Does Domain Name Matter

Everyone is spending crazy amount of money to buy a domain name for themself or for their business presence online. A fair amount of research goes to identify a good domain name, which is the starting point for any new business. Did I say good domain name? Ah you won't settle for anything that is good, well, I withdraw my words, I know you are looking for "The Best Domain Name" and you would not settle for anything less.

On similar topic I had posted my views "Does Domain Name Matter" a little while back. Today I am revisiting the topic with a new perspective. When you started your business, with no office in prime location with primary contact as your landline or cellular number and an email id that was most probably on usa.net or yahoo (gmail has been in existence for relatively lesser time). How did you go about marketing your services or business to others? What were you marketing then? What does a customer expect to get from you? In all probability, if you are a small business owner, I believe you never paid attention or huge sum of money to invest in a fancy telephone number, you just advertised what you had. That is it.

No one was coming to you because you called your house / office with a fancy name. Your customers came to you because you provided a service, and that you were good at providing that service as compared to your competitors. A business card was more than enough to provide details on how to contact you; your postal address for any snailmail - letter, a number to send and receive fax and a contact number to speak with you. Very little attention was paid if you were conducting your business from your garage or in a posh location. With advent of internet, somehow everyone has lost track how business was conducted a few years ago. Amazing amount of money is being wasted to get a short and sweet domain name but is it really that important to have a short and easy to remember domain name? Isn't the service that you provide more important than easy to type in URL address?

Times have changed, so has technology. Just as few people have the good habit of storing your business card, many and believe me -- there are many intelligent people who know how to use bookmarks and favourites to store the links they intend to visit. Browsers are changing with time and give you option to autofill just as you type first few letters in address bar. There are also options like Google History which would track all sites that you have visited, just in case you don't remember where all you have been.

Let's also look how you used to get visitors to your office / business a few years back -- Advertizing has not changed despite improved technology, and brand has to be built, just by getting a good domain name doesn't guarantee you get the traffic that is important to you. You may get a million hits because of your domain name, but if you can't convert even one into a customer for yourself -- is it worth the investment?

A recent study indicates that about 64% of internet users type Google.com or Yahoo.com to search for information they are looking for, and most likely if you visit your site statistics you would realize that majority of hits to your website has come from search engines -- which showed your link not because of your good domain name, but because your website had content that was worth to share and display to the person who searched.

Having said that, I still would not advocate you to buy a domain name that is not realted to your business or hobby or profession. It should and it must be related, it serves no purpose that a technology company buys a domain name like gettherightshoes.com, however there is no point to feel low if you didn't get besttechnologycompany.com domain to yourself.

Check Alexa ranking for top 10 sites -- Yahoo.com leads the list, followed by Google, Youtube, Windows Live, Microsoft Network, MySpace, Wikipedia , Facebook and Blogger in descending order. How many of these do you associate with business that they are doing? How is Google related to search and youtube for video sharing? The name doesn't really give a clue, but despite that you do know that if you wish to search -- you have choice from Yahoo, Google and Windows Live. Why do you remember that? When you have a need to remember, you would remember, that is why Wikipedia (spelling isn't really that easy to remember -- but you do, and in case you don't you actually go to google, type wiki and search) gets hits from direct and indirect (search engine driven traffic).

So friends, go ahead and build a brand, the name is important, but more then the name, it is the content that is the MOST IMPORTANT resource that you should be investing in, in terms of time and money. Any domain name would serve the purpose just like any building can serve as your office, as long as you stock the material that people want from you.

Pubdomains.com -- Domain Name Registrar, Web Host and SSL Certificate provider. Expert in OSCommerce setup, modifications and troubleshooting. Free Hosting and other web services.

Domain Registration * Web Hosting * SSL Certificates * Blogs Hosting * Forum Hosting * .IN Domain Registrar * Web Hosting Indian Servers * Reseller Business Opportunities

Google Ranking Guidelines for Design and Content

Everyone wants their site to be listed in top results on Google search. You would be an exception if that is not important to you, however for majority, the wish -- remains a wish only if concrete actions are not implemented for optimizing their site to suit search engines.

Let's first see how does your site appear to a web crawler also know as spider or automatic bot that visits your site looking for keywords & to index content on your web pages.

Design and Content

Key to success in search engine ranking comes from excellent design and content on your web pages. I am aware that everyone talks about good design and content, but what exactly is required in this area to be done? Follow the points mentioned below and your site would get a A+ rating by Google on any given day --

Design and Content Guidelines

• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• I hope you are familiar with the proverb "Well Begun is Half Done". Though we all know that to perform any action every person has to do the customary homework, alas not many really pay attention to a good beginning. We all want our sites to be out there on the Internet as early as possible. How long is your checklist for setting up a new project? Have you actually ensured that you don't have to add last minute links and pages or create something at the eleventh hour? If you have done your home work well, your site would definitely have a clear hierarchy and text links. Google loves such sites and you would be the lucky one to get indexed in search engines way ahead of your competitors. In case you haven't done your homework, now you should know why your competitor always stays ahead of the game, perhaps he is a better student in this field and takes his / her homework more seriously than you do!!! Is it end of the road for you? -- Nah, good thing is that Google really doesn't wait till the end of year to give you score, the bots are very obedient and sincere programs, and they would revisit your site soon, so you have time until the next visit to make correction and demonstrate that you too are a worthy student willing to please the teachers err Google I mean.
  
  
  
• Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
• It is often talked about, but not regularly followed. Your site must have a valid site map with links that connect a user to pages he / she wants to visit rather than going through a maze of clicks. The sooner it is for me to visit your site and jump to the page I am interested in, the better it is going to be for Google to index your pages and visit them and display them when required!!! Just like you and I want to get to the right information in shortest possible time, so does a search engine, and hence you should have a clear site map, especially highlighting important pages of your site in the site map.
  
  
  
• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Ah, you already know all about content and information rich. Have you ever done a copyscape search to find out that your content is actually available on 100x sites on the internet, and the content is not as unique as you thought it should be. Well, you did modify the content when you took inspiration from different web sites so content you created is definitely unique -- I know, but sad part is majority of the folks on the planet have almost similar thinking patterns and replacing words with synonyms may not actually provide unique content. Paraphrasing is OK till a certain point, however if the gist or synopsis of the content is identical on 100 odd sites, odds are not in your favour to get a better ranking in search engines. Think out of the box -- write your OWN content, check with copyscape and modify until you are satisfied that you are not one in million providing the same information that other major players have already been providing for some good decades.
  
  
• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
• I generally search Google a few times before I write my blog posts. It gives me idea on what is already available, what is available but requires more information and perhaps what is not at all available. The last one is rare though with Wikis floating all over the world in all languages and someone has already thought about most of the things that I think. A day back I noticed that my blog on wordpress has got few hits via search engine for the string flush domain resolution even today it gets listed on position 4 (as of now) and I thought let me see what change would come if I modify the keywords used for search. So search with flush domain came up on 12th spot and of course I don't appear anywhere with flush keyword. Not surprising but gives me idea with related words shown by Google, so flush dns may be the right keyword to write about next on my wordpress blog
  
  
• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
• Does that require any explanation. If you have Angelina Jolie's picture on your web site, make sure that you also mention her name in the text (instead of writing actor photo on the left, it would be wise to write Angelina Jolie with Brad Pitt with Tom Dick and Harry from left to right)
  
  
  
• Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
• If you don't know what I mean, right click on any web page to read the source. Then do a search on Title and Alt and read what is written (if any) and whatever is written is relevant to the content or not. An image with Alt text helps Google or Yahoo to index and associate image with text. No Alt - No help in your endeavor to get good search engine ranking.
  
  
• Check for broken links and correct HTML.
• I hate 404 errors, I am sure you too don't like it when you click a link on web site. Ensure that your site doesn't have broken links, and your HTML code is proper.
  
  
• If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
• If you are using a good script, chances are they are already taking care of dynamic page content. Most of CMS scripts come with SEO Friendly URL concept making use of mod_rewrite feature to convert dynamic pages to show up as static pages. In case you have your own script, see if you could get it converted to SEO friendly URL format or at least try to reduce the parameters to a reasonable limit.
  
  
• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
• Avoid hyper linking too many words in text. As a rule, keep the total number of links on any web page less then 100. Search engine bots don't like to spend an hour just indexing your site, and too many links may put them off ... something you wouldn't like for your web site. So give them enough just to keep them interested in content on your site, rather then trying to hit bulls eye from just one page. Spread the links on different pages, instead of ALL in One approach.

I often check Google Webmaster Guidelines to know what is latest and what are suggestions from the King of Search engine. I suggest you too should book mark and read the resources from time to time and be aware of what is the latest trend, do and don't tip for your web site. If you have any feedback or suggestion, please feel free to comment on this article. I would love to hear from you.

Cheers
Pubdomains

Domain Registration * Web Hosting * SSL Certificates * Forum & Blog Hosting

Why use a Domain Name?

A domain name is a unique word combination used as identifier to identify a web site on the World Wide Web. While computers talk in the binary language (I hope you know this one -- There are 10 types of people.. those who understand binary, and those who don't). OK so back to language computers communicate in, and language we use to communicate. Now, each computer on the world wide web (WWW) is identified by a unique 32bit number (which can be permanent, also called static IP or temporary, or dynamic IP).

A typical IP address looks like 121.001.003.005.

This representation with 4 decimal numbers (also called octets), are separated by dots and this format is known as "dotted quad" or "dotted decimal" notation.

Now you may ask what has "dotted quad" got to do with domain name? Well imagine if you were to remember and type 72.14.207.99 in the address bar every time you had to do a search? So what is easy to remember the decimal representation or something you are so familiar with, simply known as Google Search?

So back to what is the purpose of a domain name, it is a easy to remember word representation of the unique 32 bit identifier for a machine connected to the internet. Not every machine can serve you web pages though... The machine has to have a software running to churn out web pages, and thus is called a web server.

Just like 32bit unique identifier, each domain name is unique - and maintained by registrars... So if you have not bought a domain name for your business, and someone else is using it, you have missed out the opportunity for your online showroom!!! Your domain name serves as a visiting card for your existing and new customers to display the services rendered by you, your company or the products that you manufacture, or complete information on your office, location, address contact nos. etc... It is only limited by your imagination to use it the way you want it!!!

As I explained how machines talk with each other in binary language of one's and zero's, and how any computer on the world wide web has an IP address, you may wonder how do we associate a domain name with IP address? OK, the answer lies in machines dedicated to perform this translation for you - known as DNS Servers. When a domain name is entered into address bar of a web browser, request goes to a Domain Name System (DNS). The DNS translates the domain name into an IP address then the appropriate site is sought out. All these transactions remain transparent to You the end user; however in the back ground this translation takes place to display web pages from the domain name that you enter in the web browser.

So to summarize why we use a domain name, as you would recollect.
1. Each computer connected on the network is represented by an IP Address.
2. Each IP Address internally is made of "dotted quad".
3. Dotted Quad representation is also known as "dotted decimal".
4. A sample IP address is of the type 111.222.333.444 - a unique 32bit number.
5. Domain name is a simple word(s) representation of IP Address of web server.
6. A web server is a dedicated computer for presenting web pages. [more on this later...]
7. When you type a domain name, like google.com, the request is first sent to a DNS Server.
8. DNS Server translates the word google.com to it's IP address, and thus you don't have to remember IP Address of computers.
9. Domain Name is unique - No 2 sites can have same domain name (just like IP address is unique)
10. Domains are maintained by domain registrars (like my service on pubdomains.com & pubdomains.in)
11. A sample website on amateur radio has IP address (dynamic IP Address, ie, it may change over a period of time) is 209.222.7.10.
12. It is easy to remember domain name instead of IP address.


So .. you may browse a website by its IP Address or its domain name, but as I mentioned, it is easy to remember format, ie words, or string of words, thus a domain name is used all over the internet...

So long,
happy domain'ing

OSCommerce

It has been a successful week. I travelled to the north (once again) on official travel, enjoyed weekend with friends and relatives, and finally came back to work on monday.

And what a week this has been !!! 3 oscommerce installations in 5 days has just took my energy and I am so glad that weekend has finally arrived. If you don't know what oscommerce, or OSC in short is - let me tell you that its a wonderful software, and if you ever want to start your own ONLINE shopping mall ... do have a look at oscommerce stores all around you. I can distinguish between a zen-cart store (another product) and OSC by the look and feel. So if you have unlimited products to be shown ... zen-cart is what majority prefer, but for elegant and decent stores... most of the folks like OSC. A wonderful admin panel, ease of operation and troublefree operation (until your host decide that they had enough of PHP4 and now need to install PHP5 and don't bother to give you advance notice -- I get umpteen hits on one page thanks to these upgrades in PHP or mysql) .

Apart from that I have recently joined DP a must register forum for all webmasters. It is giving me more leads for my business of domain registration and looking for prospective clients for reseller business. Apart from that, there is indeed a lot of confusion in the world about latest ICANN decision to increase domain registration price and a good market place to sell domains. Everyone wants domains @ cheap and affordable cost, and I get a very targetted audience in DP. Do have a look when you get time!!

Wish to continue more ... but as always time to pack and take leave. Wishing everyone a very enjoyable weekend ~~~ OOO ~~~

Back to Business

For all internet freaks - one thing stands out clear for any company is getting a good Domain Name. With over 600 million strong internet users and counting - the demand to get online is increasing everyday!!!!
How can you as an individual join this movement and make money everyday?
Suppose you are a freelancer who
a. Develops sites for others. &
b. Host or manage Sites for others or
c. Develop and maintain your own website(s).
Now questions
Where do you buy domain name?
Where do you host them?
What do you get - if you do it from public service providers?
Do you get commision from them?
Answers
If you & your friends develop and host sites regularly - you should become a reseller!!!
How does it work?
For every domain that is registered on YOUR Domain Registration Site - You get attractive commisions. For every hosting package sold - You share the profits. Why is it good, because - You are the buyer (for someone) and You are the seller !!! so a win win for any and every activity that is related to domain hosting and registration services.
How much does it cost?
Well - GDaddy is worlds largest reseller with plans that start from $99 (Approx INR 4100) that go upto $239 (Approx INR 10000 at current conversion rates) www.pubdomainshost.com offers same services that are available for $80 (INR 3200) to $179 (INR 7200) .
What do you gain?
Well with a single hosting plan and domain name registration - you can make cool commisions from sites hosted on your (reseller) servers.
Support
pubdomainshost.com creates your virtual store - so not only you, but anyone on the internet can come and register or buy from you - do a bit of marketing and get the orders from all over the globe!! They offer 24x7 support to your customers as part of the package, and help your customers to succeed!!! Who would give you these services for price as low as $80!!!
Reseller Fees
Trust me, with a small expenditure of 80 USD on pubdomainshost.com - I have already recovered my investment from a site that I recently created through Rent a Coder. Not only did my customer pay for creating his site for about 150 USD, he hosted it through my site and I got back all my money that I invested. September onwards - any sale I make would be my profits :) Ain't it amazing that I have customers whom I have never seen in my life!!! They come, they buy from my site, and I make profits selling stuff without negotiations, office or even any conversation. It can't get simple than that.
Competition
There are many players in the market so it is natural to think about your chances of success - but on a serious thought, there are so many sellers because there are many more buyers!!!! This is an ever growing space, with names coming up with .mobi, .tv, .ws extensions - everyone has an opportunity to own their own domain name or get online and have a site. Sooner or later - you would be doing it for your company, family, friends or yourself. Why do it at some other place, why don't you do it on your own site and be in a Win Win Situation.
Grab this opportunity to take your share of Internet revolution and be a webmaster - and service provider.

Good luck Friends!!!