Copywriting 911

Choosing the Right Domain Name

October 5th, 2007

There are a few very important considerations to make when choosing a domain name for your business. The name itself should reflect your company or its services and products. While ego might dictate a personal name for your business, it is not recommended if you are marketing on the world wide web. Finding a business and domain name that tells what you do rather than who you are will be much more effective.

If at all possible, a one word domain name will have the greatest value and brand name recognition. Primary study data compiled by DomainsBot Labs shows that nouns are the most important part of speech when used in a website domain name. Two to three nouns used together can increase your ratings with the search engines to 90-100% serps (search engine results page). A noun and verb combination will still rank in the top 90 percentile. Some items to avoid in your domain name are hyphens between words and numbers used in place of letters. Made up words are also to be avoided unless you have a massive advertising budget to make the word familiar to the general public. Not only will they be harder for users to remember but the spelling errors generated will prevent your site from showing in results.

Once you have chosen your website name, it must be registered. You must purchase and register your domain name through an agent company. While the major search engine companies like Yahoo and Google offer this service, independent companies like GoDaddy can offer the same services for registering and hosting more economically. While you do not have to host your website with the same company you register the domain name with, there are advantages. Payments can be combined into packaged groups and discounted for multiple years of registry and hosting fees. Your registration fees should run no more than $10-15 USD per year.

Cost for hosting your website on the company’s servers depends upon the size and usage of your site and can be as little as $5 USD a month for a starter package and increase upward from there. Keeping your registration and hosting with the same company also makes it easier to keep up with your domain names and the times they need to be renewed. This is of the utmost importance as failure to keep your registration current can cause your domain name to default and possibly be sold to someone else.

While it may cost a bit more in registration fees, it is best to purchase all the top level domain name extensions for your business and website name. You will definitely want to use the [dot]com extension for your business website. Owning the rights to [dot]biz, [dot]org, [dot]net and [dot]info will prevent a competitor from creating a knockoff site similar to yours and funneling business from you.

Finding the availability of your chosen name can be searched through either your preferred registration company or use the services of whois[dot]com. Whois lists the ownership information and contact addresses of all domain name owners. They are also affiliated with companies that will act as agents to attempt purchasing currently active domains that you may wish to acquire.

What is the main condition for promoting your website? An appropriate niche being found? A brilliant advertising campaign? A good neighborhood? Of course, all these factors are of high importance, however, there exists the most significant consideration – that is content. In combination with smart linking and some other Internet marketing tips, good content can increase your site’s traffic incredibly, bring it to the highest SERP positions and make much profit.

Just imagine: amazing and captivating, original and logically organized, relevant and keyword rich content, sweet delicious content with an appetizing golden brown crust… But suddenly, to your horror, you discover that someone has stolen the basic feature of your site and now your content can’t be called unique anymore. What will you do?

In prehistoric times thieves were torn to threads or just fed to wild animals. People of the Middle Ages subjected them to tortures. Two centuries ago swindlers were killed in duels. But nowadays such steps are a little bit out of fashion, in addition, there is a more progressive way to punish tricksters – I mean DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

As a United States copyright law, DMCA outlaws production and distribution of devices which serve to obtain the access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes removing copyright management information, like the author, title, copyright owner’s name, terms for the data use and some identifying symbols. Such illegal actions as abuse of the copyright law and dissemination of anti-security tools imply various civil penalties – from banning the plagiarist website to imposing a fine or even imprisoning.

The law includes several exceptions, and not any borrowed data is considered the violation of DMCA. Thus, the act allows to use online information for educational, governmental and law enforcement purposes. Another example is computer programs or games coming in obsolete formats and requiring the original hardware to get access to; in this case the necessary programs are “borrowed” for the preservation or archival reproduction purposes.

But what if that isn’t the case, and your content, based on the best SEO copywriting technologies, was shamelessly stolen and placed onto other site(s)?

First you should determine the extent of the offense and try to find out about the infringer as much as possible. You can contact the circumventing websites’ owner directly or send him/her a warning letter. If your message is ignored, and the copyrighted content wasn’t removed from the offending site, make up a DMCA infringement notice by yourself, or with the help of a lawyer, and send it to the hosting provider.

To attain its object the notice should meet certain requirements. To make it clear, your notice has to contain detailed identity of the copyrighted material, such as identification of the web page or posts where the data was published and the URL coming with the title, name of the source and date, – or the link leading to the initial post. Then it should provide the identity of the infringed data, its name and all accompanying posts and pictures, if necessary. Don’t forget to include your contact information, like email or fax. The DMCA notice is concluded with the signatures of the copyright owner and the author. Such host as Google require handwritten signatures, yet in most cases an electronic one is still valid. (Learn more details and examples by visiting Google’s DMCA department on the web.)

The majority of hosts will reply to your DMCA notice within 1-3 business days. In most cases the response is favorable, as any host doesn’t want plagiarists on its service. Nevertheless, don’t send the notice without being completely sure your content was stolen, otherwise such actions will be considered illegal.

There are many example when, thanks to the DMCA’s interference, circumvented data was removed from the the sites-offenders, and the latter were even banned. So, be aware of these methods standing on guard over your website reputation.

Can a human being be substituted with a robot? Who is better – a man from flesh and blood with her unpredictable temper or a precise machine from stainless steel? According to the popular literature and cinema, terminators, despite all their strength, are on a lower stage of development. However, modern scientists have a different point of view, trying to prove that anything a man can do, a machine can do better.

Thus, one could suppose, up-to-date tools are to replace humans not only in quick calculating but also in writing. As webmasters have understood that the importance of content on site cannot be questioned, a whole variety of content generators and content rewriters have appeared, allegedly making the process of writing easier and less time consuming. Here, you’d only need to paste a genuine article in the text space, click the “generate” button – and to obtain a new article featuring “unique” content. If you click 10 times – you will get 10 different new articles, 100 clicks equal to 100 rewritten articles, and some content generators can create thousands of them!

But who might need such an infinite number of articles?

People who are running an online business know that a good, search engine optimized article is the best way to promote their product. Yet, writing kilometers of text for websites requires much time and money, and in addition, many people think it is incredibly boring. Moreover, as for SEO purposes content should be updated on a regular basis, writing original copy for one’s site can become an unpleasant routine for some webmasters. So, they just buy some spinning tools and multiply one and the same content.

Content generating tools come in several ways. Some of them (known as rewriters, spinners or spoolers) only replace separate words with their synonyms from an in-built thesaurus; others include additional words or phrases and change the structure of sentences preserving the original sense. Besides that, there exist content generators which only need keywords or phrases to be provided, and, with the help of online article directories or other resources, they produce articles almost from scratch.

Nevertheless, the quality of such output more often than not leaves a lot to be desired, and even the most sophisticated article generator doesn’t guarantee your content will be considered original by search engines. According to Google, each page is analyzed not as a whole but in parts, so, replacing several words with synonyms won’t do, and a rewritten article of this kind will be easily detected by search engines. With that said, there is a definite rate of permissible matches, so if the percentage is too high, Google will classify the article as plagiarism. If you don’t want to write a genuine article or get it written by professionals for you, and prefer generating content through auto tools, or just “borrow” it from the Internet, its rightful owner can appeal to Google and, according to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) your website may be banned once and forever.

Apart from that, the effectiveness of content generating tools varies greatly, and some of them don’t manage to keep the logical order of sentences, so a rewritten article has to be edited manually.

The matter of automated content generators in copywriting sphere resembles disputes about computer assisted translators: there is no arguing that machines may store more information about a language than its native speakers; however, they still can’t compare with a professional human translator/interpreter. The same applies to modern intellectual medical equipment: would one agree to be operated on by a clever robot, and no qualified surgeon?

Developing an online business, it is very useful to remember that articles are written not only for search engines. PEOPLE ALSO READ THEM. That is why content is so important. Good content can boost profits hundredfold, so choosing the author is a crucial point for your success. Nobody knows what kind of Internet technologies will be invented tomorrow, but today a content generator, even a most advanced and innovative one, can’t replace creative and ingenious human brain.

Recently Google has become the most popular search engine in the world. Among the factors of its success are first-rate performance, ease of use and the high quality of search results ensured by a sophisticated algorithm that includes such Google’s know-how as the PageRank. Developed by Larry Page (allegedly hence the name) and Sergey Brin in 1995, PageRank measures the site relevancy by assessing the quality and quantity of its inbound links.

To put it differently, PageRank considers all the incoming links as “votes” for a webpage, so the more links a page has, the higher PageRank it’s likely to show.

Yet the quality of links also matters. Thus, five links from authoritative search engine-optimized sites with good content are better than a hundred of links from low-quality or spammy sites (the so called bad neighborhood) which, by the way, can provoke Google to ban your site. Those webmasters who try to outwit Google ranking tools are more likely to outwit themselves, in fact. Nowadays link manipulation has achieved such a massive scale that Google had to introduce special punishments, devaluing “false” links. Thus, if your incoming links have been bought or come from irrelevant and poor quality sites, your website really runs the risk of being frowned upon by Google and – potentially penalized in a certain way.

Another popular path that some people take to grow their PageRank is link exchange. Either that is the case of linking by mutual agreement (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) which is a popular topic within some online forums, or a kind of family linking, like “This is my grandma’s site, that’s the site of my best friend, and click here to see my dog’s site”, Google tends to lower the value of both, especially if the topics of linked sites don’t match or their IPs coincide. In addition, from the point of view of PageRank raising, reciprocal links are less important than one way links, so such an exchange won’t help you much with high ranking.

The good news is that, apart from gray- to black-hat link building methods, there also exist many legitimate and effective ways to get incoming links. Some of them will be favorable to your site’s traffic, others will optimize it for SEs, and there are things which are good for both.

To to get more incoming links, start your link-baiting campaign. Let the online world know about you: sign the guest books of the sites with related content theme, leave testimonials, write product reviews (e.g. on Amazon.com), post comments on blogs or start your own blog and tag its posts on Technorati.

Submitting your articles to the trustworthy websites with high PageRank, such as iSnare, EzineArticles and GoArticles might also be a smart idea. Next, you can submit your site to free or paid directories; in particular it would be great to get listed in DMOZ; or create your own topical directory.

While PageRank refers not to the site as a whole, but to each separate page, optimize your site’s navigational structure to better distribute its PageRank. Consider arranging some freebies – people will appreciate it and possibly refer to your site.

It is also advisable to update your website regularly so it always appears fresh and interesting for visitors.

All in all, the above tips have been proven to work, but still please keep in mind that the most important step to increase your site’s PageRank is to fill it with unique high-quality content, easy to understand and worthy of linking to. Good and relevant content can be more significant for developing your authority than other factors, so make sure it is your starting point when optimizing your site.

As such, if you can’t create brilliant content yourself, hire copywriting specialists whose work will help to grow your site’s popularity and make it be in the lead.

Whether you deal with online marketing and sell goods or services through the Web, or just want to popularize your personal site, you can largely succeed by applying the following Longtail SEO tips:

First, choose various word combinations for the keywords to make them more specific. Phrases of 3 or 4 words will convert more potential buyers than 1-word ones. Combinations are also used to target many different tail terms. For instance, creating a page with the title “New Jersey Spa Salons” is better than “New Jersey Salons” and “Spa Salons”, as it captures both terms at once.

 

Another important point is to choose more target keywords using keyword lists which can be charted with the help of Google AdWords, Wordtracker, Overture or Google labs tools.

Remember that each page of your website should have enough keywords, otherwise it will be difficult to discover.

Moreover, take into account that while targeting the tail, you shouldn’t use far-fetched terms. Thus, an article about landscape-gardening with the keyword “Godzilla” will hardly do, as these two topics hardly have anything in common.

 

The rank of your website also depends on the quantity of pages in the search index. The more content you can offer – the more visitors will be attracted by your site.

 

However, while working on the quantity don’t forget about the quality: modern search engines are sophisticated enough to identify if the body text is connected with the keywords or not, and whether keywords are relevant.

 

Of course, good site navigation is also very helpful, especially if your site contains many pages. As a good housekeeper knows the location of pots and pans in her kitchen, a website visitor should have a clear view of how to find the necessary information. So place a link to the site map in the footer of every page, or at least put it onto the home page.

 

In addition, get more inbound external links to every page of your website. Build at least 2-3 inbound links referring to the correspondent specific terms on your site.

 

And finally, to increase the competitiveness of your website, you should draw links from respectful sites with good quality content.

 

Such a Longtail SEO approach is quite effective and can considerably optimize your site’s PageRank.

The reality is such that even the pithiest and the most creative sites may remain unknown to the targeted audience if the ranking factors of Search Engine Optimization – or SEO – weren’t considered by the web master. With the appearance of SEO technologies encompassing a wide range of methods the process of searching has become much easier, and so has site promotion. In fact, SEO techniques have had a dramatic impact on the world marketing, at times making online business even more profitable than offline one. Nowadays, to succeed in the Internet marketing, each online man of affairs should know the basics of SEO and use it in a proper way.

Without any doubt, website traffic – or how many people have visited your site – is of ultimate importance. High traffic implies a greater income, while low traffic means the site owner doesn’t make much profit. It is also clear that traffic depends on your ranking directly.

According to the leading experts, the most important ranking factor is the appropriate keyword use in title and body text, as well as the relationship of keywords to body text content.

Some SEO specialists claim that if there isn’t enough time to apply all SEO tools, one should work only on a good title. Nevertheless, others believe that it is not so much important to create a good title as to avoid a bad one which can absolutely ruin the page. Furthermore, the keyword must figure not only in the title but also in the body text, because it also optimizes the ranking. Yet, it is worth keeping in mind that the abuse of keyword phrase using leads to the suppression of ranking, too. SEO experts also think that such a factor as semantical relationship between the body text and the targeted terms will considerably develop in future, as search engines are improving constantly.

As you see, choosing the right keyword is the most effective way to achieve success. Some words, like credit or travel, are very popular on the web: having typed them in the search bar you’ll see an endless list of links, and it takes some time to find what exactly you need. Actually, it often takes MUCH time, as the ranking page offers all possible word combinations and usage. So, rather often potential customers get tired before they manage to find the relevant information and get the goods they wanted.

No way out? Don’t panic! All you have to do is to grow a long SEO tail to your website which will contribute much to your progress in online marketing. So what is the Longtail SEO?

Let’s suppose you’re selling lingerie over the Internet. As you probably know, this niche is overcrowded with distributors, and if you choose lingerie for the keyword, it will be quite difficult to find your site among myriads of others. But if the term is specialized, like white sheer Italian silk lingerie, your site has a good chance to be noticed by the targeted clients. As a result, your site’s traffic increases attracting advertisers and making a greater profit. Besides that, Longtail SEO brings more targeted traffic, favoring referral commissions and sales. Another Lontail SEO advantage is that it saves money, as you have to spend less on link building. Moreover, using Longtail SEO you don’t have to worry so much about changes in search engine algorithms which become smarter day after day and weed out websites with irrelevant content. In this way, Longtail SEO helps your site not only to win a desirable position in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), but also to hold it for a long time.

So, Longtail SEO is completely indispensable while running an online business, and, as any subject, it can be studied.

To be continued…

It may seem strange, but originally the idea of junk mail was quite innocent: in 1978 Gary Thuerk, currently known as the Father of spam, decided to create such mail invitations that would be quick to send and wouldn’t cost much. As the mailing list of Digital Equipment Corporation, where Gary worked as a marketing manager, numbered 600 persons, it would take a long time to make up a personal message for each of them. So, Gary just drafted one invitation and sent it to all 600 people.
This way spam came into the world – the world that not only didn’t expect it but also was completely horrified by the annoying “newcomer”.

Today the average computer user gets around 10 junk mails per day, and this amount is increasing year by year. Spammers never rest, sending about 90 billion spam messages a day, mainly through botnets or zombie networks – Internet computers used to transmit spam and viruses. Thus, spam damages both the national economy as a whole and separate companies in particular, making people spend time on reading junk messages and money on installing spam filters.

One of the most irritating things about junk mail is that once your computer is equipped with some spam detection mechanism, permission-based messages can happen to be never delivered to your inbox only because your filter treated them like spam. Just imagine that your business partner addresses you a list of tempting discounts, but as the mail contains such prohibited words as earn or discount, your spam filter classifies it as spam, and you remain absolutely unaware of a profitable business offer.

To prevent the formation of false positives – legitimate messages which are determined by spam checkers as spam – you should follow these spam filtering advice:

First create more than one e-mail address. One or more addresses are used for business contacts, friends and family, while a separate e-mail is dedicated to dealing with commercial companies and service supplies. This way spam is unlikely to interfere in your business affairs and personal life.

Secondly, if you receive a mail from a familiar sender, but the message contains a suspicious attachment, check with the sender. In case he/she didn’t send any, delete the message without viewing it.

Generally the subject line of business letters have a definite well-thought topic which reflects the content neatly. However, some people neglect this rule and leave the subject line empty, or, which is worse, write something like !!! and some words in capital letters. In this case email protection systems think the message is spam and eliminate it. Ask all your correspondents to indicate the topic in the subject line properly.

Besides that, you can show your junk mail filter what is spam and what is not, using such systems as Barracuda Quarantine or e-filtrate which also help to identify the spam rate for your own outcoming messages.

Finally, if you want to stop receiving newsletters you subscribed to before, don’t use the “Report as Spam” button, but just click “Unsubscribe” instead. Otherwise the mailer will block this message not only from you but also from other recipients, and you may become an obstacle to people’s correspondence.