Domain name

Domain registration is the process by which a company or individual can secure a website domain. You will get more traffic to your website by using the right domain names.  The suggestions on this blog post will help you get the best name possible.

domain registration Domain name extensions on keyboardA domain name is a unique address of a computer on the Internet.  It consists of an alphanumeric entity followed by an extension (also called top-level domain).  The domain name system (DNS) translates the domain name into a numeric address called an IP address.

For instance, ibm.com uses “ibm” for its alphanumeric entity.  It uses “.com” for its top level domain.

Branding

Select your domain name from a branding point of view.  In the example above, “ibm” is the very best alphanumeric entity possible for a company called IBM.  The very best extension is “.com” because it is the most well know extension in the world.

Your domain name should reflect your business somehow.  Then it will be easier for your customers to remember and come back to your website.  Also, a really good domain name helps with search engine optimization (SEO).

Make it memorable so that you can get repeat visits from people.

email-marketing-ad

Value-added email marketing can help you with your branding. Click on the image to learn more.

Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

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Mnemonic device

A businessman may use this word to help him find the ideal domain name for his website — RAIL, the four main points to think about are Recall, Aesthetics, Impressions & Length.
* Recall: Will the domain name be easy to use/remember? Choose a name that’s easy to recall.
* Aesthetics: How does the name look written on paper? How will it appear alongside other lettering on business cards and company stationery?
* Impressions: First impressions can be crucial. So select a domain name that will give an immediate good impression.
* Length: Typing a short web-address is always preferable to typing a long one. Choose for length.

Domain registration time

Google may consider your website more stable and reliable if it has a long registration time.  In order to test the waters to make sure you like your domain name, make your first registration for a one year minimum.  If your website is still going strong after a year, register it for a longer time.

With which company should you register?

Since 1996 my domain registration has been with various companies.  Some, which will remain unnamed, I’d definitely advise against.  One company I like a lot and would recommend is WhoIs.

Correlation domain name & business name

domain registration How to Name Your Business

Remember the branding part of domain names.  It is best if your domain name and business name are very similar.  (Note the discussion of ibm.com and IBM above.)

WhoIs has a system for correlating the names.  In this quick example you are looking for a name for your pet store.

You want people to look at your sign for two seconds and know exactly what kind of store you have.

Register a domain

pet store worldYou could start you domain registration by going to the WhoIs website. Select Domains > Register a Domain. You do a domain search for pet store.

Naturally petstore.com was taken.  However, WhoIs makes a search for similar available names.  One available domain name is petstore.world.

So, you could register petstore.world and name the business Pet Store World.  If people know the name of your store, they can remember your domain name.  If people remember your domain name, they can remember the name of your store.

Mom & pop business example

roots-and-vines-toursA couple I know live in an area that has 112 wineries.  Tourists love to go to the Okanagan Valley and go on wine tours.  The couple set up a touring company in Kelowna that takes tourists to various wineries.

They found an excellent domain name that:

 

Related pages

5 characteristics of a good business name

The Success website says

How important is a name, really? In the world of business, it’s absolutely everything. Why? Because your…   Read more.

How to register and protect your new business name

The Tiernan Parsons website says

A good name can get people’s attention and contribute to your business’ success. And once it is a success, that name will become a valuable asset. But unless you protect that name, someone else could use it as well.   Read more.

 

 

 

 

Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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Eight social media

Snowball pushed by boyIf you combine 8 different social media, your marketing efforts can snowball.  A SlideShare post can send people to a YouTube video.  That YouTube  video can send people to a blog.  And so on.

YouTube

This page has been summarized in the YouTube video below.

Start with a blog

Note for NewbiesI always start with a blog.  I decide upon the message I want to get across.  Before I start creating content, I use Google Trends to find one or more keywords that closely relate to that content.  I might use Hashtagify to find closely related Twitter hashtags.

The above exercise will help me create a title.  It will also give me some keywords that I will likely try to combine within the article.  (Careful: In order to get high rankings with the Google search engine, all of the ideas in each paragraph should flow naturally.)


Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

Click here to learn more.

SEO your blog

I always use WordPress for my blogs.

There is a reason why a quarter of the websites in the world use WordPress.  One reason is because they provide so many free plugins such as SEO by Yoast.

From the beginning I start search engine optimizing (SEO) my blog.  I go down to my SEO by Yoast and decide upon a focus keyword.  That will be a keyword I got by using Google Trends and/or Hashtagify.  As I write the blog post, I make sure the points in SEO by Yoast are covered.

Starting the blog

I write out the idea I wanted to get across.  If it is less than 300 words, I use CurationSoft to get summaries of articles related to my topic.

Learn about blogging with consistent quality content.

Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus

For my social media marketing I always use a blog followed by Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus.  If I feel so inclined, I will also add Pinterest, YouTube, SlideShare and LinkedIn.

It is quick & simple to use Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus to promote your blog.  You are increasing the probability that the search engines will find your blog.

Same picture 3 social mediaTo the right is a sample of Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus all promoting the same blog post.  They all use more or less the same high-quality stock image.

However, note that the wording of the text is different in each one.  That is to make sure that the search engines to not penalize me for having duplicate content.

The “social” in social media

2 people having coffeeWith social media we are socializing with people.  We are not blatantly trying to sell them something.

If you want to sell people something, do it in a convoluted way so that they feel like they are socializing with you.

Subtle theme

Scam in Red Keyboard Magnifying GlassEven the theme of your posts may be expressed subtly.  I was recently a victim of credit card fraud.  I want to let people know about that but I don’t want to overdue it.

So, I made a blog post and a YouTube video about finding high quality stock photos.  It subtly linked to the blog post about credit card fraud.

YouTube

Watch the YouTube video I mentioned above.  Read this page.  Pay special attention to the idea of 30 videos in 30 days.

Read the post about video marketing and getting started with YouTube.

SlideShare

Click the white arrows on the SlideShare presentation below.

Properly-made SlideShare presentations are powerful.  Your organic searches can be larger than your Facebook and Twitter searches combined.  Besides that, starting at slide #4 you can have multiple links to your web pages.

LinkedIn

Read this article I wrote on LinkedIn.  It also subtly promotes credit card fraud.

Pinterest

Credit Card Fraud pinHere is the  Pinterest pin I created using that magnifying glass graphic.  See this Pinterest pin in the Pinterest website.

Note that as the months or even years go by, a Pinterest pin can become more popular.  This is opposed to Facebook or Twitter where your posts rarely get shared after the day they were first posted.

Also note that it is very important to have compelling photos.

 

Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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Curated content from public input

Google News LabThe Google News Lab Twitter page has a link to a website with unhappy news. It’s curated from various contributors to the website.  Click on the link at the end of the tweet below.

Watch curated eyewitness content from on crisis in :

Websites using curated content to find music & videos for viewers

The 9to5 Mac website says Vevo has today announced a native tvOS app for Apple TV, with a Spotlight section auto-playing a stream of music videos based on your own tastes.  Read the article now: Vevo announces native app for Apple TV, offers curated content based on your tastes.

… Apple TV , and Apple TV continue reading at 9to5Mac . What do you think? Discuss “Vevo announces native app for Apple TV, offers curated content …


Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

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Better website ranking with Google

The description for the video below starts with

How to quickly rank web pages in Google shows webmasters and online business owners how to achieve top ranking position for their websites. This Google search engine optimization video tutorial looks at critical web page elements when creating web site content.

Content marketing

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing thusly: Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing

♦ Valuable,
♦ Relevant, and
♦ Consistent content

to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Having valuable, relevant and consistent content will help improve your website ranking.

 

Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of a free YouTube tutorial. It’s called 7 Day YouTube and will teach you how to make entertaining videos & animated GIFs.

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1. Quality contentContent is king, seo tools

A trick I use  to make sure my posts have high quality content is to use the SEO tools in Yoast SEO.  Other tricks I used are in my blog post about finding high quality blog content.

Dog blog2. Consistent content

Post regularly or people will forget about you and stop following you.  The writer of the Dog Blog writes 5 days a week. Each of those days he uses Google to find an interesting news story about dogs.

3. Variety in content

Avoid lots of repetition in your posts.  Otherwise, people will unfollow you.

4. Relate to your followers

Ideally you will become part of a community that relates regularly.  Here are some tips for relating to your followers:


Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

Click here to learn more.

5. When free seo tools are not enough

Some if not all of the social media sites allow you to do some sort of advertising.  For example, the Dog Blog people paid to have the video below on Facebook.


One week this gave them 8301 views of their Facebook Pet Memorial page.  The page linked to the Dog Blog on their website.
The next week they had discontinued paying for the video.  They had a grand total of of 66 views on their Facebook Pet Memorial page.

an offer I can't refuse6. Give incentives to follow your posts

The Wishpond website gives some excellent ideas on how to get followers who are really interested on your product.
Photo courtesy Wishpond

7. Choose the right domain name

The right domain name can make branding much easier.  The First Site Guide website has an excellent article on how to choose the ideal domain name.

Granite Pet Memorial Video


Don’t forget to use all of the SEO tools found in Yoast SEO.

 

 

Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of a free YouTube tutorial. It’s called 7 Day YouTube and will teach you how to make entertaining videos & animated GIFs.

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Integrate your SEO into your website properly

Yoast SEO content analysis

I feel privileged to be using Yoast SEO with my WordPress websites. I’m using the free version and, right now, it is all I need to help me with my search engine optimization.  (Learn more about this plugin.)

How Yoast SEO works

This plugin analyzes eleven different parameters in a web page to tell you how search engine friendly your page really is.  For instance, the search engines rank pages higher if they have links to other websites.  This plugin tells you if you have outside links.  It tells you if your page title is between the recommended 45 – 65 character range and if you article has over 300 words.

If Yoast SEO gives you a thumbs up for a parameter, it will have a green dot beside it as you see in the illustration above.  Otherwise it will be red or orange dots.


Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

Click here to learn more.

Focus keyword

Yoast SEO places a great deal of emphasis on focus keywords.  These will be a single word or usually a long-tail keyword around which your entire article should usually be written.

The focus keyword for this article is Yoast SEO.  Notice the it is in the beginning of the article title, it is used in the first and last paragraphs and it is in at least one H2 heading.  It is also used in the meta description.

Stop words

Yoast SEO may discourage you from using “stop words”.  Those are words like a, the, what, is, …

However, Google is getting more sophisticated.  Stop words may be just fine.  Read the post about the Hummingbird update.

Getting Started

Add new plugins

To get started, go to your WordPress dashboard and click on Plugins > Add new.  Enter Yoast SEO in the Search Plugins box in your new page.  Press Enter. Click on the title of the plugin you want and then click the Install Now button.

SEO in black columnSEO will appear in the black column on the left.  If you click on it, you can find more information about Yoast SEO and search engine optimization in general.

Now, when you start editing any page, you can scroll down to the bottom and find how well you are doing with your Yoast SEO.  Keep tweaking your page until each of the buttons in front of a content data statement is green.All Yoast SEO buttons green

 

 

Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of a free YouTube tutorial. It’s called 7 Day YouTube and will teach you how to make entertaining videos & animated GIFs.

tweets

Improved search engine ranking

SEOIf you use 60 to 65 characters (letters, spaces, and numbers) in your web page title, you are more likely to improve your Google ranking. When people talk to you like that, they are talking about SEO.

Learning about SEO (search engine optimization) is essential for getting good search engine ranking.  In this post you will find a number of SEO tips to help you with that ranking.

SEO tips from recent web posts

SEO tips for local businesses

The Small Business Trends website says

We’ve sat down and come up with some unique and effective tips that you can use for your local business. With these simple and effective local SEO tips, you will be able to obtain a new level of organic search traffic.  Read more.

5  easy B2C SEO tips

The Business to Community website says

What if you have sunk thousands of dollars into designing it [your website], yet your traffic is at a stand still — or not where you want it to be?  This may be because your site’s SEO ranking (search engine optimization) is below par. So how do you bring up your ranking… and fast?

In this post, we’ll discuss some basic SEO tips that will help improve how Google and other search engines rank your site. Read more.

Click here to learn more.

10 SEO tips for building a local brand

The Search Engine Land website says

“Brands account for more than 30% of the stockmarket [sic] value of companies in the S&P 500 index.” When Imperial Tobacco decided to spend $7.1 billion to expand to the US, the lion’s share of that money was spent on purchasing brands recognizable in the US.

But what about small or local businesses? Can they build a brand? How can they compete in getting recognition behind multi-billion-dollar behemoths?  Read more.

Mobile SEO tips

Girl with smartphone at sunsetThe Marketing Dive website says

“Having a mobile-friendly website has become a critical part of having an online presence,” according to Google.

In April 2015, Google debuted a new ranking signal on mobile searches that takes into account a page’s “mobile friendliness.” Depending on how legible and usable a page was on mobile devices, it received a boost on mobile search rankings.

With a majority of Americans using smartphones and 94% of U.S. smartphone owners searching for information on their phones, according to Google, the update had a big impact on search marketing.   Read more.

Finding keywords

Use ubersuggest or Google trends.

 

SEO tip — captions at bottom of video

seo tipsYouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world.  If your video is closed captioned like the video in this picture, it is more likely to get ranked higher with Google.

You type out the script that is spoken in your video.  You upload that as a text file.  By clicking in the right spots, you can get YouTube’s voice recognition software to sync the voice with the closed captioning.

The search engines cannot record the spoken word in videos.  However, they can read closed caption text.

How to add closed captions to your video in 19 steps
seo tips

1. Type out your script and save it as a text file
2. Go to your YouTube channel that has the video you want to close caption and click the gear icon
3. Click “View additional features”
4. Click on “video manager” in the left-hand column
5. Find the video that needs the closed captioning, click on the drop down arrow and then “subtitles and cc”
6. Set language
7. Click the blue “Add new subtitles or cc” button
8. Select “English” or whichever language you want and wait a few seconds.
9. Click “create new subtitles or CC” and open your text file separately
10.Listen to the first voice segment.  (Notice the beginning and end of the sound wave segment at the bottom.)
11. The red vertical line is called the “scrubber”.  Make sure the scrubber is at the beginning of the first set of sound waves.
12. Highlight the first voice segment from your text edit file
13. Copy it into your clipboard, paste it into the appropriate box and click Enter
14. You will notice a box with the new text just above the sound waves.  Click on the blue vertical line so that the text will continue to show up after the speaking has stopped.
15. Drag the bar at the bottom so that the scrubber is at the beginning of the next set of sound waves.
16. Copy and paste the next line from your text edit box
17. Drag the blue vertical line out beyond the sound waves
18. Continue this process for the rest of the voice clips
19. Click the “Publish” button

 

Note: YouTube keeps changing things.  The instructions above could become partially obsolete.  If you cannot figure out how to do it, go to the help menu on the same page that has “view additional features”.  Ask about closed captioning.

Closed caption sample

Below is a sample of a YouTube video to which closed captioning has been applied.

 

Instructions in a YouTube video

To help you understand the instructions above, watch the YouTube video below.

 

SEO tip — long-tail keywords

As you are creating the script for your video, have a list of keywords in front of you.

To create the script for the video above, I did a keyword search for “work part time from home”.  This gave me a list of long-tail keywords that I could use in my script.  Included were “earn money online” and “make money from home”.  Because people search for those phrases so often, they are more likely to find my video.  If there was no closed captioning, having those phrases in the script would not help with search engine rankings.

Keep in mind that you must use honest, relevant long-tail keywords.  If a keyword does not fit into the context of the script, you could be penalized for it.

Amazing search engine optimization (SEO) tricks

You most likely use Google Trends to search engine
optimize (SEO) your content writing.

To learn much more about these and other SEO tricks, click here. Watch the 5 videos and then read some of the notes below.  It’s fascinating.

 

 

 

 


Collecting long-tail keywords

With the Keyword Researcher tool, you can quickly collect and filter a large number of long-tail keywords.  (Read blurb about long-tail niche words.) This then helps you write a number of related articles on your website.  As you are writing, you can get the software to give color coded highlights to the title, slug and content of your article.

When the highlighting is green, the entire keyword has been used.  Wherever there is an orange highlight, the keyword is partially used.  You make your own decision.  Do you want to change that into a long-tail keyword to help with search engine optimization?
Watch the 3 and a half minute video below to see how this amazing software can find hundreds of long-tail keywords tor you on a wide variety of subjects.

Group keywords on article tree

As you look at your various long-tail keywords, you can get ideas for different articles you will consider writing.  Give each potential article a unique name.

Then drag and drop the various keywords onto your article tree. When it’s time to start research for your article, the potential long-tail keywords will be there to help you out.


Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

Click here to learn more.

 

Getting started with search engine optimization (SEO)

You most likely use the AdWords keyword tool to search engine
optimize (SEO) your content writing.   You may have read the blog post about using the AdWords tool to help you find the best long-tail keywords.

Here are a few tricks to be 100 times more effective than the instructions in that blog post.

Keyword ResearcherKeyword Researcher In this example, the article writer is creating a post about bicycles.  He wants to SEO the post to get a huge number of organic views.  So, he
enters this into his Keyword Researcher: best bicycle*.

The asterisk stands for every letter of the alphabet.  Starting with
the letter A, Keyword Researcher will give a number of long-tail
keywords that Google searchers have searched for in the past year.  It will start bikes for all, bikes for a 10 year old, bikes for a 7 year old, …  You get the idea.  The picture on the left above shows some of the long-tail keywords that came up for the letter B.  The picture on the right has “C” words.

This box on the left illustrates four more SEO tricks that come with
Keyword Researcher.  The user is obviously about to write an article about low carb diets.  Look at point #2.  It shows how this person looking for question keywords.  He was searching for long-tail keywords that have both how and carb in them.

Point #3 shows that he wanted only those keywords that had more than 100 Google searches per month.

Point #1 gives three tiny boxes — white, grey and black.  When white is selected, the writer wants to use that keyword in an article.  Grey is the default.  It means that the writer is undecided about whether or not to use the keyword.  The black box means that the keyword will not be selected to be used in the article.

To learn much more about these and other SEO tricks, click here. Watch the 5 videos and then read some of the notes below them.  It’s fascinating.

To learn how to quickly find current information about a long-tail keyword topic, learn about CurationSoft.

Important note: In order to use Keyword Researcher, you must have the Windows operating system.  It will NOT work with a Mac.

How much does Keyword Researcher cost?

Keyword Researcher is quite affordable.  This is what to do if you want to find out the current price and discounts (if any):

♦ Go to the landing page.
♦ Scroll down.

How to do SEO


    
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SEO video

To help you understand these search engine optimization concepts better, watch the short YouTube video below.

 

 

Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of a free YouTube tutorial. It’s called 7 Day YouTube and will teach you how to make entertaining videos & animated GIFs.

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Free Web Design

Category: SEO

  • Domain Registration with the Ideal Name

    Domain name Domain registration is the process by which a company or individual can secure a website domain. You will get more traffic to your website by using the right domain names.  The suggestions on this blog post will help you get the best name possible. A domain name is a unique address of a…

  • Combine Social Media for a Multiplying Effect

    Eight social media If you combine 8 different social media, your marketing efforts can snowball.  A SlideShare post can send people to a YouTube video.  That YouTube  video can send people to a blog.  And so on. YouTube This page has been summarized in the YouTube video below. Start with a blog I always start…

  • Website Ranking with Curated Content

    Curated content from public input The Google News Lab Twitter page has a link to a website with unhappy news. It’s curated from various contributors to the website.  Click on the link at the end of the tweet below. Watch curated eyewitness content from @WITNESS_Lab on crisis in #WesternSahara:https://witness.checkdesk.org/en  @witnessorg Websites using curated content to…

  • SEO Tools for Improving Social Media Marketing

    1. Quality content A trick I use  to make sure my posts have high quality content is to use the SEO tools in Yoast SEO.  Other tricks I used are in my blog post about finding high quality blog content. 2. Consistent content Post regularly or people will forget about you and stop following you. …

  • Yoast SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

    Integrate your SEO into your website properly I feel privileged to be using Yoast SEO with my WordPress websites. I’m using the free version and, right now, it is all I need to help me with my search engine optimization.  (Learn more about this plugin.) How Yoast SEO works This plugin analyzes eleven different parameters…

  • SEO Tips to Help You Get to Google’s Page 1

    Improved search engine ranking If you use 60 to 65 characters (letters, spaces, and numbers) in your web page title, you are more likely to improve your Google ranking. When people talk to you like that, they are talking about SEO. Learning about SEO (search engine optimization) is essential for getting good search engine ranking.  In…

  • Keyword Researcher for Super-fast SEO

    Collecting long-tail keywords With the Keyword Researcher tool, you can quickly collect and filter a large number of long-tail keywords.  (Read blurb about long-tail niche words.) This then helps you write a number of related articles on your website.  As you are writing, you can get the software to give color coded highlights to the…