and that's the domain name I use to promote my mini-site about search engine marketing to the engines. So if the name you'd prefer is already registered, try submitting it with a hyphen or two between the words. You may well find that it's available and a better search engine option too. You can do this at www.tucows.com or www.ukreg.com . BUT - make sure your keywords are in the root of your domain, not the stem! For example, if your main keyword phrase is "cell phones" try to get a domain name such as "cell-phones.com" instead of "mobileuk.com/cell-phones.com." Some search engines will penalise sites with keywords in the stem. HOW MANY SUFFIXES? By suffixes we mean .com, co.uk, .net, .org and so on. Why is this important? Well, the last thing you want is a competitor stealing a .com, .net etc version of your name. You could lose a lot of business. But you could easily go overboard and register tens, even hundreds of domain variations. So, before you break the bank, how likely are you to need different suffixes? The first factor to consider is your geographic area of trading. If you're operating in an international market with $multi-million online sales, you should protect your online identity and register the different options for each country in which you trade. But if you're operating regionally and your name is not particularly descriptive, then going beyond co.uk, .com and perhaps .net is probably a waste of money. Certainly, if you plan to sell internationally or even just the US, you should register .com as well as co.uk. REGISTER AT THE BEST PRICES And don't get ripped off. There are lots of sharks out there who'll charge you too much for a registration. You can do it yourself at www.ukreg.com or we can do it for you at competitive prices at www.incisecomms.co.uk - simply give us a call and we'll make sure your domain is available and reserve it for you. That's it for now. In the next lesson we'll talk about how to get started in the way that suits you best. Cheers for now, Paul ---------------------------------------------------------- Protect your business from crashes, viruses and hackers. Incise subscribers save over 15%. Depositit is the leading online data back-up solution. Incise subscribers get nearly 20% off standard prices. Find out more here ---------------------------------------------------------- PS. Don't forget to set up that ! Web Marketing Course ! folder in your Outlook or email client. paullock@incisecomms.co.uk NOTES
2. As a reader of my course, you're my most important critic and commentator. I welcome all reader feedback. Email me anytime at paullock@incisecomms.co.uk . 3. If you really don't find the course useful, then reply to this email with the subject field 'unsubscribe'. I'd appreciate any feedback.. 4. Lastly, I've taken every care to check the information and advice I give. However, I can't be responsible for any loss that you may suffer as a result of the advice or from any omission or inaccuracy. This disclaimer also applies to 3rd party links. © Paul Lock 2005. All rights reserved. No copying or extraction without permission from service@incisecomms.co.uk |