Saturday, June 21, 2008

Choosing A Domain Name To Attract Targeted Customers

By Theo McLanahan

The quickest way to getting eyeballs on your business these days is by establishing an online presence and central to establishing a powerful online presence is choosing a domain name that will attract the right customers.

Unfortunately, many people overlook this important step. Let's look at a few tips for getting a domain that will attract the right customers to your site.

1. Choose A Descriptive Domain

What your website offers should be clear from the domain name. Don't make your potential visitors guess at what they'll find on your website.

For example, if your name is Veronica Smith and you own a hair salon, get a domain like veronicashairsalon.com instead of veronicasmith.com. Unless you're famous, or want to become that way, your own name isn't the best option as your domain.

Also, shorter is better because it's easier to remember. It's also easier for them to type, with less chance of spelling mistakes.

2. Get A Domain That Includes Your Keywords

It's becoming increasingly important for business owners to have their websites indexed and ranked well in search engines like Google.com, MSN.com and Yahoo.com. And it helps this cause tremendously if you have a keyword-rich domain name. The reason for this is simple: Your potential customers search using specific keyword phrases to find what they're looking for.

Taking the time to do some research to find your best keywords, and a domain that includes them, is important. Make sure it still meets the first criteria though - short and descriptive.

There are other things you can and should do to get better rankings in the search results, but starting with a good domain sets a strong foundation. Avoid using hyphens in your domain name as well since it's believed they can hurt your rankings. Take the time to find a good domain rather than taking a shortcut and using a couple of dashes.

3. Do You Really Need .com?

Well, the answer is yes and no. There's no reason you can't use a different extension like .net or .biz if that's the only way you can get the domain you want. It's not the best choice however, because everybody thinks in terms of .com. If your site uses something else, it's going to be an uphill battle to get people to recognize your site. If someone else already owns the .com version, they're going to get a lot of free traffic thanks to your marketing.

How would you feel if you spend time and money marketing your website and some of those people wound up on your competitor's customer list instead?

If you're setting up a website for specific types of organizations, a non-profit group for example which should use .org, the best way to go is to stick with .com.

So, don't rush headlong into purchasing a domain name without first taking the time to research keyword phrases that would be a perfect match for your product or service. You can perform this much needed research at websites such as www.wordtracker.com, www.keywordtumbler.com and www.goodkeywords.com. It requires some effort, but acquiring the keyword phrases that are used by prospects and incorporating them into your domain name will pay off handsomely for years to come.

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Friday, June 20, 2008

Providing Affordable Web Hosting Solution

By Johnson

The contents of your website will affect the amount of money you have to pay to your Web Hosting service. Although your website only consists of some web pages, but if you also provide streaming video or audio to visitors, the cost of bandwidth is something you should take into consideration very carefully.

It is highly recommended to opt for a plan that allows you to use bandwidth more than your current requirement so anything you use over it will not cost you extra usage fees. The storage capacity you need depends on the type of website you intend to build.

For instance, if you have a plan to build an article directory where the web space required would grow rapidly you should think about the cost of that extra web space you would need. If your business plan involves the usages of more than one websites, consider to use a web hosting provider which gives you a facility to host all of your domains under one account.

That way it doesn't matter how many domain names you host, you only have to pay for one hosting account. It is also a good idea to thing about the cost of using an add-on domain in case you want to build more websites later. Look at what kind of policies an Affordable Web Hosting company has. Will they charge you automatically when the web space or the bandwidth you use have reached the limit?

Avoiding surprises is a necessity in business, especially when it comes to extraneous costs. Those are some essential rules in finding an affordable web hosting plan. Keep in mind that today the count of Web Hosting providers is endless and most of them claim as the number one company in the world with the very best cheap rates. Before finalizing on a Web Hosting service, do your homework and plan ahead.

Nowadays, because of the competition is getting harder, many Web Hosting companies don't charge you for setting up a new account.

So if you find the one that does it, simply go to other companies. Are there any extra charges for any application or database you might need to make sure that you don't have to spend extra money for setting up databases, putting FrontPage on your site, creating email accounts and using other common applications? They all should be free. Some web hosting providers allow you to build unlimited number of databases and email accounts.

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

How to Increase Your Website Ranking

By Ahsan Mirza

Therefore, you have an amazing website and smart content but your website ranking is still low. Little or no ranking means that there is little or no income. So it is crucial that you increase your website ranking to ensure a more successful business.

Structure website ranking is simply marketing your website so that it can market for you. However, website traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is everything. The easiest way to increase targeted website traffic is to focus each website page or blog post on a specific position in the market. An excellent way is to ask a "how to" question and write about your solution.

Another tactic is to use inbound links to bring in ranking from other sites. Social bookmarking is one more great method to increase links exponentially with little effort. Get in the habit of writing articles, posting them to your site, and submitting them to social bookmarking sites, this mixture will increase your site ranking.

If you are in a place where people like to chat and argue that subject, this can be a great way to increase your ranking. Get involved with the debate - don't just post ads, and your site will get more ranking.

Be sure to contain your URL in your signature. Seriously, post comments around the web that you are starting a forum on such-and-such a matter and they will come.

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