30 ways to promote your website on a shoestring budget - Tip 11

11. Domain Name

Your domain name represents one of the most important decisions you have to make in going online. The purpose of a domain name is similar to that of a street address or telephone number. The domain name directs customers to you on the Internet. The most popular domain names in Australia are “.com.au” and “.com”.

Ideally your domain name should be rich in keywords (words relating to your business) to ensure on-line success, especially with search engines.

If for example, you are a florist based in Sydney, it would be preferable for you to have one of the following domain names:

www.sydneyflorist.com.au
www.florist.com.au
www.sydneyflowers.com.au

You will, however, find that generic names such as the above are already taken. In that case, register something like:

www.cindysflowers.com.au
www.sydneyflowersandgifts.com.au

If your business name is for example “Jim & Sons”, ensure you include a description of what you actually do, eg.

www.jimandsonscarpetcleaning.com.au or
www.jimscarpetcleaning.com.au

Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Business
www.web4business.com.au

30 Ways to promote your business on a shoestring budget - Tip 3

3. Search Engines & Directories

A search engine is a searchable database of websites collected by a computer program (called a crawler, robot or spider). When you enter a keyword, the search engine looks for keywords in its database, and any relevant records are displayed. Currently there are thousands of search engines and directories on the internet. Some of the main ones include:
Google - www.google.com
Altavista - www.altavista.com
Yahoo - www.yahoo.com
Excite - www.excite.com
AllSearchEngines - www.allsearchengines.com
Northern Light - www.northernlight.com
DogPile - www.dogpile.com
AllTheWeb - www.alltheweb.com
Lycos - www.lycos.com

When submitting your website to the search engines, you can either do it manually by going to the search engine website and adding your URL (website address) or you can employ the services of a Search Engine Submission company, who will do it for you.
www.submitexpress.com
www.wpromote.com
www.website-submission.com

Search engines try to list sites that contain good content, so you need keywords and phrases on your pages that best describe your service and products. For example, if you are a florist, use the words such as florist, online florist, virtual florist, wedding florist, florist in Sydney, florist on line, flowers, floral, bouquets, floral arrangements etc as many times as possible to ensure high search engine ranking. To find out what keywords your customers may be searching on ask your family and friends or go to:http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/http://www.wordtracker.com

Once you decide on the keywords, use them in
(a) Your website’s domain name
(b) The title of your page - This is displayed in the top bar of your browser window
(c) The heading of your home page
(d) The first paragraph of your home page
(e) Meta tags - Keywords, page title, description
(f) Titles of your graphics

Whilst it is important to use keywords as much as possible, it is also important you use them only if they are relevant and do not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords you may be penalised or even banned by some search engines.

If this all seems too overwhelming, you can employ the services of a Search engine optimization company, who will make your website’s content more search engine friendly to make it rank higher. www.melbourneit.com.au (for VIP treatment - advise you are our customer - partner ID 5597)www.websight.net.au
www.bmcoptimise.com.au
www.e-channel.com.au

For a comprehensive listing of search engines, go to:
http://www.web4business.com.au/ResourcesListSearchEngines.htm

Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Business
www.web4business.com.au

Before submitting your website to Google ...

Inclusion in Google's search results is free and easy; you don't even need to submit your site to Google. Google is a fully automated search engine that uses software known as "spiders" to crawl the web on a regular basis and find sites to add to our index. In fact, the vast majority of sites listed in our results aren't manually submitted for inclusion, but found and added automatically when our spiders crawl the web.Before you submit your website to Google, Google recommends you do the following:

* Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."

* Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

* Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

* Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold(tm) that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

* Avoid hidden text or hidden links

* Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

* Don't send automated queries to Google.

* Don't load pages with irrelevant words.

* Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

* Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.

* Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

* If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

For more information visit: http://www.google.com/ or for Webmaster Guidelines, go to:

http://www.google.com.au/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Ivana Katz
Websites 4 Small Busines

http://www.web4business.com.au/