Buying a web domain

April 21st, 2008

webpageSo you’ve decided to build a website, you have your product or company that you are trying to promote, or perhaps it is even just an idea that you are trying to share. You have an idea of the design, perhaps you’ve even started to build the actual website itself. Everything is on its way, and you are now at the stage where you are about to buy a domain name and get some hosting in. Stop! There are some important things to think about when choosing your domain name.

Branding is the first and most obvious one. Whatever your product, your brand should reflect this – and not always in an obvious way. If for example you are hoping to appear in the search engines for the term corporate events london, having the website corporateeventslondon.com will certainly make link building easier, so perhaps this seems the obvious choice However, when people click on search results they will have a quick glance at the web address. To many peoples eyes, having the words “corporate events London” jammed together appears spammy, and therefore it may well put people off from picking it as a search result. However, if you have a company name as your domain name, you seem more established. The choice is yours, but it is worth thinking about when choosing.

History is another thing worth thinking about. When you start a new website on a new domain name, the website has no trust or history within the search engines. You are therefore starting an infant website, and as such you will take 7 months before being able to rank within the search engines for the search terms you would like to appear for. However, if you were to start with a website that is already running, you wouldn’t have to wait seven months before being able to rank within the search engines. So how do you do this? Well there Read the rest of this entry »

Email marketing; three top tips.

June 27th, 2007

Did you know that at the start fo 2004 the spam accounted for apporimately 70% of all email sent and this figure is still rising. Spam has been long acknowledged as seroius problem, because of the waste in resources and time, not to mention the scams associated with them.

I personaly have been caught with one phishing scams where I sent money via world pay for a ebay product.

However I personally have been effected by spam in a different way; My ligitamate email marketing is becoming more and more ineffective every day. With ever new scammer who gets his figure on a $15 spamming software, the world email filters get more and more paranoid.

The main point I learn were:

1. Keep the email size over 20K
The majority of spam email are under 20K, so SpamAssassin (A spam killer that works onm a point systyem, get too high a spam score and your email gets flagged up) gives a higher score for a message under 20K in size.

2. Check your list for Spam flag lists.
This has actually happen to me twice, people sign you up to anti-spamming email address to get you in toruble. It is recommended you scan your list for any email address that start with things like: abuse@, postmaster@, or nospam@. Have said that now I have gone on to a confirmation email I haven't had this problem since.

3. Avoid desktop emailing software
The majority of spammer use desktop e-mailing software so to avoid gettign penalised it is well worth picking a clean web hosted software that is fairly well established and used by more high profile clientel. Try to avoid these:

hash 2
jpfree
StormPost
JiXing
MMailer (Gammadyne, 2.73)
EVAMAIL
IMktg
screwup1
GroupMail
VC_IPA

How to Use Your Interior Pages Effectively for SEO

June 14th, 2007

Many companies concentrate their SEO effort on improving the Google rankings of their homepage.  The problem with this strategy is that the home page cannot be all things to all people.  It cannot rank well for every keyword that could drive traffic to you, and it might not be relevant to searchers.  Remember that most people decide in seconds whether the website they have landed on is right for their purposes; they don’t spend time poking around to find out what other information you have.

To get all off the search engine traffic that you can, you need to think beyond the homepage and use interior pages effectively.  You can laser target your interior pages to specific topics that searchers want to read about, instantly convincing them of your site’s relevance and authority. Furthermore, you can attain a high reputation with the search rankings for each individual page; with a good linking system, this reputation can flow between the different pages of your website.

In order to use interior pages effectively, you should:

  • Design each page to be accessible and informative to someone who hasn’t seen any other pages of your website.
  • Create an easy to use navigation system that encourages visitors to explore your site more thoroughly once they have the information that they came looking for.
  • Read the rest of this entry »

How to Use Google Sitemaps with Yahoo and Other Search Engines

May 29th, 2007

Google has made the effort to show webmasters just how useful site maps can be to their search engine spiders.  Site maps help to ensure that all relevant pages are properly indexed, while providing extra value to the site visitors by helping them find content more quickly.

Google has made it easy to create and submit to them site maps which work well with their spiders– but what about other search engines?  Will you have to create a new site map to appeal to Yahoo spiders?  

Luckily, the XML sitemaps favored by Google are also accepted by other major search engines, including Yahoo and MSN.  You can even use your robots.Txt file to ensure that spiders can easily find your site map by adding the following line:  Sitemap: http://www.Yourwebsite.Com/sitemap.Xml.  You can also help Yahoo find your sitemap by sending it to their submission page. Read the rest of this entry »