How to Choose and Register a Domain Name

Choosing your domain name is one of the most important decisions you will face when building your business. For years, the debate has centered around choosing either a Company Name Domain or a Keyword Domain.

Company Name Domain:

If we assume that, for example, you own a web design company located in Boston called Praxis Inc., you may want to register your company name as your domain name: praxis.com. One advantage is that your customers already know your company name and it will be easy for them to remember. Also, a company name domain looks professional when printed in collateral material.

The main disadvantage, especially if you are a small business, is that people won't be able to tell what you do based on your domain name, and it won’t help you very much with the search engines (since some of them use the domain name for cues on what the business does, and to determine its relevance to certain search terms).

Keyword Domain:

Keywords are generic terms related to your field that you believe search engine users will type in the search box to find a company like yours. Since a domain name is usually the anchor text used to link to a site, and anchor text was a very important factor in search engine placement until not so long ago, keyword domains were very popular for a while.

Search engines are evolving and now recognize that people have been abusing the use of keyword-only domains, so they have downgraded their importance in their search algorithms. Keyword domains, though, still have some advantages associated with the growing trend of web users typing a bunch of keywords in the address bar followed by “.com” in their efforts to find relevant websites.

The disadvantages of keyword domains from a branding perspective is that they tend to be long and hard to remember, and look awkward when printed in company collateral material. For example: boston-web-design-company.com may give you a slight edge over praxis.com when it comes to search engine placement or getting direct traffic, however, its branding disadvantages are obvious.

A good compromise, and the solution that I recommend, is to combine your company name with a keyword. For example: praxiswebdesign.com. That will give you the best of both worlds: brand recognition and keyword strength.

Final Tips:

• If you are just opening a small business, choose your domain name before you choose your company name. Many times, people have registered their company and then found out that their company name is not available as a domain name.
  
  
• By all means, secure a .com domain. It is the default extension and the first one that will come to mind to people trying to remember your domain name. You must try to register at least the three most common variations of your domain name: .com, .net and .org, to prevent unscrupulous competitors from benefiting from your brand equity.
  
  
• Registering a domain doesn’t cost a lot of money. In fact, nowadays it is common to find domain names for less than $10 / year. I use Godaddy to register all my domains. (disclaimer: I am also a Godaddy affiliate). They have great prices and a very user-friendly interface.
  
  
• Don’t register your domain name with your hosting company. Though it may be tempting to accept their “free” domain registration offer with your hosting package, if one day you want to change hosting companies they will make you jump through hoops to release your domain. Don’t play with your brand: register your domain in an accredited domain registrar and point it to your hosting company’s servers.

Tech Tags: seo domains seo+tips small+business internet+marketing

Is giving away articles still a relevant link building technique?

Writing articles and publishing them in article clearinghouses for others to use as free content was once the easiest way to get links and build up your reputation as an expert in your field . However, with the runaway popularity of blogs, social bookmarking and RSS, giving away articles to get links is not as important or as necessary as it once was. People are now finding it easier to get links by writing a remarkable piece, publishing it in their own blogs, bookmarking it in del.icio.us, digg or other social bookmarking service, and doing some promotion through comments in forums and other blogs.

If your blog is new and not very well known, I still recommend writing some articles and giving them away for others to publish in their own sites. Your articles will have your resource box or by-lines with a link to your blog’s main page, which will help you get some visibility both with search engines and people interested in your topic. As your blog gets more established, however, I recommend to give away articles only occasionally, and to keep your best content for exclusive publication in your blog. If your most remarkable articles are only available in your blog, other bloggers will have to deep link to them directly and not to other sites that may have published it. These spontaneous, deep links to your content have much greater search engine value than the links to your main page coming from free article sites or low value websites.

Tech Tags: link+building blogging internet+marketing entrepreneurship small+business seo

Top 20 Tips for Beginner Bloggers

1. Choose a topic that you know, like, and are passionate about. This way you will never get bored and will keep your audience always interested and asking for more.
   
   
2. Pick a topic where there is not a lot of competition. If your topic is too common, try addressing it from a particular angle or focus on a specific niche. For example, there are many sites that talk about cars, but few that specialize in only one brand, and even fewer that focus on only one model. The key to be successful is to find a specific enough topic with a large enough audience.
   
   
3. Open a Blogger account. It is free and easy to use. That way, you won’t have to invest in costlier platforms like MovableType or TypePad before you have the chance of finding out if blogging is for you.
   
   
4. Use a minimalist template, preferably one with a white background. This format is easier to read and pleasant to the eye when you combine it with color pictures.
   
   
5. Use pictures to dress up your blog entries and give your blog a more professional appearance. You can find excellent pictures at a very low cost in istockphoto.com, or even free in Flickr (don’t forget to ask the owner of the picture for permission before you use it).
   
   
6. In one of your blog’s side columns, list six or seven links to authoritative sites related to your topic. When the search engine robots visit your blog, they will find these links and your blog will benefit by association.
   
   
7. Write in simple language, short paragraphs and using bullet points. These are essential guidelines for writing on the web, and will make your posts easier to read and understand.
   
   
8. Always link out to the sources you use to document your posts. This is not only good etiquette but also a way to promote your blog and get links: when the people you link to find out that they’ve been linked to, they will most likely link to your post from their site or blog.
   
   
9. Check your posts for spelling and grammatical errors. This will make your blog look more professional and will increase the probability of other people linking to it.
   
   
10. Use labels to categorize your posts and keep your blog neatly organized. Blogger recently modified its software to allow the use of labels.
    
    
11. Participate actively in forums and discussion groups related to your topic. Find what are the most common questions and provide the answers in your blog. Then, direct forum readers to your blog. Try to also direct forum readers to other resources, or answer without necessarily linking to your blog, sometimes. If not, you may be perceived as self serving and only interested in promoting your blog.
    
    
12. Use HitTail to research topics to write about. HitTail gives you a list of the search terms used by those who came to your blog through a search engine. This search term list will give you ideas for future blog posts.
    
    
13. Allow your blog readers to email your posts to other people. Also, give them the option to bookmark your posts using del.icio.us, furl, or any other social bookmarking service. You can go to AddThis to download a smart button that makes it easy to bookmark your posts. You can find instructions on how to add the button to Blogger here. The easier you make it to share your blog posts, the more relevant traffic your blog will get.
    
    
14. Use Technorati tags at the end of your blog posts. Technorati tags are a way of classifying your blog posts by topic and have them added to Technorati’s index (Technorati is the most important search engine for blogs). Use this automatic Technorati tag generator to avoid having to create the HTML code manually.
    
    
15. Syndicate your blog allowing your visitors to subscribe to your feeds through their favorite aggregator. This way, they will be automatically notified every time you update your blog. You can use this tool to generate attractive syndication buttons, which you can then place in a side column of your blog.
    
    
16. Post frequently. It is the only way to keep your audience interested and coming back. Two or three times a week is ideal. Once a week is the borderline minimum that I recommend to keep your audience engaged and maintain adequate visibility in the search engines.
    
    
17. Keep a large number of posts in the main page of your blog. Search engine robots usually won’t crawl and index all your blog pages, however they will visit your main page frequently. The more content you keep in your main page, the bigger the chance of it popping up in the search engine results pages.
    
    
18. Use Google Adsense to monetize your blog. Blogger lets you add Google Adsense easily and seamlessly in several locations within a page. The best locations are within the content, and on top of the page simulating a navigation bar.
    
    
19. Don’t use Google Adsense excessively, at least at the beginning. Your initial focus should be not to monetize your blog, but to build your audience and establishing your blog's reputation as an authority within your topical community. A blog that is deep on content and lean on ads is more likely to attract the kind of links needed to become relevant to users and search engines.
    
    
20. Once your blog is established and generates abundant, relevant traffic, you can monetize more aggressively, not only with Adsense but also with affiliate links and, why not, maybe even by selling your own products.

You can see a real example of all these tips at work in this blog ;)

Tech Tags: blogging blogging+tips social+bookmarking technorati delicious seo smallbusiness marketing

Adding Videos to your Blog

You've probably seen blog posts that show a Youtube screen that allows you to play a video clip hosted in Youtube without having to go to the Youtube site. It is really very easy to place Youtube videos in your blog posts. Just go to the Youtube page of the video you want to include in your blog, and you will find a small profile form to the right of the screen with information about that particular video clip. There, you will find two pieces of code: one called "URL", which is the web address of the video clip, that you can use to link to it, and another one labeled "Embed", which shows you the code you have to cut and paste to actually see the screen in your blog.

Just remember that just because a video is in Youtube doesn't mean that it is not copyrighted. Make sure you have the right to use the material before you put it on your blog. Other than Youtube, you can also find videos in Google and Yahoo!.

Tech Tags: blogging small+business entrepreneurship internet+marketing internetmarketing

Online Marketing in 2007

We're entering 2007 and, as search engines become more sophisticated, small sites with limited authority are finding it increasingly difficult to rank well. Gone are the days when link exchanges or anchor text was all you needed to worry about to increase your visibility and traffic. The web is becoming more social in nature, and sites need to be more interweaved in the community to be successful. There is a great article in Aviva Directory that is especially relavant to us, small internet business owners. Here it is:

Little Known Ways to Brand on the Cheap: 99 Tips for Poor Web Startups

It is about 10 pages long, but there is some great, must-read advice there, so I suggest that you print it, grab a yellow marker and a cup of coffee, sit in your favorite chair and go through it. Then, put it to practice. Enjoy.

Tech Tags: small+business entrepreneurship marketing branding internet+marketing online+marketing

Using Testimonials to Increase Sales

Testimonials are like referrals: they greatly increase the probability of converting prospects into customers. Bob Leduc, a sales consultant with over 30 years experience in marketing and sales, estimates that sales letters with testimonials perform up to 65% better than the same letters without the testimonials.

To get testimonials, he suggests to give customers a postcard asking them to tell you what did they like about your product or service, and then mail the postcard back to you (postage paid). Most of them will be glad to do that for you. You can then sift through the postcards, select the ones you like the most, and ask those customers for permission to use their feedback as testimonials in your marketing pieces.

Kevin Nunley, an experienced copywriter and web marketer suggests us to "get someone who is a recognized name in your field to say something good about what you sell. Let them mention their own interest in the testimonial. This is why blurbs on book covers go, "Best book I've ever read," Joe Blow, author of How to Get Rich. Joe lends his good opinion as a way to get a mention for HIS book".

Another good way to get testimonials, especially if you're just starting out, is to pay somebody to review your product, service, book, website, or whatever it is that you offer. There is a new service called ReviewMe that does just that... there is a caveat, though: ReviewMe reviews must be unbiased (you cannot pay for a positive review). However, if you practice rule #1 of getting testimonials: "always provide a great service and deliver what you promise", you will do OK.

Finally, here are some more testimonial basics:

• Testimonials must describe a specific benefit, for example: "your product allowed me to accomplish three times as much in half the time", instead or "your product is great".
  
  
• Always include the name, city and/or website address of the person giving the testimonial. You can omit the address, for privacy.
  
  
• Send the person giving the testimonial a thank you note, or, even better, a small, symbolic gift like a gift certificate of a free sample. However, make sure you do this after you've received authorization to use the testimonial, or it will look like a bribe and may offend the customer, who most likely would have been glad to give you the testimonial with no expectations of receiving anything.

Tech Tags: small+business copywriting marketing

How To Write Effective Sales Letters

No matter what business we are in, we need to be able to produce marketing material that sells. David Frey, president of Marketing Best Practices Inc. reminds us that we don't have to be award-winning copywriters to create effective sales letters, that writing great sales letters is more of a science than an art, and that anybody can produce compelling sales pieces by following a 12-step template:

1) Get attention
2) Identify the problem
3) Provide the solution
4) Present your credentials
5) Show the benefits
6) Give social proof
7) Make your offer
8) Give a guarantee
9) Inject scarcity
10) Call to action
11) Give a warning
12) Close with a reminder

Read the full article here and learn more about the 12 steps to writing effective sales letters.

Tech Tags: small+business copywriting marketing

Don't Be A Marketing Day Trader

Many businesses pursue marketing strategies in the same short sighted, reactionary manner as yesterday's day traders. They never develop a marketing strategy. They do not consider the long term. They lack patience. And, like day traders, they receive the same dismal results. Steven Van Yoder suggests us that rather than chasing the latest get-rich-quick scheme, we take a long term approach and build our reputation first. He explains us how in his article: Don't Be a Marketing Day Trader.

Contributed by Steven Van Yoder.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Internet Marketing, Small Business

Nick Usborne's Web Copywriting Guide

Nick Osbourne is one of my favorite web copywriters (you can find some of his great articles in my website's archives). Nick understands what it takes to write effectively and persuasively for the web, and offers his readers a ton of value through his Excess Voice website and his Web Copywriting Blog. I highly recommend subscribing to his newsletter. In times like these, when dime-a-dozen newsletters are chocking our inboxes, Nick's is one of the few that are really worth reading. Fortunately for us, Nick is offering his new guide to Writing for the Web, a 35 page PDF document detailing the 7 biggest challenges faced by web copywriters, free of charge to those who subscribe to his newsletter. These are some quick links to some of Nick's best web pages:

Excess Voice Home:
http://www.excessvoice.com

Excess Voice Newsletter Archives:
http://www.excessvoice.com/archive.htm

Excess Voice Newsletter Subscription Page:
http://www.excessvoice.com/newsletter.htm

Web Copywriting Tips page:
http://excessvoice.com/web-copywriting-tips.htm

I am sure you will find this information useful and that you will add Nick to your A-List of web marketing resouces.

The Lifetime Value of a Customer

This literally can be the most profitable thing you'll ever do for your business and that is to understand exploiting the actual value of your customer. It's been called the Marginal Net Worth and the Lifetime Value.

What is the current worth of one of your customers or prospects? It's the total profit of an average customer over the lifetime that they do business with you. That includes all subsequent sales minus advertising/marketing and your fulfillment expenses.

Let's say the average customer brings you $75 per sale. They re-purchase 3 more times in a year. Their average order amount is $300. On each $300 reorder, you make $150 gross profit The average life lasts 2 years. Every new customer is worth $975.

You reach the 975 by adding the $75 initial profit to the 3 other purchases each year of $300. Only $150 is profit, so $150 times 3 equals $450. If they do that for 2 straight years, that's $900 plus the original $75.

If this is our average customer and they're worth $975 in profit and it only costs you $30 through your advertising/ marketing expenses to get them, every time you spend $30 you receive $975 back.

You would be foolish not to increase your advertising/ marketing and promotional budget to produce as many of these $30 cost customers so you would spend $30 over and over and over again to get $975 back.

Theoretically, you could spend $975 to get that customer because you know they will come back and spend $975 and you will break-even. Of course, we don't want to do this. Remember, this is an average customer. Some will buy more and some will buy less This is an average number.

Now you "know you can spend up to $975. You could just as easily be spending 100% of your $75 profit just to get that first sale because that's just the first sale's profit, and you'll still end up with $975 over the next 2 years.

If you offered to give that $75 service for free and it doubles your customers, it "would double your profits over the next 2 years.

One in 100 business owners think about this You want to spend everything you can justify to bring in a customer as long as that customer costs you less than they earn you. If you can't afford to spend more than the entire profit from the first sale, remember you'll be making money just in a few months from them. Start out spending what your cash flow can justify. After a quarter or several months after their re-order profits come in, then you can step up your ad budget.

About the author Abe Cherian is the founder of Multiple Stream Media, a company that helps online businesses find new prospects and clients, who are anxious to grow their business fast, and without spending a fortune in marketing and automation. http://www.multiplestreammktg.com .

Web's #1 site to find "free resources to Plan, Build, Market, and Maintain your website": http://www.multiplestreammktg.com/resources.html

Does Your Site Deserve a Top Ten Search Engine Ranking?

New site owners are especially eager to achieve high search engine rankings quickly and usually have unrealistic expectations of what search engine optimization can do for them. Donald Nelson, owner of A1-Optimization, reminds us that the goal of a search engine is to pick the best sites in any given field, and suggests us to ask ourselves five questions to see if our site fits the mark:

1) Are you an industry leader?
2) Does your site look good?
3) Is your site content rich?
4) Is your site and authority site?
5) Has your site been around a long time?

To the degree that you answer "yes" to those questions, you will have more chances of search engine success. Read the full article.

Newsletters and Blogs

Newsletters are still a great tool to market your business and stay in touch with your customers. However, they are beginning to experience some tough challenges:

• 50% of all measured email is considered spam. (Brightmail Probe Network)
• 70% of all email messages will be spam by 2007.(Radicati Group, Feb 2003)
• 10 out of 12 messages reviewed are considered spam. (Postini.com 10/19/04)
• An average user now receives 42 unwanted pitches a day.(Jupiter Research)
• Even opt-in ezines are being sent to the junk folder in record numbers by spam filters.

Blogs are emerging as the web tool of choice to communicate with customers. Debbie Weil, the author of the 'Beginners Guide to Business Blogging' gives us some good advice by recommending that we start using a combination of blog and newsletter to start introducing our newsletter readers to the blog format, and eventually to RSS and RSS readers.

Building Customer Engagement

Customer satisfaction is just the minimum; your goal is to engage your customers. Engaged customers assure a business of sustained and profitable growth. Learn the four emotional building blocks for an engaged customer.

Find out who your real customer is

Every day, on my way to work, I listen to this rock station. The two guys running the show regularly endorse some products, among them teddy bears from the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. Now, at first sight, it may seem strange that a radio station that caters mostly to blue collar macho types goes around endorsing teddy bears. If we look deeper, though, it does make sense. Most women love teddy bears, but it's the guys that buy them for them. Sufficient to say that the DJs pitch the bears as "something that will help you get laid" (pretty raunchy, it's true, but very effective)... You can bet that all those truck drivers and contractors listening to the show are snapping up those teddybears as fast as they can get their credit card out of their pocket! The moral of the story is that the end user is not always our only customer. Our real customer is the buyer, the decision maker. If we forget to find out who is really buying our product, and focus our marketing on them, we may very well be barking at the wrong tree.

SEO and Copywriting

A common misconception in internet marketing is to have the expectation that SEO is all we need to be successful online. In reality, you need to do much more. Search engine optimization will give you traffic, but it is ultimately your copywriting that will make the sale. While it is very important to know how to write for the search engines, it is also very important to know how to write for humans, since they will be the ones making the purchase. There are some good resources out there for online copywriting. Some sites I regularly visit are Nick Usborne's Excess Voice (you can subscribe to his free newsletter), and Robert Warren's website (I just posted this copywriting article by him on my website). Another good copywriting resource is Kevin Nunley's website, where you will also find hundreds of bite-sized internet marketing tips across a wide variety of topics.

Character Driven Marketing

"Much of modern marketing practice is superficial and artificial rubbish, motivated entirely by profits with little to no genuine regard for the people these profits are being harvested from. The general public are becoming increasing weary of these false messages and are starting to look for alternatives. The only kind of marketing, though, that truly engages the hearts and minds of your potential customers, and leaves them feeling cared for, satisfied and understood is based on a set of values that are obvious, but all too often forgotten - integrity, honesty and honour. These are the core elements of genuine marketing." Contributed by Tamara Lyster. Read her full article on Character Driven Marketing. Technorati Tags: Marketing, Internet Marketing, Small Business