Internet and Business Online

In online marketing, the website is the heart of every business. This is where you begin your serious relationship building efforts. You understand the importance of having a website that converts well. Yet… your blog or website will only be one aspect in your IM business. Another must have is targeted traffic, and you can’t get by without it. Of course people need to know you’re on the web so they can hopefully buy from you. Regardless of whether you intend to target a specific niche market like article marketing automation or virtually any other specialized niche, it’s vital that you remember the following tips.

Keeping your site fresh with new content matters, and using a blog for that is a great approach. A site with old content, and never updated, will not get return visitors – usually, so you’ll depend upon making a sale during that once or second visit. Contrast that with a site with constantly updated information, people will likely bookmark it and return again. You are more likely to sell things to repeat visitors than you are to “drive by” traffic. While getting even more traffic, you’ll be building your online rep and establishing yourself as an expert. It’s a win-win!

Look for people who can contribute good content to your website. Everyone wants links back to their sites, so if you offer them a link in exchange for an article in your niche, they’ll most likely be happy to comply. There are actually two reasons why this is good for you. Your page rank can go up by having more outbound links. It will also get you an inbound link. If you publish something written by someone else, there’s a good chance they will note this on their own site, creating a link to your site. Doing this can bring you visitors who found out about you from the contributor’s site, and you will also be building both your inbound and outbound links!

You should try to take advantage of offline marketing, as well. Never discount the power of this form of advertising for websites. Classified ads in magazines have built more than one empire. Great giveaway products like key chains and pens are another way to spread the word-just drop a few off at different places as you run errands. A lot of people you reach via offline marketing may not be accustomed to online marketing strategies, so they could be a source of easy sales for you. Whether you intend to target a specific niche market such as website traffic or any other specialized niche, it’s vital that you remember the following tips.

There are a lot of different ways that you can get people to visit your website. What you’ll always want to do is be able to maintain that traffic source. An hour or two every day, and you’ll see a huge difference in a little while. Keep your eye on the ball because each visitor means the possibility of making a sale. Thankfully if you keep working at it, you should be able to build up quite a stable of traffic to your website!

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So you want to start up a website?  Have you thought about your long term plans for your website?  Doing so will be a great advantage in determining the best possible domain name.  A well chosen domain is a key component to your website’s success. Fine tuning your choice and thinking it through will help secure good placement with search engines and in the minds of your potential visitors/customers.

OK, so now you’ve found the domain name you want, but someone else owns it.  But you really wanted it badly.  Can the domain name still be acquired?  The answer is a qualified YES.  It’s possible, but there are conditions.  However, with a little luck and enginuity you can get the domain name you want even if it is already spoken for.  But for now, lets look at some alternatives to getting that domain name you want:

Hyphenated Names Sometimes it is a good strategy to just take the same domain name and hyphenate it as in turning bobsautoparts.com into bobs-auto-parts.com.  Is it always the best strategy?  Maybe, maybe not.  For example, if the domain name you want is already taken AND well known, most likely this is not a good idea, because most web surfers would likely just type the non-hyphenated version into their browsers and thus could end up at your competitor’s website.  Not a good strategy.  Also, the longer the name you have chosen, the more tedious and error prone it becomes for the surfer to type in the name correctly, again foiling the chances that they will end up at your website.  So keep it short.  Hyphenating a domain name might be a good strategy for you in the following scenario: Let’s say the domain name you want is taken, and the current owner is not willing to give it up.  After researching it you find that there is no website published under the domain name, or perhaps there is but it is poorly designed and gets very little traffic.  In a case like that hyphenating the domain name might make sense and in fact could be a wise strategy.

Longer or Shorter?  If you want to, you can purchase up to a 67 character long domain name.  At 63 characters, thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com claims to be the longest domain name in the world, and it may very well be.  Can you envision anyone wanting to type it into their browser?  My website is www.StartMyWebsiteToday.com    When choosing my domain name I wanted something that in a few words would tell the web surfer what to expect from my website.  Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking.  In as few characters as possible the name of the site, the purpose of the site, and the keywords of the site have all been neatly put together in a domain name.  Shorter is better here.

Brand Name or Generic  Should you give your website a descriptive generic name or do you want to use a brand name?  If your business is known by a brand name, and it is a well known name, of course it is the best possible strategy to try to register that domain name.  For instance, Nike.com is a well known brand name site, although there is nothing in the domain name to suggest that it is a site about shoes.  Still, Nike is such a well known brand name to the public that people automatically know what they will be shopping for when they get there.  If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name.  But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well.  People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names.  A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike.  So if possible cover all the bases.  You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better.   A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one.  To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine.

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Selecting a hosting plan is a critical step when you want to start up a website.  In prior posts I discussed choosing a domain name and creation of web pages.  Next we will discuss hosting:  Early on in your decision making process, you will want to shop for a hosting plan.

The next step after creating your website is to make it live on the internet, or publish it.  In order to do so, you will need a hosting plan.  A hosting plan is different from a domain name.  You own your domain name but you rent a hosting plan.  In it’s simplest terms a hosting plan is paying a company to broadcast your website onto the internet.  Let’s go over some of the key important factors to consider when choosing a hosting plan:

SERVICE  The number one thing to look for in a hosting plan is service.  It does not matter that a multitude of features are offered or if the price is low if the service you will be getting with your hosting plan is sub par or even worse, nonexistent.  Once your website is live on the internet you will want it to be up all the time.  For that reason you want to be sure and choose a hosting provider that will provide the best uptime as well the best availability and quality of customer service.

UPTIME  What is the hosting company’s “uptime guarantee”? Many guarantee 99% uptime for their servers.  That sounds great, but it does mean that your site could go down for 1% of the time, which means over 7 hours out of each month! If at all possible, choose a host guaranteeing up to 99.9% uptime.

SIZE  What size, or how many pages will the website have?  The amount of disk space all of your website’s pages takes up will determine the size of the hosting plan you will need.  If your website will be media rich with videos or music or photo files, or a large e-commerce site with a lot of catalogue pages, you will have to take space into consideration as a criteria for choosing the right hosting plan.

LINUX OR WINDOWS  This question refers to the operating systems available for hosting and which one to choose.  BTW it does not matter what operating system you are using on your personal computer.  What programming language was used in the Web site design?  For example, if you designed a website using ASP or ASP.NET, you’ll need to find a Windows hosting plan. If you have a Web site that uses CGI or PHP, you’ll need to get a Linux hosting plan.  Note that if you are simply publishing a basic html website, the choice of hosting Operating system won’t really matter as much until you get into more advanced languages such as PHP or ASP.

TRAFFIC  How much traffic or how many visitors do you expect monthly?  Hosting plans are usually sold at different level plans according to the bandwith that will be required.  Bandwidth = Traffic.  Obviously more bandwidth is better because it allows more visitors to visit your site, but at the beginning this will be hard for you to gauge.  Usually the best way to proceed here is to start with a basic low bandwidth plan, and upgrade later as the traffic begins to flow to the website.

SHARED OR DEDICATED HOSTING  The question of shared vs. dedicated hosting is really answered in a very simple way:  First a brief description of shared hosting, which is sharing space on a server with dozens or perhaps hundreds of other websites.  The main factor here is that you will have no control over the operating system, database structure, etc., and will have to work within the structure setup by the hosting provider.  Dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting is different in the sense that you will have full control over the environment that your website resides in, and you will have the only access to that space.  Dedicated server hosting gives you full control over setup of the operating system and auxilliary programs such as database management or shopping cart or database management software.  Generally customer support will be low to non-existent, since this type of hosting is geared to the advanced user who will be using his own custom setup.  The bottom line:  start off with shared hosting if you are a beginner, until you are advanced enough to progress to your own controlled dedicated hosting environment.

At StartMyWebsiteToday.com our uptime guarantee is 99.9% and we offer 24/7 customer service.  The hosting plans that are offered include a variety: shared hosting, virtual dedicated hosting, and dedicated hosting plans with either Linux or Windows operating systems for every need and budget ranging from the small personal website to large online multimedia sites to those interested in ecommerce website building. To see what is available, click HERE: Hosting plans.

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So you want to start up a website?  One of the best things you can help yourself with in your domain name choice is to develop a strategy and plan of attack.  Just as important as choosing the name for your business, a domain name, the name of your soon-to-be website, is one of the most important factors in your online success. Fine tuning your choice and thinking it through will help secure good placement with search engines and in the minds of your potential visitors/customers.

What if someone else already owns the domain name you wanted?  Is it still possible to buy it?  It’s Possible.  It’s possible, but there are some things to consider.  With some research and hard work you can still possibly register that coveted domain name even if someone has beaten you to the punch.  Instead, let’s check out some alternative strategies to get the domain name you want:

Hyphenated Names One strategy to consider if the domain name you want is already taken would be to hyphenate it, as in turning ricksantiqueshop.com into ricks-antique-shop.com.  Is hyphenating the best way to go?  Possibly, but maybe not.  If you want a domain name that is already taken by someone else and is already a well known, well traveled website, this might be a bad move, because users already familiar with the original domain name will just type the original, non-hyphenated version into their web browser, and end up not at your site but at your competitor’s site.  Not what you were after!  Also, if you do decide to take a hyphenated domain name, remember to keep it short!  The longer the domain name and the more dashes you put between words the harder it will be for the end user to remember, and therefore makes it more error prone, which could cost you customers who never make it to your website.  So, the shorter the better.  Hyphenating a domain name might be a good strategy for you in the following scenario: Let’s say the domain name you want is taken, and the current owner is not willing to give it up.  After researching it you find that there is no website published under the domain name, or perhaps there is but it is poorly designed and gets very little traffic.  In a case like that hyphenating the domain name might make sense and in fact could be a wise strategy.

Longer or Shorter?  If you want to, you can purchase up to a 67 character long domain name.  You could purchase a domain name like thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com which is 63 characters long, but why would you want to do that?  Who would want to type it into a browser?  My website is www.StartMyWebsiteToday.com  and has a domain name that tells what kind of website you will be surfing to.  Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking.  In as few characters as possible the name of the site, the purpose of the site, and the keywords of the site have all been neatly put together in a domain name.  Keep it as short as possible.

Brand Name or Generic  Whether or not to call your website by a brand name or to make the name a more generic description of your business online is the question.  Definitely if your business is known by a fairly well known brand name, then you would want to try and secure that as your domain name.  Budweiser.com is a site that is well known and gets a lot of traffic, even though there is nothing specifically in the domain name that says anything about beer.  But because Budweiser is known all over the world as a beer brand, people know what they are getting when they surf to the website.  If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name.  But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well.  People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names.  A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike.  Think it through and hedge your bets.  You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better.   A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one.  To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine.

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