Posts Tagged ‘domain names’

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The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.

Search Engine Friendly URLs

When developing a website, you can save yourself a lot of problems down the road by planning ahead before moving full speed into the site development process. One of the first site architectural issues to consider is how your URLs will read. This is especially important for e-commerce websites that quite often have long complicated URLs. But having good URL structure is still no less important for static websites.

Here are a few things you can do to give yourself search engine friendly URLs:

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The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.

Domain Names

Its easy to think that all the good domain names are taken. Sure, the easy and obvious ones have been snatched up years ago, but that doesn’t mean there still aren’t any good .com domain names left that are perfect for your business or blog.

The starting point, however, is to realize that you do need own your own domain name. Most businesses have figured this out already but a lot of bloggers haven’t. That’s because it takes a bit of work and some small fees. First you have to purchase the domain, then host it, pay the monthly hosting fees, install the blog, etc., etc. Not quite as easy as signing up for a blog service and pounding out your first blog post all in ten minutes.

If your blog is nothing more than a personal diary then the free blogging services may be all you need. But if you’re looking to build an audience, sell a few products, or make a name for yourself, getting your own domain name is the way to go.

Whether you’re a business, a blogger, or something in between, selecting your domain name can be a trying process. Those of you who have searched for the “perfect” domain name know what I mean. You go through dozens, if not hundreds of different options looking for just the right one. When looking for domain names for your business or blog, here are a few guidelines:

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I often have a hard time convincing clients that they need to buy additional domain names to protect their brand. I even give them a list of all the domains I could think of that we think will help with brand protection. Unfortunately, I have nobody doing that for me!

If you’ve ever doubted that buying additional domain names solely to protect your brand then this post is for you.

Years ago we went buy the name Pole Position Web. Then we re-branded as Pole Position Marketing. I wanted to go with “marketing” instead of “SEO” because I needed a name that better represented our focus on website architecture, usability SEO and PPC.

All things considered, I should have bought the SEO domain name anyway.

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There are advantages and disadvantages to using both absolute and relative links. Here I will explore the differences between the two, outline some pros and cons and also provide some additional information on how you can create hyperlinks in your site that will ensure that all links to your content remain in tact and properly functioning.

Back in the day, you know… the early 2000’s I loved to use relative links. Inserting relative links made websites development easy in cutting-edge programs such as Microsoft FrontPage. By using relative links you could move files around in your directory structure and FrontPage would automatically update all your link paths throughout the site, keeping them connected to the pages in their new location. No more manually updating all your internal links by hand! It was brilliant.

But now I’m not so big of a fan as relative links as I once was. I don’t have huge problems with them, but I understand the value in using absolute links rather than relative links. But perhaps I should take a step back and explain the difference between the two.

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Continuing my Q&A series on Website Architecture, these questions were presented to me before and during my webinar of the same topic. We have some more good questions and answers today that I’m sure you’ll find valuable. Click here to Keep reading

Registering multiple domain names is, and should be, common practice for businesses wishing to protect their brands. I discussed buying alternative domain names earlier this week, but I wanted to address it again, this time from the context of duplicate content issues which may arise if you don’t set up your new domain names properly.

Domain Name Redirects

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Last week I wrote a post about how poor product categorization can frustrate shoppers and search engines alike. Strictly from a user standpoint, improperly thinking out how each product should be categorized can cause many products from being found by your shoppers. When determining the category or categories of any product, you have to put yourself in the mind of the searcher. How would they look for it?

In much the same way, the domain name(s) you select can also be a preventative measure against someone finding you. We can use The Home Depot as an example once again. My first attempt to get to their site I typed in www.thehomedepot.com. That goes nowhere. The URL to reach them is www.homedepot.com. This is a clear case of “what are they thinking?” The last time I checked (which was today) they bill themselves as THE Home Depot, not just Home Depot. It’s right there in their logo!

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Multimedia Track, Tuesday 3:15 – 4:30 PM
Video Search Optimization

Moderator: Sapna Satagopan, Associate Analyst, JupiterResearch
Gregory Markel, President, Infuse Creative, LLC
Jeremy Clem, DoubleClick
Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst Online
Stephen Baker, Chief Revenue Officer, Everyzing

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