Web Site Find
5. Is Your Website FINDABLE?
Your domain name(s).
You should have a domain name that clearly identifies the name of your business, one that matches your business name. It is the ULTIMATE if it is available in a .com, but any TLD extension will do if it is not.
The protocols for .net and .org have never actually been followed or enforced, but you’ll not get a .gov or .edu. So, even though there were specific designs for .net and .org, you can use them if they are available.
As a matter of fact, you should get the .com, .net and .org for your business if you can, just to ensure that people find you by your domain name. (Your web hosting provider can park any number of domains to the same web hosting account, so all of them can work for the same website)
If your business name and therefore domain name is long, it will provide an additional convenience for people if you will get an "easy to type" abbreviated name for them. We probably host multiple domain names for 25% of our clients for this reason.
Print media advertising.
The number one reason that every small business owner should have an affordable and effective website presence is that a website can EXTEND every other form of marketing that you do.
Your business cards, brochures, newspaper advertising, other print publications and phone book ads should ALWAYS include your website domain name in clear type.
Again, if you have a long business name (and therefore a long domain name) an abbreviated version is a very friendly, convenient thing to do for your clients. Do you want them to have to try and type in your domain name several times? They will often "miss" and think your website doesn’t work or land on a competitor’s site instead.
Do you really want that to happen?
Let’s suppose your business name is "DeLaCallis Pizza and Pasta Palace." Should you get this domain?
delacallispizzaandpastapalace.com? Yes. I really think you should, because that is the name of your business, and you should own the exact domain name in the .com extension if at all possible.
But I would not publish it in any print media! I would also get something like this: dpapp.com. I would use that in all of my print media and have my website host point the abbreviated domain to the same account as "delacallispizzaandpastapalace.com", and PRESTO, either domain gets you to the exact same website.
If your domain is sort of long but not so hard to type, use proper case in the type in print media, like this example:
John owns a marine repair shop, and the name of the shop is "Johns Marine Repair". Publish the domain in print like this: www.JohnsMarineRepair.com.
Note: domain names and email addresses are NOT case sensitive as many people suppose, however, if an email address is used as a login ID (as they most often are today), then it WILL be case sensitive. Why? Because in this particular application it is NOT really an email address, it is a LOGIN ID, and Login ID’s and Passwords are ALWAYS case sensitive.
Audio Advertising.
Should you list your website’s domain name in audio? YES! Abbreviated domains may be helpful here as well. In an audio ad, it should be repeated multiple times, especially if you want them to visit your website for more information.
Did you know that the younger and now aging population (born about 1975 or after) are more likely to use the web than a phone book, which brings us to another little tidbit — the second reason that every small business owner needs an effective and affordable website presence today is that more and more people use search engines like we used to use phone books!
Video Advertising.
Same song, second verse to that above, but it doesn’t hurt to have your website’s domain name display at the end of the video, and if you can, have the link at the end of the video be clickable to get to your website (unless the video is being run on your own site).
Directories.
It is worth the money to pay for indexing in some directories, and many business affiliation groups will list your website with a clickable link in their directory as a part of the membership fee.
If you are considering advertising in a directory, ask for a report of unique visitors and be sure and evaluate how closely the directory’s demographics match your potential client base.
Search Engines.
This is most difficult. Some less sophisticated users of the internet use search engines to type in domain names, which is not the purpose of a search engine, of course.
I am continually amazed to consult with small business owners regularly who insist that their website is on the very top of the search engines, when they are simply typing in their domain name.
This is really what the address window on your internet browsing program is for! You can just type the correct domain directly into the browser without using a search engine, but there are many people that actually don’t know or do this.
No search engine should miss this! But they sometimes do. If your website is new, it depends upon when the search engine sends a "spider" that "crawls the server" that hosts your site as to when that search engine will yield results to browsers that type in your domain name.
But the real nature of search engines is to help people find your business when they don’t know you or your business.
In the example listed previously about "DeLaCallis Pizza and Pasta Palace", I’ve got a bit of news for you. Anyone who is looking to order a special pizza and just types "pizza" into the search engine is truly ignorant.
Let us place "DeLaCallis Pizza and Pasta Palace" in the city of Seattle, Washington. (If there is such a business anywhere on planet earth, I am unaware of it, I just made it up).
A resident of Seattle may want to try some new pizza place that they don’t know of, and so he would type in "Seattle Pizza Parlor", or "Best Pizza in Seattle" or "Seattle Gourmet Pizza" maybe.
In such a case, Mr. DeLaCallis needs to have pages on his website that has those keywords on them, otherwise, someone else will be getting that business. Every website can benefit from what is known as "Search Engine Optimization" but businesses need the service at differing levels depending upon the nature of their business.
If you have questions about Search Engine Optimization, you may call my company (PROSBO) toll free at 888.249.2539, or visit http://www.serseo.com.
How FINDABLE is your Web site? Grade it!
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