Changing your domain name once your site is well-established can turn out to be a very costly venture, so the solution is to select the correct domain name right from the get-go.

DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION

Not too long ago I used to preach and practice that you should “Never register your domain name through your web hosting company however attractive the deal might appear” Why? Because in the past it was not uncommon for web hosts to react somewhat angrily to the idea of you transferring those ooooh so delicious annual registration fees to a competitor.

But times have changed, the web has matured, web hosting services have matured. Most recognize the fact that the big bucks come with providing quality service.

And what’s more some very reputable web hosting companies provide some very attractive domain registration packages coupled with hosting.

So go ahead and take advantage of those cheap domain registration/web hosting packages just as long as the hosting company is well known and reputable.
If you ever do find yourself in a domain transfer battle you can contact the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Another thing to consider when registering your domain name is not to rely solely on your domain name register to ensure that the domain name you have in mind is available and does not infringe on someone else’s trademark rights (unless you enjoy being sued). To be doubly sure your domain name has no trademark infringement issues, after conducting a search for its availability on your domain name register’s website, you can also check at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) http://www.uspto.gov.

When registering your domain name it’s a good idea to register it for more than one year. The reason being that, other than the usual discounts you get for multi-year registrations from most domain name registers, Google (and perhaps the other search engines) consider multi-year registered domains as less likely to be spam sites. Consequently, right off the bat your site will have a search engine advantage (at least with Google), such as a shorter evaluation period in the Google Sandbox.

A final note about domain name registration; there are plenty of domain name registration companies out there, all eager and equally willing to register your new name. Domain name registration prices range from as little as $10 a year up to $35 per year and beyond. Generally there is little point in opting for the more expensive registers because you more or less get the same service. In fact some of the cheaper domain name registration companies provide better quality service.

However whatever service you use, make sure that your domain name is registered in your name. Some less scrupulous domain registration services have been known to register new domains with their own information. You can verify that your domain is registered with your particulars at: http://www.internic.net/whois.html.

THE DOMAIN NAME GAME

So what kind of domain name do you want? Do you want to pick a domain name incorporated with a targeted keyword, or do you want to take the memorable-brand route that the likes of Google, Yahoo and Amazon (to name but a few) have done with astounding success. Well, if your website is going to be business related or involved in some form of commerce it makes sense to have a well-searched-for-keyword incorporated within the domain name. The majority of online businesses are still found through search engine queries. By and large though, a good rule of thumb is to incorporate the most searched for term (for your market) in your domain name.

The shorter your domain name the more memorable it’s going to be. However you’ll discover that most one-word/two-word domain names have been snatched up already. One alternative you’ve got is to hyphenate your targeted keyword with another word. The jury is still out about hyphens though, but most seo experts concur that hyphenating a string of words makes a long domain name more search engine friendly. The downside is that when it comes to word-of-mouth dissemination most folks won’t bother including those pesky hyphens, with the resulting consequence that intended referrals to your domain could end up on your competitor’s doorstep. So as you can see, the whole process of naming your domain is a fine balancing act.

CUTESY ARTSY DOMAIN NAMES

There’s a budding artist in all of us waiting for just the right moment and place to show the world we are the new Leonardo da Vinci. Be that as it may, but naming your domain is not the place to express that inner artist. Avoid cutesy names interspersed with numbers in place of words (e.g., 4 instead of for), they’ll only confuse potential customers and torment you with heaps of regret somewhere down the road. In fact the best rule of thumb is to avoid numbers in your domain name altogether. However, if on the other hand your domain functions merely as a cyber-platform to let an uncaring world know you exist, then by all means let loose!

Bottom line, your domain name is your online identity
, so try to choose something that is memorable, fares well with the search engines, and also inspires confidence and respect.

TO DOT.COM OR NOT TO DOT.COM

These days there’re more and more choices for domain name extensions. This is great news because it is getting increasingly difficult to find a good domain name ending in .com that runs under twenty letters (okay that might be a wee bit of an exaggeration but you get the point). However the drawback with using anything other than a .com extension is human nature. You see people are creatures of conditioning and habit, and given a choice of precisely similar domain names, (other than the extension) you can bet most of us will instinctively beeline for the domain name with the .com extension—Without question the .com extension is the most recognizable.

Also think twice before settling for a top level country code domain such as co.uk. Unless you are located in that region and ship primarily within the area, such a domain name could have a negative impact on your business. Think about it…a potential customer based in the U.S. or another part of the world is not going to relish the prospect of forking out a mini fortune for shipping and handling fees when they can easily find a more local competitor. In the same vein try not to regionalize your domain name (unless your business caters to a market found only within that region) because you’ll probably lose potential customers who reside elsewhere.

On a final note, if you anticipate a lot of your traffic is going to come via word-of-mouth referral, you might consider registering similar domain names and redirecting to your main url (e.g. www.africasafarizone.com and www.africansafarizone.com) before cyber-squatters (people who register domain names in hopes of selling them for a profit) get wind of your growing success and beat you to it.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com

The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you – the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords – the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the browser menu bar, and select “source.” This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com

In the Internet , SEO marketing is the way to go if you want your business to be seen and noticed. There is such a thing as a SEO marketing specialist who aids clients and website owners in their quest to have bigger sales and more traffic to the site.

The Aim of SEO Marketing:
SEO marketing has mainly one aim and that is to bring traffic to a certain site. Traffic is seen as prospective buyers and clients of the site owner. Therefore, traffic is a much needed “commodity”. Many Internet users visit sites that they have been redirected to or sites that have been presented by search engine results, and they get hooked on these sites. In other words, some users do not specifically seek out that particular site but they might have been led to it by it being in the top ten high ranking sites presented after a search engine query.

Now you see how important getting high ranking is during searches. Sites that rank in the top ten are most likely visited by more users than those that are ranked lower. Many users do not bother to look for more sites if they find what they are looking for in the first few sites presented in a search. This is why many sites employ search engine optimization methods to encourage higher ranking and to achieve successful SEO marketing.

The Value of SEO Marketing:
The value of SEO marketing is that people who work to market your site know what they are doing and may be objective about what your site requires. By hiring and working with a SEO marketing expert is also a way of fully understanding how the search engines work and what is needed to meet the requirements of being in the top ten pages of a search engine.

SEO Marketing Tools and Strategies:
There are many ways of getting your site in front of many Internet users. These strategies are all included in search engine optimization and website optimization. Most sites are optimized to suit the requirements of search engines. Many search engines index and catalog sites in accordance to the data and information that the site owners have submitted and the data and information that the search engine crawlers have gathered from the web site. The way that the data and information is presented in the site is important and so is the submissions that are given to the search engines. It is the role of the SEO marketing expert to be able to fully recognize the right data and information to supply for the site and submit to the search engines. SEO marketing companies are hiring, at an unprecedented pace, SEO marketing consultants to accommodate the increasing demand for quality SEO marketing experts that can handle search engine optimization and SEO marketing for various sites

Among the many SEO marketing tools that can propel a site to the first page of a search engine result is content. Content that is relevant to the site is what sites need to make it stand out from others that have irrelevant content and improper web design. This is the importance of keyword or key phrases that are integrated ion to the article used for the site. These articles carry the information that robotic crawlers need in order to properly index a site according to what it contains and what it can offer to users. The relevance factor holds true when link building. One way inbound links from relevant sites are extremely relevant.

SEO marketing strategies also include designing the web site in such a way as to make it easier to use and for the texts and images to load quickly. It is important for the web site to be quick loading in order to hold the attention of the users. Sites that take too long to load or have large images that hinder quick access to the texts will most likely be abandoned by the users in favor for a much faster site. Part of SEO marketing is to meet the demands and needs of the people by providing a web site that has relevance and the information that the users need.

The problem with SEO marketing is that there is a fine line of distinction between black hat and white hat methodologies. Some SEO experts employ underhand methods to gain high ranking for their clients’ sites. Many overzealous SEO experts might integrate a few well placed codes and hidden texts that could raise the ranking of a certain web site. Human users will not be able to see these codes and text but the spiders and crawlers used by the search engines to help index a site will be able to read these and gather these as relevant information regarding the site. The results of these actions will lead to the site being banned from the search engine and the SEO company might be included with this. It is best to practice white hat methods of SEO marketing to have long lasting results.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com

A colleague recently asked me what I thought about a 44.82% bounce rate, if it seemed high, and if it could cause suspicion for advertisers.

A “bounce” occurs when a web site visitor enters a particular page and then leaves the site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs.

In actuality, the bounce rate can be quite arbitrary depending on the website. For some, a bounce rate of 44% is quite high. I have a client who sells modular homes and she has a bounce rate of about 15%. If she goes up to 20%, she starts panicking.

Another client who sells recycling containers once gave me a bonus when I got his bounce rate under 50%. It was previously about 65% and I saved him about $550/month.

Still another client, a dryer vent cleaning specialist for whom I’m just doing SEO work, has a bounce rate of about 65%. Here’s the reason: he’s a local business whose site is so well optimized, it comes up for searches all over the country. When they see that he only does business in Hampton Roads, they leave. His bounce rate for local traffic is much lower.

However, my colleague has a client who is experiencing a 44% bounce rate with a local news site and is concerned that this number is not good for advertisers.

This probably is true, but the website analytics would have to be analyzed to know for sure. It could be that most visitors are clicking on a story they Googled and then left after reading it. A high bounce rate on Google referrals would confirm that. For my colleague, a close look at page popularity could actually reveal an opportunity to convince advertisers to invest more advertising on the top 5 pages–prime real estate if the pages are getting lots of traffic.

The key is website conversions. If the site is converting a fair portion of its traffic, a high bounce rate is less important. It’s even less important if those conversions are turning into high revenue. For example, if a real estate agent is spending $1000 per month on paid search marketing and turning that into $30,000 in profit, a bounce rate of 60% is irrelevant.

The best approach is to look at it holistically. Baseline the bounce rate, analyze the data, set a goal, and work to lower it. Your site analytics will reveal many important factors that will tell you where you are wasting money or where you are missing the target.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com

Obtaining top search engine rankings is a challenging task for many businesses seeking a significant web presence. Accordingly, most of them go in for quality SEO services offered by experienced service providers to boost their online image.

Increase Web Traffic and Enhance Online Sales

Only search engine optimized web pages can enhance online sales through improved traffic generation. Professional SEO service companies utilize social bookmarking, link popularity building and other useful methods for enhancing their client’s website presence almost everywhere in the web world. This will help them draw more traffic from various quarters. Besides, for transforming visitors to the website into potential customers, the website should have all the relevant information and other details that they are searching for. This can be achieved if the website has well-written content and well-designed web pages.

Quality SEO Services

A professional SEO service company can offer quality services that boost the page rankings of client websites. For improving the exposure of business websites, they combine various search engine techniques and SEO tools. SEO service companies have a team of experts proficient in latest web page optimization methods and who are capable of delivering effective and prompt services. Some of the important processes performed as part of SEO services include:

* Competition research
* Keyword research
* Place keywords/key phrases to get priority
* Optimized content building
* Meta tag optimization
* Optimized title tags
* Search engine submission
* Internet marketing strategies
* Website analysis and reports
* Monthly maintenance

For the best results, firms must approach an SEO service
company that understands their business objectives and implements the best web marketing strategy
to enhance their online sales and help them gain a competitive edge over others.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com

If you have a business website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is not just anyone popping in for a visit on your site but an actual interested target group who are specifically looking for a product or service in your industry/ business. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your website, then the chances of high sales volume is out of the question.

Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The main ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. There is always the option to use advertising but we all know how expensive that option can be. By using search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many business website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a “pretty” website. It is important to have a presentable site, but it must serve the fundamental purpose and that it bring in more sales for your business. So, what are some of the pitfalls someone can fall into?

1. Keywords – Not using them effectively

This is probably one of the most critical areas of website design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong one and you will hardly see any traffic to your site. It is therefore recommended to seek the services of a professional website design
company which also use search engine optimisation elements to create a Search engine friendly website.

2. Keywords – Please do not repeat them

If you are new to keywords, you would be using the same keyword in the content again and again. Some users use it in each sentence. This is a big no-no and search engines actually look past these websites as “spam”. Keywords should be used in moderation and most people agree that using 2-3 keywords (2 to 3 times) on a content page is more than sufficient.

3. Do not steal content

Search engines change their algorithms all the time and one of the more recent changes is detecting duplicate content. Never steal content directly from a website; not even the images.
You can always get ideas from other sites but your content should be unique. Search engines favour content which is unique. Some sites are banned from search engine listings
if found to be directly copying from other websites. If you cannot write the content for your websites, seek the help of professional writers.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website

Some unethical website owners use keywords which are not even related to their website. A classic example is using the name of a celebrity as a keyword. Even though it is a popular keyword, it is a dead giveaway when someone lands on your site to discover what they are looking for is not available on your website. Instead, stick to keywords relevant to your site as the whole idea is to receive target traffic to your site who will convert later on to be your clients.

5. Do not hide your keywords

Yes, it is true. There are some people who stoop to a low level just to get traffic to their site. What they do is make the keywords invisible by changing the colour of the keyword font to match the background. This is clearly not a good idea as search engines are becoming really smart now. It is not worth getting your website blacklisted.

6. Search Engines have their own rules

To really stay ahead of your competition you have to realise that all search engines have their own logic and algorithms. This means that if you understand what sites they give more importance to, the higher your success rate of making your website visible to the online community.

7. Check your website regularly

Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. The reason is that you may have some important keywords located in some pages and if information is missing or links broken, it will only drive traffic away from your website instead of retaining the visitor.

The above are real examples of what has happened to website owners who have gone off and done their own thing. Play by the rules when it comes to search engine optimisation and work with a good website design company if you are planning to build a website from scratch because the SEO elements they incorporate from the website design phase will have long-time positive results for your business website.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com

The growing demand for frequently updated information and access to the latest news stories as they unfold have prompted Google to improve its previous indexing service. This enhanced service provides links to content which is in constant flux such as forums, news stories and blogs, much faster than before.

Caffeine also allows for the indexing of vast amounts of information in a shorter period of time. The index occupies almost 100 million gigabytes of storage, adding new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes daily.

With one of the main ranking factors cited by Google as being the frequency with which information on a site is updated, web developers cannot afford to miss out on the potential traffic generated via the new and improved indexing structure.

One of the best ways in which a site can impress in Google’s ranking factors, is through the inclusion of a blog. This feature allows for frequent updates to be added to the site. Furthermore, snippets from the blog posts can then be added to the home page, thus updating the latter on a continuous basis.

Many companies now employ in-house blog-writers to make sure that the site content is always refreshed, and performing well in line with the updated ranking factors. Those who do not possess the required manpower or have sufficient resources to commit a team of writers to the task, may outsource the job to an SEO web design consultancy.

The presence of a blog on a website not only satisfies the need for frequently updated information, but also creates additional content to be crawled and indexed by Google. It also lends itself to an increase in back-links directing traffic to the site, as many blog posts are shareable via social networking sites
such as Facebook, Google Buzz, and Twitter.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com