"What's The Big Fuss About Long Domain Names?"

Written by Alan Yap


The word is out. You can now register domain names of up to 67 characters. This is going to shoot your ranking way up onrepparttar search engines. Because if you stuff all your keywords into your domain name, search engines are simply going to love your site. Or so they say...

But is that reallyrepparttar 108339 truth?

No point speculating. Let's do a little test...

Go to your favorite search engine, say AltaVista. Key in your search term, say "website promotion." Look atrepparttar 108340 top 10 rankings, closely.

How many of these top rankings actually haverepparttar 108341 full term "website promotion" in their domains?

No hype, just facts.

Call me a natural sceptic if you want. Whenrepparttar 108342 news hitrepparttar 108343 town, with allrepparttar 108344 "Special Announcements" flying everywhere, urging people to "go grab a new all-you-can- stuff keyword rich domain name and emerge tops in search engine ranking," I was not at all moved. I believe this is too simplistic an approach to getting high search engine placements:

1. Besides keywords in domain names, search engines look at a few other factors for relevancy. In fact, this is what Don Dodge, AltaVista's Director of Engineering said: "Keywords inrepparttar 108345 domain name do not help much in ranking. We look at half a dozen factors in ranking. The words onrepparttar 108346 page, their frequency and position onrepparttar 108347 page, are still amongrepparttar 108348 most important factors."

2. Search engines are constantly evolving. Once they find out that such keyword-stuffed domain names are content-poor sites with low relevance, they are going to come up with new rules to preclude such sites from gettingrepparttar 108349 top spots.

Finding that Winning Combination...

Written by Bill Quimby


A good domain name is valuable, butrepparttar combination of a domain name and a good vanity 800 number can be priceless in marketing. The right 800 number allows your advertising to reach several times as many people that are not onrepparttar 108338 internet regularly. It generates instant credibility and recognition and helps to create that all important million dollar brand name. But withrepparttar 108339 incredible scarcity of both .COMS and 800 numbers, how could you ever come up that all important combination?

All too often companies get one piece (likerepparttar 108340 domain name) without consideringrepparttar 108341 other and then often run into also brick wall and have to settle for something less. The phone companies will often tell you that 877 is exactlyrepparttar 108342 same thing as 800. And that is true if you consider .CC or .TOrepparttar 108343 same thing as .COM. They may be technically able to dorepparttar 108344 same thing, but in their marketing potential they are totally different. So if you aren’t willing to settle for .CC for your domain, then don’t settle forrepparttar 108345 same thing in your phone number since just like your domain name, that is how so many of your customers will find you.

The first step is definitelyrepparttar 108346 most important and oftenrepparttar 108347 one that gets skipped over way to quickly. Creativity is definitelyrepparttar 108348 key to finding either a domain name or a phone number. The good news is that it doesn’t cost any more money to be more creative. It just takes some brain power and a little effort. I’ll outlinerepparttar 108349 process of gettingrepparttar 108350 number briefly but you’re really not ready until you have 50-100 or more possible names. So be prepared to really spend time in this part.

The first step of brainstorming is to look for any type of keywords. Just put down everything possible you can come up with related to your company, your message, your product or service, your benefits or your customers and what they are looking for. Take a look atrepparttar 108351 keywords from your website or those of your competitors. Carryrepparttar 108352 list with you for several days, and involve as many people as you can. If there are other people in your organization consider having a contest to see who can come up withrepparttar 108353 most possible names/words. Short words are good because they allow you to combine them with a number of other prefixes or suffixes.

Next use some of these mechanical brainstorming exercises and sites which will help you come up with possibilities you may not have thought of. Start with an excellent online thesaurus tool at Plumb Design (http://www.PlumbDesign.com). Next, after you’ve added any possible synonyms, take a look at what other people have done to get ideas at Whois.net (http://www.whois.net). Look atrepparttar 108354 registered and perhaps better,repparttar 108355 recently unregistered domain names there. Finally use an interesting java search term suggestion tool available (click on option number one) at GoTo.com (http://www.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/othertools.jhtml) Try these tools with each ofrepparttar 108356 words that you come up with and you will literally get dozens of additional possible names. You can also try a neat tool for creating new words at a site for inventing new words called, NetSubstance (http://www.netsubstance.com) Then finally, you should combine as many of these names together with my list of possible prefixes and suffixes at http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/finding.htm to stretch your list even further.

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