Tuesday, September 16, 2008Google Phone to be Introduced Next Week
Posted by Nathan Denny in Consumer Tech, Industry News: Players | Leave a Comment
In Miguel Helft’s tech blog for the New York Times, it was announced today that T-Mobile will be unveiling details of its new, highly anticipated, Google branded mobile phone next week in New York — on September 23, to be precise. The phone will be the first to utilize the Google Android application.
The phone itself, which is being manufactured by HTC, is not likely to be available until next month. But top executives from Google, T-Mobile and other companies are expected to unveil details about the phone’s release date, pricing, plans and software at the press conference.
The phone is expected to become a challenger to other high-end phones like Apple’s iPhone and the BlackBerry line of devices made by Research In Motion. Other manufacturers and cellphone carriers are expected to introduce Android-based phones in the coming months.
Google is promoting Android phones as a way to ensure that its services, as well as other services that may use its advertising system, are available on a broad range of mobile phones. But Google also stands to benefit from the popularity of devices like the iPhone, whose PC-like Internet browser has greatly increased the likelihood that its owners will conduct Web searches on their phones.
Google also (probably) stands to benefit from a general sense of dissatisfaction with iPhones among the business community. Although Apple has eased that discontent a bit with the latest release of the model, there’s still a big potential market there that’s looking for an alternative to the consumer-oriented iPhone and the limitations of the BlackBerry (which is often said to have a browser that’s inadequate for high-powered business applications).
What do you think? Are you eagerly awaiting an alternative to your iPhone and/or BlackBerry? Are you anticipating this new phone, or do you think it’s unecessary? (And is anyone else starting to get a bit nervous at the prospect of Google dominating yet another product market?)
Sunday, September 14, 2008Grow Your Business and Make the Most of Your Hosting Space: Part 3: Subdomains, and SEO Considerations
Posted by Nathan Denny in Small Business Matters, Tips and Advice | Leave a Comment
Welcome to Part 3 in our instructional series on how to maximize the value of your hosting services via Added Domains, Parked Domains, and Subdomains. Every successful online business should understand how to employ these three assets in order to get the most out of money spent on online infrastructure. If you haven’t already, check out our first two articles in the series on Add-on Domains and Parked Domains.
Today, we’ll explore subdomains. A subdomain is a part of a larger domain name, but with a different prefix. Unlike add-on domains or parked domains, which tend to be completely different domain names altogether, a subdomain retains the identity of the larger domain name, keeping the same basic URL root in place.
In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain. For example, “mail.example.com” and “calendar.example.com” are subdomains of the “example.com” domain, which in turn is a subdomain of the “com” top-level domain (TLD).
So, think of subdomains as subsections of a larger domain name, with the very first part of the URL (after http://) representing the name of the subdomain. For example, Yahoo utilizes this strategy to great effect, with mail.yahoo.com, news.yahoo.com, etc. Popular online classifieds site Craigslist also implements suddomains as the name of the city for each site (http://sandiego.craigslistorg, http://kansascity.craigslist.org, http://savannah.craigslist.org, etc.).
Subdomains are a great way to establish branding and to focus on separate products or services within that brand. For example, if your website is ABCDEF.com, your “about us” page can be about.ABCDEF.com, your “contact us” page can be contact.ABCDEF.com, your member sign-in page can be members.ABCDEF.com, and on and on. This method is less cumbersome than ABCDEF.com/contact, ABCDEF.com/about, etc., and it’s also easier to build and to navigate.
URL Structure and Search Engine Optimization
For optimum search engine placement, your domain name and URL naming strategy should incorporate your site’s most important keywords. If you decide to use subdomains in your URL structure, keep your website’s main keywords in mind when determining what to name the subdomains users will browse most frequently, and when naming parked or add-on domain name URLs. Remember, when it’s time to name all these extra domains, search engines tend to favor names that are simple and basic.
You should be able to set up and manage add-on domains, parked domains and subdomains from your hosting account or domain registrar control panel. However, as we usually suggest, always consult with your web host before proceeding if you have any doubts.
Thursday, September 11, 2008Microsoft SEO Team to Webmasters: Tell Us What You Think
Posted by Nathan Denny in Developer's Corner | Leave a Comment
Recently on the Live Search Blog, Microsoft Program Manager Jeremiah Andrick put the question out there for the entire webmaster community: “What [can we] do to improve our development stack (Windows, IIS, ASP.Net, Silverlight) so they are optimized for SEO by default”?
Andrick goes on to open up the floor to some acknowledged areas of difficulty:
* Bad default settings - What settings are poorly configured by default? What should the correct setting be (e.g., IIS using 302 redirects by default)?
* Too hard - What is possible, but simply too hard to do? If this is done well on another platform, that would be helpful to know as well (e.g., rearchitecting the link structure on a site while not breaking the links of the old site).
* Limited capabilities - Are their capabilities that we just don’t have, but would really make your lives easier as SEO-savvy web developers (e.g., need to have multiple URL entry points into silverlight application)?
* Bugs - What just doesn’t work right today (e.g., URL rewriting in ASP.Net using 302’s to redirect links)?
We have to applaud this effort by the company to open up a dialogue with its customers. Direct feedback of this nature is good for Microsoft, and great for the thousands of people who use its products. And so far, Microsoft personnel have done a solid job of addressing the comments they receive.
So, hey, this is your chance, everyone. We know a lot of you use Microsoft platforms, and this is a great opportunity to let them know what improvements you’d like to see. Click here to check it out for yourself, and take advantage of the info exchange.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008Grow Your Business and Make the Most of Your Hosting Space: Part 2: Parked Domains
Posted by Nathan Denny in Small Business Matters, Tips and Advice | Leave a Comment
Parked domains are just what you might think they are: Domain names you own and have registered, but aren’t currently using. They’re not actively associated with any hosting, website, or email services. They’re out of use, or “parked.”
What are the benefits of domain parking? Usually, a parked domain is a domain that you think may be of value to you or your business in the future, but you aren’t quite at the point when you can (or want to) make use of it. Maybe it’s a brand you want to trademark in the future, or maybe it’s a domain name similar to your business name that you want to keep out of the hands of competitors (or cybersquatters).
So, there are a number reasons why you may want to own a domain name that isn’t associated with a website. Indeed, parked domains are a very common feature throughout the World Wide Web. As it usually happens in real life, though, parking isn’t free. It’ll usually cost you, in the form of a separate fee by a hosting or “parking space” provider.
That fee, however, is usually minimal. You’ll need to check with your hosting provider to see what kind of parked service is available to you, and what it will cost. Also, check out what kind of placeholder the hosting service uses. A placeholder is a simple page put up by the hosting company, usually featuring an “under construction” or “coming soon” sign, to let visitors know that the domain name is taken, but does not yet feature a website.
In the current age of eCommerce, almost all of these parked domain placeholders are “monetized”, meaning that they feature advertisements. Blame that on Google AdSense. Just as it’s revolutionized almost every other aspect of online business, Google is changing the nature of parked domains by turning simple placeholders into a showcase for ads, thereby “monetizing” the parked domain. These ads are typically auto-generated, determined by a search keyword associated with the parked domain name. That search keyword helps bring in visitors using the Google search engine, and these visitors, according to the AdSense business plan, will then (hopefully) click on the ads.
The end result is that a revenue stream, no matter now minimal, is created from what was once simply blank, wasted space. However, there’s some controversy over this practice. Google was even sued earlier this year in a class-action suit claiming that the AdSense ads were ineffective and riddled with errors. Essentially, Google stands accused of charging customers for ads that don’t work. Whether that’s because the ads were faulty, or because the art of directing traffic through parked domains is still too undeveloped to really work, remains to be seen.
Either way, this practice of using parked domains to generate ad revenue is having an enormous impact on the industry as a whole. Some have even speculated that, since “monetizing” amounts to a sort of rudimentary web hosting in and of itself, Google AdSense will eventually bring about the end of domain parking as we know it.
But we’re not quite there yet. And until that day comes, domain parking remains an important fixture of online business, and an almost inevitable part of growing your brand through domain name purchasing.
Next up: Diversifying your base URL with subdomains.
Sunday, September 7, 2008Grow Your Business and Make the Most of Your Hosting Space: Part 1: Add-On Domains
Posted by Nathan Denny in Small Business Matters, Tips and Advice | 1 Comment
It’s the same with almost any business: Once you taste success, you’ll probably want to expand. And with online business, that usually means adding more sections to your website, or adding new websites altogether.
And, as a smart business manager, you’ll no doubt want to expand your site without having to pay for more hosting services. Luckily, there are several ways to do just that. Today’s blog entry is the first in a series of three articles to help you better utilize Add-on Domains, Parked Domains, and Subdomains.
Add-on Domains
Sometimes called Hosted Domains, Add-on Domains are domain names located on the same hosting plan as your primary domain name. Just like your main domain name, you own these domains and have to pay for their registration. They can represent a subdirectory on your main site, or they can show a different website altogether. They can also be a type of parked domain. They use the same hosting space and bandwidth as your main hosting service account and are typically managed by the same control panel. (However, even these almost-universal basic facts can sometimes differ among hosting providers.)
The advantage of add-on domains is that you can host more than one website on the same account, saving resources, space, and of course, money. That means, with just one hosting plan, you can create whole new websites under the same account, with completely different identities, styles, keywords, SEO functionality, and so on. Or, if you prefer to brand your main site over a variety of different domain names, you can choose to incorporate a single style and structure throughout all your add-on domains.
It’s your choice. Add-on Domains give you the freedom to maximize the value of your hosting service in the way that works best for you. And, although you have to take extra care that growing traffic among your various add-on domains doesn’t overwhelm your main service’s bandwidth capabilities, this, too, can be seen as a positive factor. After all, if you have that many websites with that much traffic, a second or third hosting plan is probably the best next step in your business plans, anyway. (Or perhaps a larger Professional Grade or eCommerce Optimized hosting plan is now in order.)
Next up: Parked domains and subdomains.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008How to Make Money Selling Domain Names
Posted by Nathan Denny in Small Business Matters, Tips and Advice | 3 Comments
One of the most basic, most proven ways to make money online is domain name speculation. The act of buying domain names and reselling them when their value has increased, domain name speculation can be a lucrative addition to your online business revenues. When it’s done well and taken seriously, it can even be a rewarding business in its own right.
Domain name speculation offers many incentives: It’s easy to do, and it doesn’t require a significant investment. There’s also a huge profit potential. Businesses and webmasters are always looking for high-quality, marketable domain names, and have been known to pay top dollar for the domains they want. R.H. Donnelley currently holds the record for most money spent on a domain name, having acquired the Business.com domain for $345 million in 2007!
So, it’s definitely possible to make a living off of the buying and selling of domain names, and it can also be a smart way to earn revenue. All it takes is a little insider info, and the business sense to make the right choices.
What Makes a Domain Name Valuable?
What gives a domain name its value? Would a webmaster or business ever want to buy it? You should be able to confidently answer yes to that question before investing money in a domain.
The suffix is the most important factor in choosing a valuable domain name, and .com, .net, and .org are by far the most popular. Other alternative domains like .tv and .mobi are becoming popular as well, because they offer much more availability. For example, .info is a consumer favorite not only because of its generally lower price, but also because many basic domains that have long been taken at .com are still up for grabs with the .info suffix. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for there, other newer suffixes (including .biz and .us) offer even more options.
The reality, though, is that .com and .net suffixes are generally more valuable than the newer suffixes (though that does seem to be slowly changing), because they’re much more well-known to consumers.
In the past, the best-selling domain names have been the most basic, the most generic, and the shortest names (such as business.com, as mentioned above). Remember: The simplest way to say something is almost always the best. A site named www.hardware.com will get a lot more natural hits than www.abacus-hardware.com, and those hits are what make a domain name valuable. Focus on short, memorable names that are easy to remember and easy to market. (Of course, that’s also why many of them are taken; very few three-character domain names even exist any more on the main suffixes.)
What names are selling? Do some research on popular domain name auction sites like Afternic.com or eBay.com to see what kinds of names are selling. and for how much. A quick visit to Afternic on almost any given day will show new domains selling for tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Remember, though: It’s illegal to register a business name with intent of extortion, or which someone else has trademarked. This is called cybersquatting, and laws are in place to protect against it.
Where to Find Domain Names?
In the past, finding a domain name could be a frustrating process. It usually took a time-consuming, one-by-one search to find the name (and all similar names) that you were looking for. But today, technology allows these searches to be vast and almost instantaneous. The Aplus.net domain name finder, for example, not only offers instant results for searches, but also more than twenty alternate versions of the searched-for name. You can also get lists of domains that have expired from the sources below, and watch the status of domain names you want to buy when they do expire with Aplus.net’s Domain Monitor service.
The conventional wisdom is that all the good domains have already been taken. This is partially true (thousands of new domain names are indeed registered each day), but there are still good names to be found, and there will always be demand for newer variations on what already exists. The best way to find great domains is to subscribe to domain lists, which are regularly (usually daily) compiled lists of thousands of repossessed domain names that have been put back into the available domain pool. Subscribing to sites like Deleted Domains or JustDropped.com is easy and inexpensive, and can help keep you notified of what new domain names are up for grabs.
Domain Registration
Once you’ve found a domain you want to purchase, you’ll need to register it. In the past, this could cost as much as $70 for just two years! Luckily, domain name registration has become much more affordable in recent years, which adds up to more profit for you. Domain names can now be registered for less than $9 a year. A wide variety of sites offer competitive rates for the same basic registration service.
Selling Your Domain
When it comes to selling your domain name, the most effective places have typically been auction sites such as eBay.com, Afternic.com, and SEDO. There are also domain name brokers who will list your site for a fee when sold, a fee to list, or both.
GreatDomains.com is a highly useful, high-traffic site where you can list for-sale domains, and if you make a sale there, you’ll only have to pay a small percentage of the sale price. If you’ve truly found a valuable domain name, and you set a smart price that reflects the market, you shouldn’t have long to wait before a buyer bids or contacts you.
Many new domain sellers make the mistake of trying to sell every domain name for thousands of dollars. In fact, you’ll probably do much better selling more domains for a few hundred dollars. This gives you a much higher turnaround rate, and still maintains a healthy profit — at less than ten dollars for the registration fee, sales of even $50 represent a significant profit.
Good Luck!
Domain name speculation is a very cost-effective way to make money, with an extremely low overhead. It’s something you can do in your spare time, and it’s fun trying to figure out what domain names may be worth big money in the future. Get started today by subscribing to ModernDomainer.com, DNForum, and any of the other domain listing sites mentioned above. Make your purchase, then register with eBay.com and Afternic.com and start selling. Good Luck!
Thursday, August 28, 2008Top 10 Search Engine Ranking Factors from About.com — Plus One More
Posted by Nathan Denny in Tips and Advice | 1 Comment
About.com’s Online/Hosting Expert Gregory Go recently wrote up a highly instructive list on search engine optimization basics called the “Top 10 Search Engine Ranking Factors”. It’s a great primer on how to optimize your site for that most important online marketing element, search engine placement. To write it, he compiled information from “the top 37 search engine optimization (SEO) professionals,” adding some of their quotes to his own advice.
Mr. Go acknowledges right away that search engine ranking can never really be an exact science, due to the fact that the big players are always changing their criteria — which they also choose to keep secret. And let’s face it, Google dominates so much of the market here that their search engine algorithms are almost the default standard. And they keep a very tight lid on things.
Of course, that’s necessary to make sure people don’t exploit a too-familiar or too well-known system, which some people would certainly do. But, it can also really make a challenge out of staying on top of the art of search engine placement.
That being said, there are some fundamental guiedlines that are always going to help. Here are the top 10 search engine criteria, as compiled by Gregory Go:
- Keyword Use in Title Tag
- Anchor Text of Inbound Links
- Global Link Popularity of Site
- Age of Site
- Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure
- Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
- Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
- Keyword Use in Body Text
- Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
- Topical Relationship of Linking Page
Each point is backed up with pointers and quotes from the relevant experts. It’s a great read, even if you already consider yourself to be an SEO expert. Read it here.
Let’s talk about the fourth point, Age of Site, for a moment. In your search engine optimization research, it’s probably a term you’ve come across more than once. Among the criteria that search engines use to rank your site is its age, which is determined by the date of your domain registration. That information comes directly from the WHOIS, the widely used database search interface that compiles ownership and details of domain names and IP addresses. Each and every domain name is indexed on the WHOIS database, and when a domain name expires, it’s eventually removed after a certain period of time. To learn more about this process, and to take advantage of an advanced WHOIS search tool to investigate your domain name or others, go to Aplus.net’s own Advanced WHOIS Search page.
Aplus.net’s “Plus One”
As great as this Top 10 list, there’s an 11th factor that might would make it even better:
11. Keyword Use in URLs
Understanding the basics of URL structure is important when determining SEO. Remember when optimizing your web copy and linking structure for SEO that it’s also very important to include your main keywords and phrases in your website’s URL address. This is a big factor in determining your page ranking.
URL keyword use is not only a useful addition to this list, it’s a topic in and of itself. A whole article could be written about how choosing the right domain name is key to URL structure, and the enormous impact that has on your search engine placement.
What are the factors that led you to choose your domain name? Were you thinking about the identity of your company? For most of us, the domain name is the first part of our website that we build; oftentimes, whole websites are created around a good domain name. But does your domain name contain your key word? Or a number of key words? It’s more important than you may realize. And it’s something we’ll cover in a future post.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008Aplus.Net Expands WebImage Design Service
Posted by Nathan Denny in Aplus.Net | 1 Comment
Big news from Aplus.Net! We’re happy to announce a whole new suite of add-on features for WebImage, our world-class web design service. The official press release is copied below; you can also read it on the official Aplus.Net news page.
OVERLAND PARK, KS – August 19, 2008 – Aplus.Net, a leading web hosting company and Internet solutions provider, has expanded WebImage, its web design service, to offer a full assortment of add-on options specially designed to facilitate online business growth.
The new features were designed to provide WebImage’s customers with the ability to add fundamental business functionality to their small business-oriented websites. Foremost among these upgrades are a basic shopping cart to support eCommerce functionality and a company logo service to help kick off marketing and branding efforts.
For website managers interested in monitoring visitor and web traffic data, WebImage now offers a Google-branded Advanced Site Statistics feature, as well as a basic web hit counter. In addition, customers now have the option of adding an unlimited amount of additional web pages to their existing design.
“For its price point, WebImage is absolutely the best value in professional-quality web design that this industry has to offer,” commented Alex Yevelev, Aplus.Net’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “And since Aplus.Net is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs grow their websites into successful businesses, we wanted to make sure WebImage provided every additional option any small business may need to succeed online.”
The new add-ons are available now at the company’s website, located at http://design.aplus.net/webimage-addons.html. For more information on Aplus.Net and its line of award-winning hosting plans, please visit the company’s website at http://www.aplus.net.
Thursday, July 3, 2008ICANN Opens Up Domains
Posted by Gina Crosby in Industry News: Trends | Leave a Comment
This is huge, huge step forward for the group that oversees the development of the internet. The board of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers–ICANN–unanimously approved some proposals that could open up domains past the standard .com, .org, .info, etc. This could open a lot of new websites in the future that are tailored to industry-specific websites, maybe like www.mymanolos.shop or www.arthurbryant.kc, for example. They look a little strange now, but I bet they grow quickly! Read the whole article here.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008Hooray Flash!
Posted by Gina Crosby in Developer's Corner, Industry News: Trends | Leave a Comment
Adobe is teaming up with search engine powerhouses like Google and Yahoo to enhance search engine indexing of Adobe Flash content. Read the press release here.
This is an amazing step forward for web content writers and producers! Now it’ll be easier and faster to make engaging, interactive, rich web content and still leave it accessible to search engine crawling. These are the kinds of trends we look for when we research and develop marketing solutions for our clients–and you better believe this will impact the deliverables we provide.
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