Domain Search on GoDaddy

Your domain name is how people find you on the web. You will use your domain name for your website and your email address. Therefore, it is extremely important that you spend some quality time and do your research when coming up with a domain name. The tips below will provide some guidance on how to go about choosing a domain name that is perfect for your website.

Selecting a domain registrar

Selecting a reputable domain registrar is the first and most important step in registering your domain. We are affiliated with GoDaddy.com and recommend them to our customers. As with anything you buy online, make sure you do your homework and check reviews before selecting a domain registrar. Registering a domain, regardless of the registrar you choose should cost you in the range of $10/year. If you find a registrar that is charging you a lot more than this you should probably look elsewhere. Most registrars also complicate what should be a relatively simple process of registering a domain by offering a myriad of add-on services the typical small business does not need. If in doubt, call the registrar or if we are designing your website let us know and we will explain in plain English what they mean and provide recommendation based on your needs.

Domain name extension or TLD

When registering your domain you will have the option of many URL extensions based on business type, regional, personal etc. For example should you register .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, .ca, etc. The choice here depends on your type of business/website, where you are located and a number of other factors. By far the most popular extension is .com, and we strongly recomend that you register a .com for your business if available. You can always register additional domains and redirect them. For example, a non profit would usually register domain such as nonprofit.org which will be the primary domain. However, it makes sense to register nonprofit.com and redirect it to nonprofit.org. Most people remember and most of the time will assume that your URL ends with .com. Another example would be a business based in outside the US (i.e. Canada). The primary domain can be mybusiness.ca and mybusiness.com can redirect to mybusiness.ca. Whatever your situation, if there’s a particular name that you want, it’s good to register it quickly. There’s no guarantee that a domain name available today will be available tomorrow. The challenge that we all face today is that there are over 200 million registered domains and your preferred domain may already be taken.

What can I do if my preferred domain is not available?

Unfortunately, if the registered domain does not infringe on your trademarks there is very little you can do. One option is to check the WHOIS data for the domain and see who has registered it. If the domain has expired it may be available for auction at the domain registrar who currently has the domain. If not you can contact the domain owner to see if they are interested in selling. Either way you may end up paying a premium.

Keyword focused or branded

There are primarily two approaches to naming your domain – keyword focused or branded.

A keyword focused domain will incorporate phrases or terms that you want to rank for in search engines. This will be part of your overall SEO strategy where you would first do keyword research and decide which keywords you want to target and optimize for. A branded domain name means that you will be using your company name or brand name as the domain. For example, a branded domain name would be theNetStuff.com and a keyword focused domain name would be WebsiteDesigns.com.

Special characters in your domain

If possible avoid using special characters such hyphens (-) in your domain name. The use of a hyphen to separate words traditionally used to be considered search friendly, however, the major search engines today are good at identifying words within the domain and a hyphen provides no SEO benefit. To make your URL readable, you can use camel case to show your URL. Camel case is when you have words that are typically separated written as one word with the first letter of each word capitalized (i.e. theNetStuff.com).

Bad words in your domain

Once you come up with your domain name, it is always a good idea to have someone else who was not involved take a second look. The domain when displayed online can have a totally different and often embarassing meaning (i.e experts-exchange.com was initially launched without the ‘-’).

Questions? Anything else to add? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/14752079@N00/1718468702/

This article is primarily aimed at self employed individuals and business owners looking for a small business web designer (either a freelancer or a company) to build and design a custom website, relatively fast at a reasonable cost. You probably would have already done a few searches on Google (I got 250 million results) and soon realized that this can be a daunting task. After all, there are thousands of website design companies and they all say they are awesome. You don’t have time or money to waste, so how do you make the right choice the first time. Hopefully this post will provide some guidance and make the process a little bit easier.

Why do I Need a Website?

Because everybody else has one? Yeah, that’s one reason, but take some time to think about what you hope to achieve with a website. Do you want to simply provide information to prospective customers, sell products online, provide additional services to existing clients, all of the above? Doing this step will help you figure out what website design expertise you need and clearly communicate your requirements to the web designer.

What are the Website Services that I will Need?

Now that you have figured out why you want a website, you will be able to determine which of the following services you will need.

Website Design and Development

This will cover the website layout, graphics, text location, colors scheme and navigation. Any programming needed to make the website function as designed will also be included.

Domain & Hosting

For your site to go live it needs an address and home on the Internet. The address is your domain name (i.e. thenetstuff.com) and the home will be online storage space provided by a website hosting company. Some website design companies can also register your domain and host your website, while others can guide you through the process and recommend what you need. There are many good web hosts out there, we use GoDaddy as we have found they provide excellent service at a reasonable price.

Online Marketing

This can include everything from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Social Media Optimization (SMO). This area can get complicated and expensive, but every website should have at least some basic SEO and search engine submissions done. You should also select at least a few social platforms to allow your customers to connect with you. More often than not, most business owners would be familiar with social platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. For more information on social media for small business check this and this.

Website Maintenance

Once the website is live, any updates to the content will be covered under website maintenance. You can either sign a maintenance contract with your website company or if you want to do it yourself make sure that your site has an easy to use Content Management System (CMS).

How to Evaluate a Web Designer

You know what you want and you have some idea of what services you need. Now you need to talk to a few web designers and evaluate whether they have the expertise needed to get you online at an affordable cost.

• Don’t always assume that the #1 ranked site on Google will do a great job, this just means they are good at SEO. Pick a few companies from your web search to evaluate. If you have family/friends or business partners with good websites ask them for recommendations as well.
• Once you’ve narrowed down the list, take a look at their website, look at their web design portfolio and clients. You need to like their site and their work. If they don’t have a professional looking site that is easy to use, chances are your site won’t be much better.
• Talk to them. Does it sound like they know their stuff? You don’t need to be a technical expert here. It is the web designers job to explain things to you in plain english. For every answer you get ask yourself, does it make sense. If you keep getting technical jargon and acronyms thrown at you, they either know what they are talking about but can’t communicate well or they have no idea and are just trying to confuse you. Either way you should walk away.
• Do they ask enough questions about your business and your goals for your website. If they don’t take the time to understand your business goals chances are they can’t build a website which will achieve them.
• Ask them how the project will be managed. Good project management is essential to ensure that things happen on time and budget.
• Talk about website maintenance. Depending on your budget, how much time you have and how comfortable you are, for most small business websites you should be able to update it yourself. At theNetStuff we do provide website maitenance services, however, all of our websites include an easy to use CMS (and free training) which can be easily updated by our customers.
• The number of website that are being viewed on mobile devices has increased exponentially. If you want your website to look great on a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer make sure you ask for a responsive design. This is a request that we get all the time, so all of the websites that we do now are responsive (whether the customer asks for it or not) so it looks great whether you access it from a smartphone or laptop.
• Often web designer will register your domain for you. It is very important that when they do this the domain is registered under your name and you are give the logon credentials for your domain name. I can’t stress enough the importance of this. If you are unsure check the whois information of your domain and make sure that you are the administrative and billing contact, and you have access to the email address listed. For more information check out our blog on how to choose a domain name.
• You should have full and unrestricted access to the website including the source files. This way if you need to make any changes, either by yourself or with the help of another designer you should be able to. You should be provided with the logon information to the website hosting account, domain account, CMS, FTP information and any database logon information.
• Copyrights can get a bit tricky. If they create a logo for you, custom design any graphics, create content, develop any software code specifically for you, you should own the copyright for these. In addition to these,t there are some components which you may not “own”. For example, we use WordPress for a lot our small business websites. The license under which the WordPress software is released is the GPLv2 (or later) from the Free Software Foundation. You have the rights to use and modify the source but you do not technically “own” the source code. Read the contract carefully and make sure there is a statement about copyrights which spells out clearly what you own and what you do not own.
• How do you test the website? Will they test on different browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari), different operating systems (Windows, Mac OS) and different devices (smartphones, tablets and desktops). Remember, just because your site looks great on Windows/Internet Explorer, there is not guarantee it will look the same on other platforms.
• Cost is always one of the key factors to consider. Unfortunately, each requirement is unique and it’s hard to throw out a number. At theNetStuff our website designs typically start at $900. We have found that this is the minimum that most reputable website design companies charge. Be vary of quotes too low or too high.
• How do you feel? Do you believe what they say? Do they answer your questions? Are they easy to work with, flexible and reasonable? You maybe working with them for a long time, so make sure you are comfortable and confident that there can be a mutually beneficial business relationship.

Common Myths & Untruths

When doing the research for this post I came across many blogs and articles that provided great information, but also came across some questionable advice and stuff that web designers say that simply aren’t true. Here’s some of them and why I don’t agree.

• Make sure your website design company has a local office – when it comes to getting a website designed, there is no reason to restrict yourself to looking in your area. Make sure you check that the business is legitimate, but as long as you can pick up the phone and talk to somebody there is no reason to impose this restriction. If the ability to meet face to face is essential to you, it must be understood that this can limit your choice and thus impact cost (depending on where you are located).
• Outsourcing is bad – outsourcing work outside the US, if not done correctly can be a disaster. However, outsourcing done right can greatly reduce cost and increase turnaround time. The company you select should be a registered business in the US and as long as you have a point of contact located in your time zone, for a small business on a budget this can greatly reduce costs.
• Websites are easy to design, my nephew who is into computers can do it – hmmm, not really. As a business if you want to project a professional image, get a website done by a professional. There are lots of free and DIY website options out there, which might be a good temporary solution. However, considering that you can get basic but professional website done for around a $1,000, it has now become more affordable and within the reach of most small businesses. Think of it more as an investment than a cost.
• A content management system (CMS) is only needed for large websites – No, not really. We believe that no matter how small, there is no reason for a web designer to create a static website. With open source systems such as WordPress and Joomla, this makes the process a whole lot easier. The simple reason why every website should have a CMS is because then you can update it yourself. You are not dependent on a web designer. In addition, having an industry standard CMS will allow your website to grow and expand without having to start from scratch whenever a major change is needed.

The Bottom Line

Spend the time upfront and do your home work. Make sure the designer answers all you are questions (and apply the “does it make sense?” test to every answer) and you trust their expertise. Then let them do their job.

Sound off on the comments below if you have any questions or any other advice to share.

If you are looking to get your website designed or re-designed contact us for a no obligation quote or read more on why you should choose theNetStuff to design your website.

The ultimate goal of viral marketing is to achieve brand awareness in a short period of time through the viral messages that appeal to the internet users through social networking potential that has a high probability of spreading the data by these users and their competitors in their interactions and conversations. This can be achieved by taking the support of a digital media agency. The best tips in having an effective viral marketing are listed below:

• Make your content speak: The content on your site should not just be static; it should promote emotion from the users. For this you need to have an opinion in expressing your idea with an appropriate dedication, this could be:
  • Making people filled with love or hate.
  • Either is stupid or ingenious.
  • Deeply compassionate or egoistic.
• This helps to get your users blood pumping and for them to spread their thoughts and emotions to their groups and contacts; this in turn creates even greater brand awareness.
• Be unique in identification: You need to do something unexpected that will grab user attention and interest. For this you need to do something different that isn’t similar to others, like promoting the products and making things look cool and appealing, which is common. You need to have a unique identification by promoting an unexpected video that may be a terrifying one that will gets easily published among others.
• Offer free services or products: Everyone loves free stuff; who wouldn’t like to get something for nothing? This process works in a manner whereby you offer a person a service or a product that will make the them really happy and excited to share that information with a related group of people. This way multiple groups will interact and share the data regarding your products and business that will gain interest of numerous customers.
• Allow easy sharing: Through this the viral marketing gets accelerated where you are providing open sources for your visitors through which they can share the information easily without any effort. This allows your information to be published on various social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg, YouTube, Twitter so on.

• Free (or provide a free version with adequate functionality)
• Need to get up and running fast (sign up and start using the basic functionality in under 2 hours)
• Easy to use (intuitive enough for you get started by going through a quick video or tutorial, no reading documentation)
• Accessible from anywhere and multiple devices (web based, no downloads or installations needed)

1. Evernote

Evernote is a great tool to capture pretty much anything you want – ideas, meeting notes, lists, web clippings. You can capture in many formats like text, audio and pictures. It’s available as a web application, desktop installation and smartphone app, allowing you to capture anywhere, sync & access. The free version allows you to capture 60 MB of data a month.

2. Wave Accounting

Probably one of the best 100% free small business tools out there. Great features for the novice as well as pro including tracking expenses, sending out invoices, integration with bank accounts, reports and journal entries if you want to do some good old fashioned double entry. Their customer service is very responsive, which is hard to find with a free product.

3. Expensify

Great for creating expense reports and tracking mileage. It has the ability to import transactions from your credit card which makes matching receipt images (uploaded from a variety of sources such as your smartphone app, evernote, email, capture via chrome extensions etc.) with expenses. Free edition allows you to do all of the above and includes 10 auto scans a month.

4. join.me

Quick and easy web conferencing including a dial-in number. Does not have all the bells and whistles of a tool like Webex, but for a free tool it does a great job.

5. WordPress

Every business no matter how small needs a website or a blog. If you are somewhat tech savvy it’s pretty easy to setup a website or a blog using free themes and plugins. The best way to go would be to get your own domain and hosting account (this is not free, but will only cost around $70-80 an year for a basic plan) and install WordPress. In fact most hosting providers will allow you to easily install WordPress through their control panels. If you don’t want to do it yourself, theNetStuff can help you get online fast with domain and hosting included from GoDaddy. Click here to learn more about our services.

6. Google Tools

Google offers a host of tools free for small businesses and start-ups. These are well documented and reviewed elsewhere, so I won’t go into details, however, the list below should get you started.

• Google Apps – free email with your domain, calendar, docs and more.
• Google Analytics – want to know detailed stats on website or blog visitors? Setup a google account, add the tracking code to your website and you are good to go.
• Google Drive – create, share and store your documents, upto 2 GB for free. Also check out Dropbox and SkyDrive.

7. MailChimp

MailChimp helps you design and send email newsletters, share on social networks, and track results. Free plan allows upto 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month.

Sound off in the comments below with your favorite free software tools that you use at your small business.

1. Add websites to your profile

Apart from the obvious reason, which is to provide your connections with access to your company website and blog, this will also help boost your search engine rankings. LinkedIn does provide options such as “company website” and “blog”, but select “other” so can you provide your own description.

2. Integration with Twitter and Facebook

Depending on the type of business, your social media marketing strategy will use a combination of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. LinkedIn allows you to add your twitter accounts to your profile. By connecting Twitter, your tweets will be posted to LinkedIn as well. You should also connect Twitter and Facebook so the information you share on twitter will also show up on Facebook.

3. Update and promote your public profile

LinkedIn allows you to create a “public profile” which appears when people search for you on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc. The public profile is visible via a public URL (even if you are not logged into LinkedIn). You should customize this URL instead of the default of www.linkedin.com/pub/firstname-lastname/40/a55/360. Your customized URL will take the form www.linkedin.com/in/yourname which is easier to remember, can easily be added to email signatures and your website in order to promote your public profile.

4. Add applications

Add relevant applications in order to share content and activity on your profile. Blog Link, Reading List by Amazon and Portfolio Display are some of the apps that I have found useful.

5. Recommendations

Get recommendations for your profiles as well as for products/services on your company profile. LinkedIn provides a “request recommendations” option where you can request recommendations from your network. You should also give recommendations to colleagues and business partners and more often than not they will return the favor.

6. Demonstrate your expertise

Join LinkedIn groups related to your line of work, participate and initiate discussions, answer and ask questions, and promote your blog. The more relevant and useful content you share, the more you will be recognized as an expert in your field.

7. Paid advertising on LinkedIn

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising also available in LinkedIn. If you have advertised on Google and Facebook, the concept and process is very similar. What sets LinkedIn apart is the ability to do some very specific targeting based on industry, job function, company size etc.

8. Create a company profile

This is very easy to do and provides your connections with basic information about your company directly from your profile. From here potential customers, employees and business partners can drill down and look at company details, products and services, job openings and navigate to your company website. In order to create a company profile click on the “Companies” section and select “add a company”. From here you will be allowed to add the information mentioned above. Certain requirements need to be met in order to add a company profile which can be found here – https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1594.

9. Get your employees on LinkedIn

Visitors to you company profile will be able to see who works for you and their expertise, which in turn will highlight your companies experience and capabilities.

10. Add products and services

Add products and services to your company profile to show potential customers what you offer. Request recommendations from current and past customers on your products/services. This is a great way to enhance credibility and attract new customers. Don’t forget to include a link to the relevant product/service page on your company website. This will give customers more information (as you can’t put everything on LinkedIn) and the SEO benefits mentioned in point #1 applies here too.

Hope the above tips on using LinkedIn for small business owners were helpful. Please share your thoughts, comments, questions and any other tips that have worked for you.

1. Facebook

Facebook is the best social media marketing tool you can find right now. With over 750 million active users all over the world and growing, imagine your small business has the power to target all those people.

If you haven’t signed up for Facebook yet, you are missing on the biggest market, so sign up quick! Once you create a personal account for yourself on Facebook, you should create a ‘Page’ for your business. Select the right category for your small business and enter descriptions, website links, photos, videos etc.

Go through your competitor Facebook pages to understand what works for them. Once you have setup your page, spread the word amongst your Facebook friends. Remember when you have 25 people who like your page, you should register the username for your page.

As an advanced step, you should create a custom welcome page and have different sections for the most popular sections of your business. For example, if you have a restaurant, you should have a section showing the menu, reviews, directions, discounts etc. You should also look into creating Facebook Ads. This is where you can target those 750+ million users on Facebook.

Facebook

2. Twitter

Twitter is another great social media marketing platform for small businesses. Signup today and reserve your business name as the username. This should be done in addition to your own personal twitter account, as there might be instances where you will have tweet as the business and it is also a great way to have your business name out there. Once you setup your twitter account, spend some time searching for various search phrases that your business is closely related to. Remember to search for your competitors and check what they are doing and also search for your own business as people might already be talking about it!

As an advanced strategy, get desktop and mobile twitter clients like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. This will help you better organize your twitter campaigns.

Twitter

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is another good social network that is focused on businesses and professionals. Setup an account to reserve your business name and once the profile is setup, research your competitors and strategize your own marketing plan for your small business. Look up your customers, employees and known contacts to build a strong network. Get your customers to “recommend” your business which will increase your online reputation. Find groups that have a connection to your business, get involved in the conversations and answer questions. If you can’t find a group that interests you, start one!

LinkedIn

4. Company Blog

There might be more attention on social networking sites but having a blog for your small business adds another dimension to your marketing strategy.

Setting up your own blog on your domain using a platform such as WordPress which is free and relatively easy to setup with a little technical knowledge, is the best way to proceed. You can also use blog sites such as blogger, however, setting up a blog on your own domain will look more professional, provide you with more control and flexibility and is well worth the effort.

Once the blog is setup on your website, focus on how to get your target audience there. Write great compelling content that people will enjoy reading. Find something interesting and relevant to write about, otherwise you will get bored and end up not making use of the blog. Add plugins and easy share buttons so that people who enjoy the post can easily share it with friends.

5. Participate on Blogs

It might seem like a waste of your valuable time but participating in other people’s blogs can be another valuable asset to your marketing efforts. Reputation and credibility takes time to build and don’t wait till everyone comes to you. Find a few blogs focused on your industry and try to be a regular reader offering helpful comments and participating in discussions. Once you have built up your credibility with these blog owners, they might let you guest post an article. This is a good way to get in front of a bigger audience.

6. Mobile & Local Strategies

Foursquare and Yelp are two good sites / apps focusing on your local small business. It lets people check-in with their mobile phones and use social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook to announce their location.

Again, it is important to atleast register your small business with these mobile social networks. You would be able to advertise your promotions to loads of potential customers and this again being in your local area.

Remember to add your listings on Google Places, Facebook Places, and also make sure your website is optimized for local searches.

social media marketing – Foursquare

7. Multimedia

YouTube is another very popular website where you can share your videos. You don’t need to produce expensive video presentations, simple videos that help your marketing efforts is all you need to take advantage of YouTube.

Try to create a video that will go viral and distribute it using many social networking sites as possible.

Social media marketing – YouTube