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31 Dec 08 Domain Names and Your Business

Vital Steps in Getting a Domain Name for Your Website

A domain name is perhaps the most important aspect of your website.  This is perhaps one of the first things they will see.  The domain tells you about the site itself.  Look at sites like www.foodtv.com, or corporate websites like www.microsoft.com, you know immediately what you are getting into.  It is what your viewers will automatically relate your business to.

Your domain name is also referred to as your web address.  This is basically your address in the World Wide Web.  As it goes, the easier your address is to remember, the easier your viewers can get to your website.

We can help you get the best domain name to fit your business.  It can help increase your revenues by bringing more viewers to your site.  It can increase the value of your company by presenting it with the utmost professionalism.  Read through and your web site will have a name that fits you and your business perfectly, like a glove.

Action Steps

Make a list.
It would be good to get a good long list of possible domain names.  If you have a particularly good customer base, you can put out a contest to get the best domain names for your business.  You can give a prize for the winner.  You can also build a list of possible domain names by going through your employees.   Set up a shared account where they can contribute a domain name while viewing other people’s suggestions.

I recommend.  One way you can collaborate on a project is by going through a shared account online.  The platform of Google Docs is perfect for this.  You can set up a spreadsheet where your employees can view all the suggestions and contribute.  If you are having trouble with the list yourself, there are online tools available like Gosimmer’s Domain Name suggestion tool to give you a list to choose from.

Follow these guidelines.
To make your domain stand out among the rest there are certain guidelines you would have to adhere to.  To begin, you need to find a short domain name that is easy to understand.  As long as you can convey your business in the least amount of characters possible, you’ll be fine.  I would not recommend using initials because it comes out unprofessional, slang-like and un-customer friendly.  The next factor you have to think about is if you are getting a memorable domain name.  Domain names must convey who you are and what your business does.

I recommend. You can read through this article to see how you can think of great domain name for your business.

Protect your brand.
Protecting your brand is not a common thought that goes through someone’s head while he or she is shopping for a domain name.  Some people who are starting up a new website might actually have an established business up and running.  The motivation can be to prevent anybody using your established name to make money from your reputation and tarnish it.

I recommend. Read this simple article about protecting your business’s reputation.  It also comes with cautionary tales and lessons in protecting the reputation of your business.

Does it sound and look right?
A lot of the business owners let their web developers choose the domain name for them. This can lead to a lot of problems when you notice that your domain name isn’t quite the same as what you had hoped.  For example, it could be that your company “Pen Island”  would have a domain name that would say “penisland.com” and that just does not sound or look right.  Use a hyphen or think of a different name that would work better.

I recommend.  If you don’t understand the difference, try reading the company name and the domain name slowly enunciating each syllable.  Read through this blog for other funny domain names.

Use SEO experts in choosing your domain name.
Your domain name can also help pull up your ranking in Google.  Google’s patented search engine takes into account several aspects of the domain including the legitimacy of a domain.  Google records the length of domain registration, the address of the website owner and the administrator, the strength of the hosting company, and the number of pages of the website.  The more favorable your website is, in terms of these factors, the higher your ranking should be.

I recommend.  If you do not have a SEO consultant employed in the development of your website, it is best to get one now.  You can go to http://www.seoconsultants.com/ to find one that is closest to your area.  You also need a good web hosting company to host your domain name, such as www.gossimer.com.

Tips and Tactics
Think about several domain names and don’t fall in love with a single one.  You don’t want to set your heart on a domain name only to find that it is already in use.

You don’t have to use your business name for your domain name.  You can choose one that refers to your business but has better name recognition.

If you hired a person to develop your site for you, make sure that he knows about the English language and not just the proper terms.  When you hire a person, make sure to double check the domain name to avoid untoward incidents like the example in the above section.

Shop around for better deals.  Even if your domain is hosted by a specific company it does not mean you cannot transfer the rights to it after.  Some providers have the capability of transferring the domain name to their company for a fee.  You get to keep your domain name and still get a good deal out of it.

Best Blogs and Forums
If you want to ask questions about your domain you can also go to this site: http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/choosing-domain-name-223734.html.

You can post a question and most experts would answer you for free.

If you liked the funny domain names, you can find more at http://www.grupthink.com/topic/22

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27 Dec 08 Internet Security

With the increase in the usage of Internet based applications, the modern computing world is faced with a constant threat about widespread, Internet-gobbling viruses.  So much so is their effect that news related to virus attacks has become a part of our daily information dose.  General alerts about Trojans, worms, viruses, and other Internet-based threats are on a rise everywhere.  Unfortunately, that’s not good news.  Money is hard to come by in this economy, and not every company can afford to have their networks revamped every time their system becomes venerable to hackers.

Recently in the news was the story of a security vendor, RSA, which found that a Trojan in their server took more than 500,000 online banking accounts credentials, credit cards and other reports.  The compromised data was collected from hundreds of financial institutions around the globe.  The company’s IT Fraud Action team later disclosed shocking information that the hackers behind the attack may have spent years in developing the Trojan.  These viruses are tricky and sometimes the average institution or customer does not even come to know that their computers are infected with it.  The threat to the data stored in company servers is huge and to protect it, is the first priority for any business.  The best remedy here is to take a defensive and professional approach towards Internet security.

  • First in the line of protective steps is to find an Internet security suite that covers all the basics of Internet security, such as viruses, spyware, spam, and firewall (and gives the user rights to customize its settings!).
  • Many small to mid-sized organizations take a reactive approach to threats and do not give combating Internet based threats due recognition.  It is often seen that such companies implement security once an incident has occurred and they’ve recognized their vulnerability.  Choosing a right kind of service provider that can defend against phishing, spamming and other email related thefts can reduce your worries to a great extent.
  • The IT team should be always updated about Internet security software updates and subscriptions.  The developers of these softwares constantly add security updates and fixes to their products.
  • Install firewall almost immediately after configuring a system, laptop, server or any remote device.  A firewall is the first line of defense against threats to Internet security.  It could be in the form of a hardware device like a router or a software program.

Typically, by employing more tools, you can make your network protective, while the tools inter-operate with each other.  If no viruses attacks are detected, that doesn’t mean the technology isn’t working; rather, it could be acting as a preventive warning to the security traps.

Protecting your network is like protecting your house.  Hackers are like thieves who are looking for valuable data.  You will never want your company to be an easy place for any attacker and would want to guard it with security alarms and protective software’s.

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15 Dec 08 Checking on Websites of Your Link Exchange

When you run a business, you are sure to use the help of link exchanges to improve the clientele of your business. Many link exchange sites will provide you with links for you to advertise about your business.

However, you have to be careful of the different websites you reach through these links as some websites can cause problems to the efficient running of your computer. Sometimes, you may end up in a site where its owner encrypts the source of the website for protection from its content getting stolen or to cover up malicious code that harms his or her computer.

You can find out if the site that you visit is an encrypted site with tools like urlaudit, in addition to finding out if the site is a risk to people using your traffic exchange. Then there is a possibility of urls leading to a 404 error page.

This page proves to be very irritating to the surfer as it leads to a blank page, and is a waste of time for the surfer. This is why if you have a site exchange service, that you never direct surfers to pages with a 404 error page.

If you do direct them to the page, they lose interest in using your site exchange service and lose site traffic, which proves to be disadvantages to you. You can prevent all this by using tools like urlaudit which scans the links of your site exchange service to ensure that visitors don’t lead to wrong or missing pages in your urls.

Sometimes, you may find some sites with urls having a 404 error with urlaudit. You then have to contact the site owner to inform them of the sites so that the right steps can be taken to fix the problem. The site owner usually resolves the error wherein the missing page is replaced or updated, as required.

If you are providing a site exchange to people, you have to remember that there are many people who are not interested in links to sites having sounds and video, as these sites take a long time to load.

So you can use tools like Url Checker to ensure that the links that you provide them don’t have any audio or video matter on the site, and then decide whether or not to include the links in the site exchange list you provide to your client. You could contact the site owner to request for the removal of this audio and video content, if your client wants the link to the site to be included in the link exchange.

There are also many sites that have adult content; you have to decide whether you want your link exchange to include these sites, depending on the needs of the client. You can find out which sites on the link exchange have adult content with the help of urlaudit and include or exclude them from the link exchange site, as per the requirements of your customer.

So all this shows that with tools like urlaudit, you can cater your link exchange service to meet the needs and requirements of your customer.

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