Marketing Communications News
Like a lot of things to do with websites, when it comes to choosing a domain name there are many differing opinions about the best approach. This results in the average business person getting confused about what should be a relatively easy decision. So, if you want some simple, basic advice on choosing a domain, check out what I believe are the six most important factors to consider.
Domain type
The domain type (e.g. .com, .com.au and .co.uk) is one factor to consider. For the average company doing business in one country, choose the domain type for your country. In Australia, choose .com.au; in England, .co.uk; in the United States, .com. If you think you might go international one day, the .com domain type is definitely a good choice as it’s considered the international domain type.
What if the domain name you want isn’t available in the domain type you want? There are numerous other choices such as .net, .biz and .org but I would advise to consider carefully before choosing these alternatives. Many people assume website addresses will end in .com (or .com.au or .co.uk, etc.) so they may have trouble finding your web address or, worse still, if your competitor has the .com address and you choose the .net address you could be giving your competitor a helping hand.
Keep it simple
In my opinion, simple is definitely best when it comes to domain names. That is, shorter domain names are better than longer, easy to spell names are better than harder to spell ones and easier to remember domain names are better than names that test the memory.
Use your business name
Perhaps an obvious statement but it’s worth highlighting: Use your business name as your domain name. Of course you might want to reconsider this if your business name contains 40 characters but in general if you use your business name people will easily be able to remember your domain name.
Use a keyword
At the risk of getting a bit technical, if you can slip a keyword into your domain name this can be an excellent tactic for getting higher rankings in search engines. For example, if you sell red widgets and you know people will use the keyword phrase ‘red widgets’ to search for a business such as yours in Google or another search engine, having a domain name such as red-widgets.com makes good sense.
Undecided? Register more
The cost to register domain names is relatively inexpensive, so if you are unsure about your domain name register more than one. You may, for instance, want to get your domain name in a variety of different domain types (e.g. mycompany.com.au, mycompany.com and mycompany.co.nz). This is particularly good advice if you think your business may trade in other countries in the future.
Do it now!
Once you’ve come up with a few potential domain names, you need to find out if they are available and many domain name registrars have a facility that can tell you instantly (Google ‘domain name registrar’). Once you know your chosen domain name is available, register it straight away or otherwise you could risk someone else coming along and beating you to it.
In these heady days of information technology you could be forgiven for thinking printed marketing communications such as newsletters, flyers and brochures is dying. While it’s true the popularity of pixel power is growing while paper power is, well, less powerful, there is still a place for the printing of promotional materials.
How can you improve sales of your services or products? How can you convince customers that the service or product you offer is better than your competitors’?
We’ve all heard of the 7 deadly sins so now it’s time to learn about the 7 friendly emotions. These are the 7 copywriting friends you can and should use to help you whenever you are developing written communications aimed at potential customers.
Do you know how search engines such as Google work?
If you’re like most people, you probably think that when you type in your chosen keywords that Google searches the Internet and provides its search results in less than a second. The fact is that while Google is good, even it can’t produce results this quickly. The search results that are provided to you are actually sourced from Google’s index of the Internet.
This video from Google explains the process very well and can help you improve your own website’s search engine optimisation.
If you’d like to learn more about how to improve your website’s search engine optimisation, see this article on 8 steps to improve your search engine rankings.
There are some people in business who simply don’t understand how blogging can help them grow their customer base and retain their current customers. Much of this is due to a misunderstanding that blogging is simply an on-line personal diary. While it’s true that in the early days of blogging this was the case, these days blogging means so much more and with the correct resources and strategy there’s no doubt blogging can add value to most businesses.
Running a successful email campaign takes time, practise and a little bit of luck and skill, but there are things you can do to make sure that your email advertisement has a good chance of success. Sending an email campaign is not like any other type of advertisement; you have to get so many things just right to really have any chance of using email to sell your product or service.
Is your business website achieving the search engine rankings you want? Do you need to improve your search engine optimization or SEO?
Search engine optimization can be a daunting prospect for many people, however, like many processes it can be less intimidating if you break down the steps into smaller parts. Enter my 8 main steps to improve search engine rankings. (more…)
When you’re looking for a web host for your new business website, or you want to change your current web hosts, there are thousands of companies who are ready to take your business… And your money! So how do you pick the best web hosts for your business?
If you’re looking for photos for your marketing communications material but don’t need specific photos of your business, people or products, stock photos may be a viable alternative. Best of all, stock photos can cost only a few dollars or even be free.
You might not consider yourself a copywriter, but if you’re in business you’re probably writing content about your business every day. Whether it’s an email to a current or potential customer, an article for a newsletter or a post for your website, your writing skills can mean the difference between increasing and languishing sales.
