You may very well be under the impression that you are the sole owner of your domain name. Are you absolutely sure that you are? Your domain name should be yours alone and it is extremely important to your business.

It is very important that you know as much as possible about your domain. You should know exactly where it is registered. You should also know who it is registered with. The sad truth is that many people don’t know anything about their domain at all.

What is a domain name?

Your domain name is the most important identifier of your website. If you don’t have a domain name, people will not be able to find all of the great content that you are publishing on the Internet. Your content is at the heart of your business. A good analogy is if someone were to steal the number off of  your house. If that were to happen, in order to ensure that you were protected from that occurring again, you would install an alarm or take some other protective measure that would deter anyone from doing that to you.

When it comes to your domain, the concept is the same. If you bought your domain name and took care of registering it yourself through a hosting company, such as GoDaddy or HostGator, you can feel secure in the fact that no harm will come to it and that nobody can touch it. In that case, there is a guarantee that only you own your domain. If anyone else tries to touch your domain, the hosting company will send you a warning, alerting you to the fact.

On the other hand, if you didn’t go that route and you got someone else to set up your web presence (they promised you that they would take care of everything), there is a very good possibility that when they registered your domain, they supplied the hosting company with their business information instead of yours. What commonly occurs after that is that they make you a prisoner to their web hosting company. If you hire someone whose prices sound too good to be true, they will probably take advantage of you in some other way—maybe through the hosting of your domain. The expenses surrounding hosting your domain should not be expensive at all. If you are quoted a high price, something is wrong.

The reality is that the domain name belongs to the person whose information is in WHOIS (a searchable database that is maintained by the registrar that contains information about domain names as well as the contacts that are associated with them). It doesn’t matter who actually paid for the domain. Anyone who wants to know can contact WHOIS and request information about any domain name, which server the domain name is on, where it is registered, and even when it will expire and thus become available to someone else to buy.

Here are some tips to ensure that only you are the registered, legal owner of all of your domain names.

• Only buy your domain name from a hosting provider if you are sure that your domain name will be placed in WHOIS.
   
• Beware of people who offer you a free domain name with their hosting package.
   
• Always check out your domain name on WHOIS before you purchase a website.
   
• Check out the legitimacy by searching for them on WHOIS. Search for the date of creation of the domain. This will let you know how long that particular company has been in business under that domain. 
   
• Register your domain for a longer period of time rather than a shorter one, if possible.

Conclusion

Having a domain over which you have absolutely no control because someone else has done everything for you and has given all of their business information to the hosting company instead of your information is very dangerous. Never allow anyone else to take control over what is yours. If you find that you are in that situation, try to get out of it as soon as possible. Even if it means that you will need to register a new name with one of the reliable and legitimate hosting companies, do it. It will definitely be worth it to be able to have the control.

Just to reiterate, regarding your rights, if you are paying money for your web presence, make sure that you own the website, own the domain, own the copyright, own the analytics data, own all other data, own the content, and are able to move the contents to any hosting company of your choosing whenever  you like.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.

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Before you build your business website, there are many things to consider, including laying out the plans ahead of time. You must have a clear plan so that your website will be successful at drawing traffic to you.

The following questions are important for you to incorporate into your website plans and if you can answer those questions, your website will be effective and will generate a high volume of traffic and bring in more business.

• What is your website all about? When visitors come to your website, the first thing that they will be asking is what the purpose of your website is. Your homepage must explain the benefits, the purpose of your website, and the products and/or services that you are offering very clearly.
   
• What are you hoping to achieve with your business? It is not enough of a motivation to say that the goal of your business is to get rich. It has to be about more than that. A more effective way to answer that question is to say that you want to achieve enough financial freedom so that you can improve the quality of your life otherwise.
   
• Do you have a marketing plan? If you are serious about your online business being successful and profitable, you will need a business plan. The best way to promote your website is by generating a great deal of content on a frequent and regular basis and syndicating the content to social media channels and business directories.
   
• Who is your competition? During the course of your market research, you should also make it a point of finding out against whom you are competing. Find out what types of things they are offering on their website and figure out how you can make your website stand out.
   
• Who is your target customer? This is very important because if you have the right target customers, you will become successful in your business. If you don’t choose your customers wisely, you will not succeed. The customers should believe in your offerings as much as you do and you want them not only to buy once from you but to keep coming back for more.
   
• Which kinds of products and/or services are you selling? Before you design your website, you should do extensive research on how marketable your products and/or services are. You can use Google Keyword Tool (which won’t cost you any money) to learn how many searches your main keywords receive each month. If you don’t find any searches, it means that there is not a great deal of demand and probably not worth marketing. However, if you are in a very competitive market, it might be hard to distinguish yourself from your competition.
   
• How many products will you sell from your website? The number of products that you plan to sell on your website will determine how many pages your website has. If you are selling a small number of products or services, you will probably only need a handful of pages. On the other hand, if you are selling a large number of products and/or services, you will need a website that that has a database so that you can store and manage all of the items and services.
   
• What types of payments will you accept? If you intend to accept credit card payments online, you will need a shopping cart, payment gateway, merchant account and SSL (secure socket layer) to make sure that the transactions are secure. That means that you will also have monthly fees and processing fees each time a customer buys anything from your website.

  Another option, which is less expensive, is the Paypal shopping cart. With Paypal, all you will need to do is pay a minimal processing fee, which will take care of everything at once.
   

• Webhosting Plan: You will need to have your website hosted on a server so that it will be available online. Choose a hosting plan that has enough space for all of your files and a bandwidth that can receive a high volume of visitors every month. When you start with the hosting plan, make sure that there is flexibility for you to upgrade when you need to in the future.
   
• Maintenance of your website: If you know the answer to this before you design your website, you will know which software to use to build the website. If your website is small and simple, you can use a software product like Dreamweaver. If, on the other hand, your website has many pages, you might want to seriously consider a content management system (CMS) like WordPress. It will allow numerous items to be stored in a database. You will be able to manage the website (edit, add and delete items) if you log into the administration area.
   
• Website statistics: You should find out if your web host has website statistics. If it doesn’t, you need to create a Google Analytics account and add the code to your website pages. This will allow you to track how many daily, monthly, and yearly visitors you get, where they come from, and what keywords are being used to find your websites in the search engines.

Conclusion

All of the tips that have been discussed here should be under serious consideration before you have your website designed and built. If you follow the advice given here, you will avoid problems and you will have a much greater chance of growing your business and becoming more and more successful.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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2010 is just around the corner. Have you already chosen your New Year’s resolutions? How about including some search engine optimization (SEO) resolutions in your list? Those are the resolutions that you definitely should keep.

Your SEO resolutions may not help you to lose weight or exercise more but they may help you to slim down your budget and fatten your bank account. The following are some suggested SEO resolutions that will help you to increase your business.

Resolve to do an SEO audit of your website: Take time to review your index page and each of your inside pages. If your site is very large (thousands of pages), go over the pages that you feel are in need of more traffic first. Work your way through the list to the other pages after that.

The audit can be as easy as making sure that your title tags match the content on the pages themselves and implementing the appropriate alternative text on your images. If you want to do a more advanced audit, you can rebuild a page to target a different set of keywords or key phrases or edit your whole site to highlight your header tags.

Resolve to do more research on keywords: Have your products and services changed since your website was built or updated last? If they have, you should identify which keywords you should add or delete. Please bear in mind that SEO is an ongoing process. It is important to make sure that the keywords that you originally put into your website are still relevant and effective.

A good way to identify new and effective keywords and phrases is to be diligent about performing ongoing research. You can follow trends and apply them to your website as well as speaking with your website visitors. Another useful approach is to follow your competitors’ websites as well as the search result pages where your competitors’ sites appear.

Resolve to update your content: Take at least 1 hour a week to write fresh content. One way to go is to complete already-existing product reviews with new keywords. An easy (and excellent) method of creating content is to start writing a blog. Your list of topics might include articles about your products and services, feedback that you have gotten from satisfied customers, or any other article on a topic that is of interest to you and is also relevant to your website. You should update your blog often and on a regular basis and make sure that your audience can get to the articles easily.

Advertising the accessibility of RSS feeds gives you greater exposure and also allows your loyal customers access to content that may push them to act on your unique products and services.

Resolve to be involved with social media sites and networks: Is your website connected to LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace? Are there other industry-specific social media sites that you should connect with? Social networks are gaining more and more momentum all of the time and continue to increase audience members. Connecting with social media sites is a quick and easy way to increase your business’ exposure.

In some ways, it is as though you have several websites, with increased exposure and links. Additionally, social networks provide your business with a great deal of potential for collecting new leads (just within your own social networks). Social media sites are great places to create awareness of your business, build links, and to keep traffic moving throughout the year.

Get involved with Industry discussions: Devote time every week to reading and commenting on your favorite blogs. Add relevant and useful conversations in your comments. Interesting and compelling comments build your profile and can provide valuable links back to your website.

Resolve to measure your SEO success with analytics: Use a good website analytics service so that you will be able to correctly understand how to measure the success of your business. Successful SEO is not always going to equal more sales so you need to make sure that you track the correct metrics, such as rankings on your keyword hit list and traffic from search engines.

The beginning of the New Year is the perfect time to evaluate and hone your SEO strategy. Keep your SEO strategy sharp and effective. Make sure that you continue to network, do as much research as possible in order to keep your knowledge current, and pay close attention to trends and patterns so that you can use them as effectively as possible for your business.

We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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Your website has a much greater impact on your business than you may realize. It is therefore necessary to make sure your website has a professional appearance, is user friendly, and is regularly updated to reflect changes in your products/services as well as those of your customers.

Possible things to consider include the following:

Does your website show that your company is unique and successful?
Visitors to your site will typically stay for only a few seconds if they are not engaged by what they see. This first impression should convey a clear and concise message about who you are and what makes you different from your competitors. Visitors are enticed by such things as an attractive, professional layout, well-defined and understandable listings of products/services, and easy access to more detailed information. To make certain your website has superior quality, compare it to those of other business sites of a similar nature.

Is your website content persuasive?
The website content should be clearly presented. The information must never leave visitors in doubt about meaning; confusing people will drive them away. It is best to be as brief as possible, and to avoid complex wording or sentence construction. Bullets and subheadings may be useful in conveying a lot of information quickly.

Can visitors to your website quickly find the information they need?
When visitors come to your home page, it is essential that they easily identify areas of interest and get to relevant information fast. This is facilitated by an intuitive user-interface, a sitemap, and well-organized content. Your site can be creative and exciting, but it must be easily navigable by all potential customers. If you have a lot of content and numerous web pages, you may want to consider drop down, pop-up, or fly-out menus making your site easier to navigate.

Is your website generating sales leads?
It is in your best interest to provide ways on every page of the website for visitors to volunteer contact information, which you can follow-up on. One way to stimulate more customer contact information is to furnish further information to interested parties in regular newsletters or website update announcements.

Can target customers find your website using search engines?
The best website has little value if no one comes to visit it. The movement of traffic to your website is of vital importance.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves various internet marketing and advertising techniques to make sure that people are directed to your site. Two of the techniques involved are Search Engine Marketing (SEM)- the practice of getting your website found; and Search Engine Advertising (SEA)- setting up paid advertisements on search engines – typically cost per click.

Is it easy to update and maintain your website?
The content management and posting tools now available are of great assistance even to non-programmers so that in a quick and easy way they can update the more dynamic sections such as news, events, and other frequently updated features. Updating the website on a regular basis is a must for any business.

CONCLUSION:
Implementing the ideas discussed above should get you well on your way to constructing a website that does the job. Since the ultimate aim of your business website is to generate business, a website that does not contribute to this effort needs to be changed so that this can and does happen.

To learn more, please visit our CompuKol Communications Professional Website Assessment services page.

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