Saturday, October 24, 2009

Website Marketing: What You Ought To Know Before Starting (Part 2)

. Saturday, October 24, 2009
By Ed Brancheau



Part 2 of 4. Your IP address is like a physical street address, while your domain name is like the name on your business's nameplate. You might own the entire building at a given address, or you may share it with others. Regardless of which is the case, the information associated with your address is sufficient for customers to find and transact business with you.

The previous point is crucial to remember. Many businesses think that they need an entire server, when shared hosting is often the better and less expensive choice. Referring back to the previous analogy, it often makes more sense for businesses to rent individual office space than it does to secure an entire building. It also rarely matters to customers, as they can reach your business easily as long as its address is kept updated.

Each website consists of many distinct webpages, each written in a language called HTML. Written to be accessed via web browsers and displayed on computer screens, webpages use hypertext links to connect to other pages or content.

As such, any business's first step into online marketing, regardless of type or age, is to build its website. Many businesses make the mistake of selecting a domain name first. This places you at a disadvantage, however, as search engines typically rank pages higher if their main keyword is in the domain name. For instance, our business involving ?SEO? and ?web design? sports the domain name ?AceSEOWebDesign.com.? This helps improve the relevance of search results, as search engines are smart enough to know that a site called ?cars.com? won't be selling many boats.

Positioning yourself as a specialist is another effective strategy in website marketing. Say, for instance, that you own a business called ?Harriet's Flower Shop.? ?Flower shop? is a competitive term, and distinguishing yourself may prove challenging. If you enjoy a particular flower, however, it may be easier to position yourself as a specialist in, say, orchids. Once you've established success with ?Harriet's Orchids,? a less competitive keyword, then it may be worth considering branching out.

While some focus is great, take care not to be overly focused. For instance, while focusing on orchids makes sense, specializing on pink orchids is much too specific. Try to find the optimal line between a good specialization that will boost awareness and a tight focus that will exclude you from the market.

If having your keyword in the domain name is so important, then how have companies like Google, Ebay, Twitter, Facebook and others come to be successful? Quite simply, they are synonymous with what they do. The word ?Google? has become entrenched as a verb in our modern vernacular, and we often think of it when searching online. Similarly, Twitter and Facebook are memorable social networking sites that have generated a large amount of buzz. While Ebay has its own distinct brand today, it began life as auction.com before changing its domain name after becoming a success.

It is also possible to point multiple domains at a single website, though there are several points to keep in mind when adopting this practice. One of our clients, an insurance agent in Jacksonville Florida named Matt Moss, wanted us to build a website reachable at ?MossInsurance.com.? We felt that there were three problems with this domain name.

-- Having his last name in the domain made it more difficult to sell later should he choose to do so. In most instances, having ?moss? in the domain name would be seen as a negative. Be sure to check out Parts 1, 3 and 4.

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Seo Optimization Now

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