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Domain Names
Given that as an affiliate or internet marketer you will own at least one web site, and more than likely several, the question of what domain name to use arises. The best type of domain name to use is the .com extension, for several reasons. The .com domain was one of the originals, if not the original, and identifies your site as commercial. It is also recognized globally which means that you will not have any problems in the future crossing international boundaries with your listing in the search engines or directories. If you use a domain name with a different extension such as .us, .info, .biz or .ws etc. there is the danger that at some point in the future your website maybe subject to filtering by the search engines. For example if you have a web site called www.example.us some search engines may not display the listing in countries outside the USA in an effort to make the listing more relevant, whether right or not. Also because .com has been around the longest it generally has more credibility and effectively "brand name" awareness, so unless you have a really good reason not to, sick with the .com domain names for your web sites. A common question that comes up is whether it is better or not to have hyphens in the name, for example should you use www.bestcars.com or www.best-cars.com ?. Generally speaking if you can find a good name without hyphens then use it, as it tends to look more professional. Technically, from what I've read and my own experience, I don't believe that there is any difference as far as search engine positioning is concerned. The reason why hyphens have become widely used is simply because all the best non-hyphen names have been taken and registered, even if not used actively for a web site, either way they are un-available. A lot of names were registered between 1993 and 2000, in the .com boom years. Since then, after the 2000 .com crash a lot of names are now coming back onto the market as their owners no longer want them. A lot of names were bought on speculation that they would become very valuable, this was true for a while but in general is no longer true. This means that there are now lots of good names coming back into the pool of available names, in fact every day there are tens of thousands of names becoming available again. Why should you want to register an old name rather than invent a brand new name?, there are a few good reasons: 1. Some of the expired domain names will have Yahoo, Google or DMOZ listings. These are very valuable because they are generally hard to obtain in the 1st place but also because it means that the domain will already have a listing in the major search engines and maybe some page rank. 2. The expired domain may have lots of incoming links from other sites. This means both free traffic and again, as in 1. above, the site may already have page rank, which is very valuable. 3. You may be able to get a good short URL (3, 4 or 5 characters) which is generally hard to get. 4. You may be able to get a URL which contains some keywords which are important to your particular business. 5. You can also sell domain names, learn more here. If you want to get an expired domain name with all the advantages listed above there is an excellent service which makes it very easy to search and find newly expired domain names. Visit Domain Bot and review their system and services. I've used this service to find expired domain names with both Yahoo and Google directory listings, which I later bought for the same price as a regular domain name. When registering your domain name there is another point which you should be aware of. When registering a domain name you are required by law to provide both technical and admin contact information including name, address tel numbers etc, which will all be in the public domain. Anyone can find this information simply by using a "who is it" service. However there is great service which allows you to keep this information private, it's called Domains By Proxy and will cost you an extra $9-12 per year to keep your domain contact information private. I believe it is good value given the amount of spam, identity theft etc which seems to be on the increase these days. You can use this service if you register your domain via www.Godaddy.com One word of advice about registering brand name domain names, be very careful. For example think twice before wasting your time registering www.find-great-deals-at-ebay.com, or something similar. I registered a similar type of domain name and it was fine for a few months. Then I received notification from ebay lawyers that I was in violation of their trademark and was politely asked to remove the web site within 30 days (with no compensation whatsoever) or they would begin legal proceedings against me. They also sent documentation (pdf files) of previous successful legal actions to show that there was already a legal president. Fortunately for me at this stage the web site was little more than a 1 page site so it's removal was not a large hardship. The moral of this story is that while domain squatting was once possible, and in some cases very lucrative, it is no longer and the law is on the side of the large corporations so just don't do it.
See also [ Web Hosting ] [ Web Site Design ] |
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Domain Names |
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