‘Ecommerce’
You visited a great website some time ago that had some fantastic information on it. It is not easily found in search engines results so you decide to type the domain name into your favorite browser. The problem is that the url spells out something like keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com.
Does that sound ethical to you? It maybe helpful with those search engine rankings but for many visitors that can be a pain in you know what to type out.
For years I worked in an internet café and was surprised to know that many persons can’t type in a hyphen. Instead of finding out how to do it, they just move on to an alternate site hence a loss of traffic.
The average computer user can be a lazy fellow indeed. That’s why there are so many keyboard shortcuts. He needs to complete his task as soon as possible.
Ever wonder why the Googles, Yahoos, Amazons and Ebays of the online world are so successful? It’s because there domain name play a significant role in there branding.
There are countless persons logging on for the first time each day in search of information that can assist them in the iniation process. It is imperative that your domain name play a major part in creating a bond with your viewers.
For almost four years I marketed a free website that was hosted on Geocities. My “domain” spelt out Geocities.com/Myname which made marketing feel like running with an anchor tied to my legs. I can’t even imagine the amount of traffic and credibility that I lost due to that single factor.
Does it work? It can and sometimes it won’t. I believe that having a domain with too many words in it can be a turnoff just like having a Geocities site. It seems unprofessional for a company to have a name that contrasts the credibility that they are trying to create.
Some domain names are like a cargo train several comportments long. Why? Since some search engines do not give any significance to the meta keyword tag, some webmasters fill their domain with their keywords.
A good domain does not guarantee success as I found out. But a memorable and easy to spell name can be beneficial to both you and your visitors. You can have an easier time reaching them and they will have an easier time finding you with a quick type in of your domain.
I think it is best to put your keywords for each page in your file name. That way you, the search engines and your viewers all win.
Copyright © Nicholas Dixon
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Nicholas Dixon is a Jamaican webmaster, writer and affiliate marketer. Find out
how you too can create an online income with our list of highly recommended
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The toll free number 1-800-Get-Rich belongs to the Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City. Perfect vanity number for a casino, right? Well apparently not. Their website shows the actual numbers, 1-800-438-7424 for the marketing department of Resorts Atlantic City. Those NUMBERS are nowhere near as memorable as is the mnemonic device of letters representing those numbers on the telephone keypad. It makes you wonder, did the casino have bad luck (no pun intended) or receive bad publicity for their 800-Get-Rich phone number?
Doing a Google search for 1-800-GET-RICH returns several spoof articles using the toll free number to make light of get rich quick schemes. Seems as well suited to a casino as to satire, since gambling represents the ultimate get rich quick scheme.
But on the web there’s a another element to toll free numbers you must consider. 800 numbers are used as domain names which seem to stick in our memory as a web address just as well as a phone number. Resorts Atlantic City Hotel Casino should buy the domain name www.1800getrich.com from the current owner and assign their marketing department toll free 800 vanity number to the Casino instead.
The domain name www.1800GetRich.com is for sale as of this writing if you visit that web address. You can be certain that the current domain owner knows that the toll free vanity telephone number is owned by Resorts International Hotels www.resortsac.com which matches the domain www.1800getrich.com. It has to be enticing to think a large international hotel corporation may want his domain.
The casino owns the toll free number but isn’t using the mnemonic for the numbers (GET-RICH for 438-7424). Makes you wonder about the history of the domain name, since WHOIS records show it was reserved only this past May of 2004, AND the history of the vanity number since it is going unused, at least on the web site. Hmmmm…
There are vanity phone number resellers online that actually specialize in providing 800 numbers with matching domain name for those seeking the consistent branding for their business. Clearly this is simply a marketing ploy by savvy 800 number vendors, as those domains may be full of hyphens and may cost more than they should due to the perception of value-added.
An interesting aspect to toll free numbers as domain names is that of 1-800 copyright and trademarks. Take for example, the well known flower retailer 1-800-FLOWERS.com where they use both the domain name and the toll free number. Both are copy- righted and trademarked names and essential to the business.
Legal precedent allows trademark owners to confiscate domains from “cybersquatters” who buy domain names containing trade- marked or copyrighted words and phrases hoping to sell that domain back to the trademark holder. But it is less clear an issue when it comes to descriptive toll free and vanity phone numbers. How about 1-800-PINDROP.com – which you would think would be registered to Sprint Communications? Curiously, as of October of 2004, this domain was available. What do they use? www.pindrop.com (without the 1-800) goes to Sprint.com.
It appears there are wide inconsistencies in using toll free 800 phone numbers as domain names but they can be memorable, which is one measure of a good domain name. They also aren’t limiting as to word length. I’ve always felt it’s a bit odd to type in 1800keywordphrase.com as a domain name, but only because there is no hyphen in it. 1800 looks like eighteen hundred and is just as strange as typing 247 for domains as a suggestion they are always open, more often seen as 24/7, but domain names can’t have that slash mark in them.
As a matter of fact, I’ve always disliked numbers of any kind in domain names – especially those using numbers in place of the words “to” (up2me.com)& “for” (good4you.com) But, as owner of http://website101.com I’m at odds with the dislike for numbers in domain names. Still, it works better than 1800website.com or 1-800-website.com, both owned by Verio Web Hosting and both purchased in August of 1996, but neither have web sites configured at those addresses. They must not have been a worthwhile domains, yet they keep them.
If it offers you another option for a memorable web address, 800 number domains may be worth considering.
Mike Valentine operates WebSite101 domain name tutorial http://WebSite101.com/Domain_Name/ Free domain lookup tool to find out who owns domain names at http://website101.com/Domain_Nam e/Domain-WHOIS-database.html This article written for 800 Numbers Toll Free http://800numberstollfree.com/to ll-free-800-number-index.htm
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Ever wonder why DNS systems came into existence? Efficiency. Every computer has a distinct IP address, and the Internet needed an elite method for obtaining these addresses and for managing the system as a whole. Enter ICANN.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number manages the DNS root of the Internet domain namespace. ICANN’s role is to manage the assignment of identifiers, ensuring that all users have unique names.
The DNS system is run by a series of servers called DNS servers. ICANN manages the root DNS domains, under which are the top-level domains.
It also manages:
Organizational domains
Geographical domains
Reverse domains
Beneath the top-level domains are other naming authorities such as Nominet, the UK’s naming authority.
How does a DNS Query work?
The process occurs in two parts. Firstly, a name query begins at a client computer and is passed to DNS client service for resolution. When the query cannot be resolved locally, DNS servers are queried.
For example, when a web browser calls the fully qualified domain name www.discountdomainsuk.com, the request is passed on to the DNS client service to resolve the name by using locally cached information. If the query is held in the cache, then the process is complete.
If, however, the query cannot be answered locally, the DNS client service uses a server list (ordered in sequence) to query external DNS servers. When a DNS server receives a query, it first checks to see if it is authoritive for that domain name. If it is authoritive, it resolves the name, and the process is complete.
If the DNS server is unable to resolve the query, it in turns queries other DNS servers, using a process known as recursion. DNS servers make use of root hints to assist in locating DNS servers, which are able to provide the required result. In this way, DNS queries are minimised and the Internet is able to operate quickly and effectively.
A typical query may run as follows:
Client contacts Nameserver A looking for www.discountdomainsuk.com.
Nameserver A checks its cache, but can’t answer, so it queries a server authoritive for the Internet root.
The root server responds with a referral to a server authoritive for the .com domains. NameserverA queries the the .com server and gets referred to the server authoritive for www.discountdomainsuk.com.
Nameserver A queries this server and gets the IP address for www.discountdomainsuk.com.
Nameserver A replies to the client with the IP address.
Queries can return answers that are authoritive, positive, negative or referral in nature. In the event of a negative answer, another DNS server is queried.
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Clare Lawrence is CEO of Discount Domains Ltd ? A leading UK provider of Domain name registration and Web Hosting services. Please feel free to re-publish this article provided this reference box remains together with a hyperlink to http://www.discountdomainsuk.com Clare can also be contacted on clare@discountdomainsuk.com.
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In this surreal world of the internet, anyone, even you, can put your point across to a staggering number of people in every country on the planet.
From political activists to artists and writers, can now find an audience to take notice of them where they could not get much attention in their local community. Their horizons have been dramatically extended, so their work will travel on indefinately with no end in sight as in entering a collosal black hole.
Where does their online work go? Where does it come to a stop? The answer is, it will go on as long as the internet is there. Even after they have no longer maintained a web site, their work can be handed on to other sites, to add content.
There are too, website archive sites who keep copies of websites for people to look at now and in the future. Twenty years from now people will be able to look through archived websites to see what was new then, what were the prices, what the stock market was doing, what writers and artists were putting out, and the list goes on and on. Ideal for a writer in the future. Not only will people be able to see what was going on, but in some cases will be able to hear what peple had to say, for websites now are using music, video, and sound. For those aspiring authors, and everyone it has often been said, has a book within them, can write their great work of literature, compile it to an e-book, and pass it around the internet, where it could go the rounds for ever more, long after the author has died. Conventional authors could hardly say that about their hardback or paperback books.
At this moment in time, maybe only 40% to 60% of people in any country log on to the internet every day, but the numbers keep growing every year, and for those wanting to make a living out of the internet, the future potential is enormous. Consider the Asian market where the internet is fairly new, with China as the next real big explosive market with unlimited potential. Credit cards in China are unheard of, except for an elite minority. To receive payment for anything over the internet you would either, have to wait another 50 years if you want to be paid by credit card, or persuade your Chinese clients to open an internet payment account online with the likes of Stormpay, which is an innovative new company, who will take any form of payment to credit your new account, even cash, or bank check. Stormpay even have ‘WalkUp’ offices around the world in major cities and more are being established where a client can deposit cash to credit their account for use on the internet.
Then the client can pay for anything on your site, e-books, software, music etc., if you also open a Stormpay account for receipt of the credits, all you need to open an account initially, is an email address. Could not be simpler. Credit cards over the internet could be a thing of the past, many people still will not use credit cards over the internet because of hackers, so what better way of secure transactions do you need than a Stormpay account? It gives confidence to your clients who need not hesitate to make a payment, there and then, for whatever type of goods and services you provide.
Consider another aspect of selling to Asia and China in particular. Most of the internet to-day is based on the English language, but that is not the language they understand in Asia and China. So, to sell to them you would have to make your site multi-lingual. This could be just a few captions in Asian or Chinese languages together with a button they can click on for web pages in their own language. Or failing that, clicking on a picture of an item on the screen can bring up a voice in their language to explain what it is and how much it costs, and to pay for it, they don’t need a credit card, just click on a link to to Stormpay’s site and sign up for an account and subsequently they can pay for anything on your site instantly. The voice in their own language can be reassuring to the client. Consider once again, if you intend selling to the vast Chinese population, the enormous potential of this untapped market, if you could only make a single dollar from each one living there, you would be rich beyond your wildest dreams, for the population totals ONE POINT TWO BILLION and still counting.
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The author Tony Dean runs a web site where he has free ebooks
for instant download as well as sells ebooks and software.
“The Best Ebook and Software Site On The Net!”
http://www.ebook-sales.com
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