The SEO Scout

Talking to Search Engines is Like Talking To A 3 Year Old

Website SEO is like talking to a 3 year old. A Quick Analogy.

Let’s use the example of teaching a three year old NOT to touch fire. But let’s do it in terms of SEO. 

THE THREE YEAR OLD:

When you are trying to convey a lesson to a three year old you have to be very, very clear. You have got to stay on topic and remember that too many words will only befuddle and irritate them.

You start with the most important message, “Don’t Touch!!!” Then you might explain that fire is hot. Then reiterate, “don’t touch”. blah blah blah… “don’t touch”. When it’s all said and done, you close strong with… “So don’t touch!”

OK, search engines are EXACTLY THE SAME!

SEARCH ENGINES:

When you are talking to search engines, you use Keywords to get traffic. You tell the search engines what you are about with them… “Coffee shop”. You have to be very clear about what your page is about and not get distracted by talking about too many other things.

So, you take those keywords, “coffee shop”, and put them throughout your site, just like the conversation with the three year old. You open with them, as a header for a section of your content… and then you use them frequently in the content itself.

You do this so that the search engines will see the keywords and know what you’re about. Search engines are easily confused, so be clear with them! And whatever you do, finish strong! “Coffee Shop”! Put it at the end of your content and even at the very bottom of the page. 

If you have a good SEO guy, he’ll do the same thing with your code that you have done with your content!

Ciao

The SEO Scout

(Source: everdreamweb.com)

A Website Name - .COM, .NET, What Should You Get

There are SO MANY Domain Name extensions on the internet. How can you know which one to get!

First Choice: Buy a .COM. Even if you can’t get the exact domain name you want and have to settle for a slight variation, as long as it still makes sense a .COM is best. Why? Because if you tell someone to go to terribletigers.us and they don’t do it for a few days, the odds are good that if they remember the domain name at all they will type it in as terribletigers.COM.

Price: .COM domains should be about $11 or $12 per year. If you are at a domain registrar (a website that sells domains) and it is MORE than that, you should just close the browser window and go to a GoDaddy reseller like http://everdreamdomains.com. You will never pay inflated prices at a Godaddy reseller site.

Second Choice: .NET or .ORG work as good back ups if you can’t get a .COM. If you don’t want to settle for a variation of the domain name you want and it is already taken in the .com’s… These extensions are solid and preferred over the rest of the pack.

Price: These extensions vary in price but again, they average about $11 or $12  per year. 

Third Choice: If you are not a government agency or a non-profit and you plan to drive traffic to your website with ads or by spreading your websites hyperlink around blogs and forums, it really doesn’t matter what extension you buy. .US, .CO, .INFO or any other extension will do fine. I recommend that if you can’t get a .COM, a .NET or a .ORG, try to get a .INFO.

Price: They can be purchased for the least money. Right now, at our domain registrar EVERDREAMDOMAINS.COM we are selling .US Domains for $3.99 per year, and .INFO Domains are $2.99 per year.

The SEO Scout

A Website Name - Domain Names Explained In Detail

A Website Name Can Make or Break Your First Year On the Internet!

In this blog, I want to clarify something that I am always writing about and it has come to my attention that I’m glossing over a very important part of it.

OK, I always tout the importance of a Domain name. I truly think it can make or break a new businesses first year on the web. And when I mention it, I always say to use keywords in the domain name that will get searched by people that you want to find you.

I re-read some of the blogs and I see that from the point of view of a beginner to the web, this is loaded with “fuzzy math”. The advice just assumes that the reader knows what I mean by “searched” and “find you” and “keywords”. So today I’ll break down the concept. Here goes:

“KEYWORDS” in your Domain Name

When you open your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome… or something like them) to view the Internet, or to “go online”, it will take you to whatever home page it takes you to. Let’s say though, that today you didn’t open the browser and go online to read whatever home page you have. Today, you are going online to find a sweater for your dog! So, at the top of the browser somewhere is a “search” box where you can type in your searches. You click on the box and type in “Dog Sweaters”. Those two words will be used by a search engine to bring you back results that will list websites that may help you in your quest for a new dog sweater. They are called keywords because they are words that are “key” in helping a business get found on the Internet when people do searches like this.

The search engine only wants to give you website links that are relevant to your search. If they do a good job, and you find what you want real fast, you will always use their search engine when you are looking for stuff. And when people use their search engine, they make money!

The search engine puts up a list of results for me. Websites that it thinks will be the best for me to visit to learn about “dog sweaters”, and today at the top of the list is petsmart.com. That’s really no surprise, because the words “dog sweaters” are all over their site in certain places and they have a lot of other dog related content on their site. Plus… their site gets a great deal of traffic, telling the search engine that other people like the site a lot and find it useful, so you might also.

OK, so here’s the lesson! Petsmart.com does NOT have the words “dog sweaters” in their domain name. Their domain name is just Petsmart.com. So why are they number one in the search results? Because they have a massive site with a great deal of content related to dogs and the sweaters they wear AND they have a lot of traffic. It would take a lot to rank higher than petsmart.com when it comes to any keywords that are pet related. But… if you look down on page one near the bottom (at least on this day) there is a domain named chillydogsweaters.com. 

That site, chillydogsweaters.com, has NO business being on page one. It’s a modest site that looks like it was made by a business owner or on a shoestring budget at best. And it has no real SEO work that I can detect at first glance, yet it is on the first page of results given to me by Google when I searched “dog sweaters”. The ONLY reason this site is on page one is because the words “dog sweaters” are in the actual domain name. Google and the other search engines give a lot of weight to that. They figure that no one is more about dog sweaters than the people who actually bought a domain name with the words in it! And they are right 99% of the time. Really, why would anyone buy a domain name with those words in them unless they had at least something to do with dog sweaters.

Because the good folks at Chillydogsweaters.com had the good sense to buy that domain name, they are on page 1 of the search results for the keyword phrase “dog sweaters”. Anytime anyone in the world searches for dog sweaters, they will see that link and might click on it. They are probably getting big numbers of visitors to their website because they are on page one of Googles search results for the keyword phrase “dog sweaters”! 

Now, you can apply this logic to literally anything. My friend is a motivational speaker and he has the words “motivational speaker” in his domain name! 

I hope this helps explain why it is so critical to think through the process of buying your domain name. If you have more questions, use the “Ask The SEO Scouts” button at the top of this page and shoot me the question. I’ll answer as best I can!

All the best,

The SEO Scout

Visit our sites to learn more about Domain Names, Website Hosting & Custom SEO Websites

A Website Name - How Important it is and How to Get It?

Your website name (domain name) may well be the single most important part of your pressence as a business on the Internet. If you don’t have a domain name already, you should look into getting one. Here are a few pointers on the subject:

Domain Names are the thing that tell a person surfing the web what the name of your company is, or what you are selling or providing. Therefore, while you are choosing a domain name it is NOT the time to be clever or funny, unless ‘clever’ or ‘funny’ is what you are selling or will help people find you. In most cases, a domain name needs to serve a higher purpose, it needs to GET YOU FOUND.

First and foremost, buy a domain name that contains the search terms people will use when trying to find you. With that in mind, here’s some tips:

1. If your company name is what you intend to brand on the internet, buy a domain that has your company name in it. For example, if your company is named Oliver Twist Dance Academy, a variation of that name would be a good domain. Maybe, “www.olivertwistdance.com”. I took off the “Academy” because it’s a lot to type in. You have to consider that. Don’t make your domain too long, the shorter the better. Caution, if people don’t know your company name, they won’t be searching for it! You’ll have to do some serious networking or SEO before the name gets out there.
2. If your services are how you’d like to be found, you should name your domain whatever people are searching for to find that service. For example, the Oliver Twist Dance Academy teaches people how to do the “twist”. So they might buy a domain like, “www.learntotwist.com”. Caution, do a little research and be sure people are really looking for that term “learn to twist”. Because if no one is looking for it, well… then no one will look for it. You might find something similar that is getting searched for and opt for that instead. Use a keyword research tool like Google’s Keyword Tool to do some research on what is and what isn’t getting searched for. If that just sounds to mind boggling to do, call an SEO company like everdreamweb.com to advise you or even do the research for you. If you know someone in the business, call them! Talking to someone you can trust is key when you are making big decisions like this that will have a long lasting impact on your business.
3. If you want to cast a bigger net, you might try buying a domain that contains general words that you just KNOW are getting searched, like “www.citydance.com”, replacing the word “city” with your city’s name. This is a great way to go, but there are two problems that could come up. One, the domain name might be taken because it has such popular words in it. Two, if the words are popular they will probably have a lot of competition on the Internet, so rising in the search engine rankings might be tough or require the assistance of an SEO company.

Yep. A website name can make or break you. So choose your domain name with care and consult a professional before you do it because it may be that they have some insight you can benefit from. I have personally seen businesses fail because of a bad domain name (really, really long) and then SEO work done to push the name of the website, not the services. All of that hard SEO work went to waste because no one was typing in the name of that company as a search term. A little good advice could have gone a really long way with them.

Have some fun looking up domain names at everdreamsites.com and if you have any questions, give us a hollar at info@everdreamweb.com or just click on the “Ask” link at the top of this page!

All the best

The SEO Scout

Making sense of Domains, Hosting and Websites

Making sense of Domains, Hosting and Websites

Internet Business 101

AN INTRODUCTION FOR NEWCOMERS TAKING A BUSINESS TO THE WEB

For some, getting a domain name and a hosting account for your website is easy. For others, it’s as mysterious and hard to understand as Ozzy Osbourne. It’s this second group which I would like to address today.

When I am describing the process of starting up a web business I like to use the analogy of a brick and mortar business that is being ran out of a real store front. Maybe a store front that is in a strip mall. That’s something we can all relate to and understand. And I like to point out that having an internet business is just the same as having a store in the real world. Here’s the analogy

1. EVERY BUSINESS NEEDS AN ADDRESS

A brick and mortar business

If you want to go to buy something, and it’s at a business you’ve never been to before, you are going to need to know where to go. For this, you will look up the address of the business. Let’s say that what you need is an organic widget and that the business that sells them is called Organic Widgets, Inc.

You do your homework and look up the location to learn that it’s located at 1234 Main St. Super! Now you know the name of the business and where it is! You can finally get that organic widget you’ve had your eyes on!!! You go there and a big sign over the building says “Organic Widgets”. Yes! You are in the right place.

An internet business

If you would like to go to a website and look for something, you will also need an address. An address on the Internet is called either a URL, or a Domain. And the domain name for that same widget company is WeSellOrganicWidgets.com. Now you know where to go.

You see, the brick and mortar store has somewhere to put all of there stuff (a building) and a big sign over the building that says their name. This way their customers can find them and come shop… a website is no different. But rather than keeping their stuff in a “building”, they keep it in a “website”. And instead of a big sign over the website, they have a domain name. One of the first things you should do is to purchase a domain name and a good rule is to name it something that is directly related to your product or service.

So, the store in the real world has a building. The store on the Internet has a website like the one to the right. It’s that simple.

You are going to want to hire a website design and development company that can design and “build” your website for you.

2. EVERY BUSINESS NEEDS TO “BE” SOMEWHERE

A brick and mortar business

When you are driving up to the Organic Widgets store you see that it is in a building. Well that’s no surprise, after all, they have to keep all of those wonderful widgets somewhere. So a piece of real estate was used to build the store on.

An Internet business

An Internet business does not need a plot of land since it is just a bunch of computer files, so it is kept in what is called a Hosting account. Think of a hosting account as a piece of virtual real estate. This hosting account is where the files are stored that will tell people’s computers what to show when the website is viewed on their computers. 

SUMMARY

I hope this helps to understand how companies are put on the Internet. Once you understand the general mechanics of having a website on the Internet, you can focus on the concept of marketing on the Internet so that people will FIND your site!

EverDream Sites is our NEW business site. We not only offer custom web design and SEO (search engine optimization) programs, but also Domain Names, Hosting Accounts, Carts, Email and everything else a company could ever need to build a successful business on the web!

The SEO Scouts