While it is relatively simple to create an online presence, it does take some time and there is a minimal cost (usually less than 30/year) to get going. There are free ways as well (such as social media marketing and some blogging sites) but if you’re looking for a dedicated website, you’ll need a domain name and a hosting account.

The wisest and cheapest way to get things moving is to pick a subject (niche) you’re passionate about, whether it’s dog walking, making jam, starting a charity or collecting Lamborghinis! The next bit involves choosing what they call a ‘keyword rich’ domain name. This is so someone looking for a website that deals with whatever your passion is, will come across your website/blog… (i.e. ilovelamborghinis.com) and so that search engines can find you as well. There is NO POINT in choosing a domain name like www.mynameisjoeblogs.com if you sell exotic fruit. No one will find you!

You can go to Google AdWords and type in some of your ideas for a domain name and they will instantly provide you with how many searches are done under your subject area/name choice. It is important to get a domain name that has a good balance between ‘competition’ (so you know people are making money in that niche) and how many ‘local/global monthly searches’ there are for your domain name idea (so you know people are actually looking for what you have to offer).

Domain names cost anywhere from a couple of dollars to hundreds of dollars or more if there’s a lot of competition for it, say, www.johnnydepp.com. Only register your new domain as your personal name (ie. JohnDoe.co.uk) if you are already well-known in your niche or trade for the reasons stated above. (You’ll want to do this later on when you start making some money and/or become famous:), so no one tries to cash in on YOU but you!) So remember, anyone wanting to buy anything about say, jam-making, will not be able to find your absolutely terrific, high content, great graphics website/blog and amazing offers from JohnDoe.com! They’re not connected in anyone’s reality but yours.

HOW TO DO IT… REGISTERING (BUYING) A DOMAIN NAME…

There are a lot of sites that sell (register) domain names such as 123-reg, NameCheap or GoDaddy. Try to purchase a domain name that has a high TLD (top level domain) extension such as.com,.co.uk,.net or.org. These are called TLD’s because they are the most popular (slightly more expensive) and are more likely to rank on search engines again, so people can find your site more easily.

Listen, at this point you are only buying the web address, so go with the least expensive but make sure you are allowed to change nameservers (you don’t need to know what this means at this point, just make sure they do allow it by calling, emailing or checking through their website – I haven’t heard of any that don’t allow nameserver changes) in case you decide you do not want to have it ‘hosted’ with the place where you’ve purchased it.

To make things perfectly clear if you’re a TOTAL newbie (that is if you didn’t know what a domain was), to use an analogy, let us say your purchased ‘domain name’ is a car (ie a vehicle to earn you money). It is just a car to which you have the keys, you’re not driving it yet and you have nowhere to park it.

To continue that analogy… we now have a brand spanking new car and we need somewhere to park it. That’s what a host does for you. It’s not enough to have your car (domain name) now you have to find somewhere to keep it (host). There are a number of good hosting packages around. Hostgator, 123-reg, namecheap all have great packages and are not too expensive.

That said, make sure that you contact their support people before you buy

to make sure you can actually get someone on the line when you need an answer and
to make sure their ‘how to’ instructions are not so obscure that a newbie can’t follow them, so get in touch and ask lots of questions.

I would recommend you use a hosting site that allows you to ‘live chat’ 24/7 with the technical staff, in case you need answers in the middle of the night UK time when your hosting company is located stateside and they aren’t open yet.

Congratulations! Now have your car and somewhere to keep it. The next thing you have to do is build a garage around it (website) to which you can invite people to come and admire your shiny new car. You can get someone to do that for you for a price, or you can do it yourself.

Want to learn more about getting yourself an online presence? Get your FREE copy of the HOW TO DO IT series…

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http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kathleen_Conabree

Domain names (DN) are alphabetic names used to refer to computers on the Internet and contain a suffix such as.com,.org,.gov, or.edu.

A Registrant (end user) usually registers DN through a Registrar. (Hosting companies act as registrars)

• Each name is unique.

• Propagation time for new registrations is 24-72 hours.

• WHOIS maintenance is the sole responsibility of the Registrant.

• WHOIS database will indicate the following important information:

• The Registrant

• Expiration Date

• Status

• Authoritative Name Servers

• Current Registrar

Registrant

• The person or company who registers the DN

• To do this, they need to contact the Registrar of their choice.

Registrar

o The company with whom the Registrant registers their DN. (Hosting company)

o The Registrar works with one or more Registries to offer different TLDs.

Registry

o The company responsible for a particular TLD, such as.com,.org, or.net.

o The registry maintains the database for that TLD to ensure that there are no duplicate registrations.

ICANN

• The various Registries and Registrars are all accredited by ICANN.

• ICANN stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

• They are responsible for managing and coordinating the ovrerall DNS.

Registration Process

1. Registrant contacts Registrar

2. Registrar contacts Registry to see if DN is available.

3. Registry contacts Registrar to confirm availability.

4. Registrar contacts Registrant to confirm availability.

Updates and Changes

Any updates to the record need to be made through the Registrar.

The customer contacts the Registrar and provides new information. ( Usually done via a control panel)

The Registrar contacts the Registry with the updated information.

The Registry makes the requested change.

Transfer of Registration

• Registrants have the option of transferring their DN registration from one Registrar to another.

o Only after 60 days have passed from the initial creation date.

• Request for transfer must be made through the gaining Registrar.

• The losing Registrar must provide authorization for transfer.

o Authorization Code

• DN must be in an ACTIVE status.

• Transfer authorization is sent to the Administrative Contacts email address listed on the Registrants WHOIS record.

• ALL communication is sent to the Registrants Administrative Contacts email address

DNS

• Is a system that stores, and associates many types of information with domain names.

• It translates the domain name (computer hostnames) to IP addresses and vice versa.

DNS consists of three components:

o Domain Names

o Authoritative Name Servers

o Zone Files/Zone Records

Other Functions

Aliases

o A domain alias allows you to point domain names to a domain name that has a hosting product.

o Aliases are NOT included with normal registration fees.

o An alias has the same zone file as the target domain name

Subdirectory DN’s

• This feature allows you to create 3rd level domains that point to subdirectories of the corresponding 2nd level domain.

• Subdirectory DN’s can be anything you want, such as: mydomainname.com/blog

Forwarding

• Forwarding allows you the ability to send all requests for one domain to another URL.

• By typing in and entering one name in a browser, you will be forwarded to a website with another domain name(URL or IP address)

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http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marie_Kahle

Two things that you will definitely need if you want to be recognized as “the expert” in the niche that you are in over time are – Domain name and web hosting.

A domain name is one where people enter into their web browsers to visit your website (it can either be.com,.net,.biz,.org, etc.) and web hosting is one where you store your website’s files in (so that your entire website can be displayed on your visitors’ computer when they visit it).

Choosing the right one can, at times, be a very difficult task – Especially when most of the time the names you wish to purchase are already taken.

What I am going to share with you in this post are 4 tips that you can consider to help you brainstorm suitable domain names for your website.

1. Relevance

Make sure that the domain name that you are going to choose is related to the topic of your website – It should be such that, by simply looking at it, your visitors will be able to tell what contents will they be able to discover in your website.

2. Domain Endings.com,.net,.org etc. – Which Is Better?

Personally, I would go for those that end with a.com, with the reason being that most people remember names ending with.com.

If.com is taken, then I will go for.net – I will not opt for other domain endings.

3. Domain Name Lengths

Generally, the shorter the domain name, the better – As people are more likely to remember a short domain name rather than a long one.

In general, I would try to choose one that is less than 35 characters in length (including the domain ending)

4. Word Separator – Hyphens or Underscore?

Most of the time, the name that you choose will consist of more than one single word.

In that case, you can either choose to separate each of these words either by using hyphens, underscores, or just simply join all the words together.

Unless it consists of more than 4 words, I generally would recommend that you join all the words together, for the reason that when people remember them, they generally do not remember the hyphens that are separating each word.

Also, if it contains too many hyphens (such as 4 hyphens or more), it will start to look unprofessional.

The above are 4 domain name tips that you should consider when it comes to brainstorming for one for your website.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jun_Yuan_Lim

Your domain name serves as the online identity you have and it is a major part of constructing your image and brand on the internet. It means that this very name will help to lead people to your website and make them form an opinion about your services and products. It should make a great impact on their minds that would linger with them even after they have signed off; and these ideas will guide you on how to achieve this.

Use Keywords: Find a keyword that easily sums up what your website is all about; like the words: racing, auto, race, car could easily describe if your site is about motor racing as a profession. In which case, your domain name would go something like, ProfessionalRacer.com or even a name such as, TrackRacer.com. You will find that such names are very precise in showing what the website is all about.

The best way to drive a high traffic website is to opt for dot.com since everyone who is going to try and visit your site will simply assume that your domain name uses the dot.com.

Some people who are not very knowledgeable on internet issues would not be aware that there are other domain names that end with dot-net or even dot-org. It is for this reason you need to stay on the safe side by sticking to the use of dot.com since without this you might end up losing on some segment of your niche market.

It is advisable that you try your best to keep the domain name as short as possible even though it is not very easy to identify such a name because the internet already has well over 162 million sites in use.

This means your first few attempts to find a suitable domain name might not even bear fruit but you must keep on trying till you get the perfect one that can easily work for you.

Remember that the abbreviated domain names pose a challenge for those who want to decipher whether you have spelled them correctly in full or if they have been shortened. Since you do not want them to keep wondering, it is better if you tried to reconsider the name you use.

The perfect example for such inappropriate names is when you visit a site like Online-Stopwatch.com, and you wonder if you have typed it correctly. You will find that the site even though their product or service is quite appropriate, they might be putting off others who should have visited them just because the domain name they chose is quite difficult to deal with.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jackie_Reyno

Increasing site traffic, visibility, and profitability are the main goals of implementing the best link popularity strategies existing in the market for your online business.

Currently, Google shares one of the best link popularity strategies to use which is to be a pro-active online marketer. This means you make sure that you are visible where ever you need to be by submitting your website’s link to or having link exchanges with various websites with high traffic.

Take note that the websites you have link with should have high traffic, which is deemed that the website is an important site by search engines as many people visit it. This means that the sites you hook up with are quality sites, and in a way, through link backs, makes you a quality site as well. If you are a quality site, your ranking increases in search engines.

In short, by being pro-active in increasing your website’s visibility efficiently, search engines will follow in increasing your visibility in results. The expected outcome will follow: increased traffic to your website and higher possibility of earning a sale!

Your strategy for link popularity shouldn’t stop in being pro-active in the submission of links. It should be followed in submitting articles about your business, products/service, and industry to the websites you have submitted your links to or have a link exchange program with.

These articles should be well “referenced” such that links going back to your website, where the same article is posted, are included at its end. This link you put at the end of your article will now server as the referrer for search engines to follow. Make sure you submit articles often to continuously increase your ranking and site traffic. Have a blog as well, even if it contains a listing of all the articles you’ve made already and have available in your website.

The blog should contain the same articles you’ve submitted to websites for your link popularity strategy to increase your visibility in the Web.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize

Manual link building is done to gain incoming links by going to the search engines. Here you request various sites to link to your website. The process takes lot of patience and tedious hours of work to build the manual links, so many website owners prefer to hire services that take care of this work. Still, many small business owners believe that manual link building should be done on your own as it has an important role to play in the success of your website and your business.

Who Uses It?

For bigger businesses and elaborate websites, this is becoming rare because site owners think the amount of work and hours that go into this exercise are not worth it. But for small businesses, it is still proving to be the most inexpensive way to rank well in the search engines. If your website is about a local business, then this will work well for you.

Manual link building is more beneficial to such businesses that actually don’t do business on the Internet, yet they need to be seen and found there. For small businesses, it is not effective to keep posting articles and publishing opinions on social networking sites to get noticed and to get their content linked. This takes a long time and does not ensure good results. Without links to relevant sites, their chances of a good ranking on the search engines diminish. Here manual link building is what proves to be beneficial.

You can go about the link building by finding some local directories and requesting some links. With a well-planned website, quality incoming links and SEO content will ensure a first-page ranking on the major search engines. Yahoo, Business.com, BOTW are some top paid directories preferred by most search engines, so it is a good idea to approach them for manual link building. This ensures good visibility.

Manual Directory Submission

It is preferable to go with manual directory submission, as here you fill up some forms yourself, provide details and submit manually. While in submission, services that use automatic tools may end up submitting to lower quality directories, so you won’t get a good ranking in the search engines.

The automatic submission tools fill up the form on their own, sometimes the date may be wrong, and some pages might be incomplete so that you think submission is done, but actually it is incomplete. But the reputed and respected directories have a custom application script, which means you fill in the forms manually, thus taking the error factor down to zero. For small- and medium-sized businesses, manual link building plays an important role in getting good search engine ranking and being visible on the Internet.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=J_M_Dawson

Write to publish ezines or articles for the online web directories. This helps promote your website and increase your link popularity.

Your website is your company’s lifeline. Increasingly, though, internet users want website content, not just website advertising. However, filling your website with content may not be enough to increase your web traffic.

Write To Publish-To Promote and Increase your Link Popularity

1.) You can make more of your content by writing articles or ezines, for other websites while linking back to yours. You can publish this ezines and/or articles on website directories like:

http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.html

http://www.ideamarketers.com

[http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml]

http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml

http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm

The content that visitors are looking for and can use. Also many webmasters and ezine publishers scour these article sites. If they pick up your article to publish on there site this gives you and your site link another needed exposure and effect of this will be enormous.

Once your article or ezine is on one directory that will spread like a virus to other directories and it will be licensed for reprinting on other sites with the author’s permission.

This will not only encourage them to consult you on other occasions, it will also encourage them to trust you on other matters,and may become your recurrent customer and purchaser of your product.

2.) write for other websites and link back to yours is through advertising. You can sell your content articles to other websites. Perhaps the best way to do this is pay per click advertising.

Pay per click advertising works through search engines that have an agreement with a business to place a small ad on the results page for certain key terms. The listing on the search engine page usually has a title, a short heading, and a short promotional description

Depending on the search engine, the advertiser may or may not get to control the text. The advertiser pays nothing to appear on the results page itself.

He or she only pays a previously agreed upon amount to the search engine when a visitor clicks on the ad itself.

This is one of the cheapest and best ways to advertise your content articles on the web. Other businesses will see the articles they are looking for and click, costing you a little money, but the fees you earn for the content you write will more than cover the cost of the advertising.

There are many different current companies that offer pay per click advertising. Google’s pay per click program is called AdWords.

Google estimates that over eighty percent of internet users visit Google as a search engine. That results in more customers seeing the ads than most businesses ever thought possible.

Google allows you to create your own ads. They do, however, have a service that will design your ad for you if you choose. Yahoo is the other most popular pay per click program.

Yahoo’s Overture works through partner sites like MSN and Alta Vista. Through these many sites, they claim to allow you to reach over ninety percent of internet users.

3.) Final way to write and publish for other websites while linking back to your own is through a reciprocal linking agreement. You can start by researching the sites that you think might be interested in your content. Write a letter to the webmaster of the site offering them your content and a free link on your site.This step helps promote your link popularity.

Then you can negotiate the link and location in terms of both sites. As soon as possible, get their link on your site and send them a note letting them know you have a live link to their site. Check their site frequently to ensure they are upholding their promise to you as well.

Offering your content to other websites can not only be good for your Bottom line in the short term, it can also be good for you in the long run because it can increase your visibility on the web, driving more customers toward your website.

There are many different ways to write for other websites while linking back to your own.

The articles can contain general information about topics your customers might be interested in. If you do it write with sincere interest in your customers well being this milestone can be achieved to your satisfaction.

Also establish your credibility with readers if the material you present is genuine and sincere.

It is probably best to choose the one that works for you. Furthermore, if you do not have the necessary writing skills, it might be wise do reaserch on website related to yours. Use their content to get a feel and guidence to come up with your own technique to write in your own style.

you can hire a Ghost writer or a Company who deals with search engine oriented keyword reach text and write to increase your internet exposure and traffic at your site.This will in turn enhance your ability to promote and increase your business and your earning potential.

Now, at the end of each article, I mention that people are free to re-publish the article as long as they include my resource box (i.e. my bio) at the end of the article. I always include the URL of my site in the resource box.

This means that whenever someone publishes one of my articles in his/her web site, I have another site linking to my site.

So you get an idea how Content on your website is important for promoting your online business and at the same time building a loyal customer base.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Deepak_Mehta

With the increase in the number of web sites on the World Wide Web, it has become even more important for all the web sites to promote themselves properly. In this era of high competition it is not enough to produce good quality stuff. You can only survive the competition in the market if you promote your web based business and your products properly. In the online world, the success of a web site is very much dependent upon the flow of web traffic towards that web site. It is important for the basic survival of all the web sites to get a regular flow of web traffic.

To ensure this regular flow many methods are used by the online marketers. Link popularity is one way of ensuring a steady flow of visitors on your web site. Link popularity means placing the links of your web site at proper places on the web, so that people may find you even if they did not land at your web site at the first stage.

If you want to be successful in creating link popularity, you should follow the following steps. First of all, you need to be very clear about your target market. If you know you target market, you will know where to find them. You can place the links on those web sites which have related content. Place reciprocal links as these may prove economical. These three keys will help you in achieving link popularity which will ensure regular flow of traffic.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize

Have you ever wondered as to why a lot of webmasters are strategically looking for means and ways on how they can obtain directional links on their sites or from other sites where your site is linked? The reason for this massive endeavor that webmasters are doing is because they would like to make sure that they are getting enough popularity not only from potential clients but also from the search engines. In order to make sure that you get this rare popularity thru link popularity, the following suggested tips are handed:

a. Create as many links on your own website but make sure that the inbound links that you place on your website are the links that poses relevance. It is deemed inappropriate to be putting so much links on your site that are immaterial and irrelevant; they do not seem to work to your advantage.

b. When you create links with other websites you can opt at linking to all kinds of websites but generally, it is suggested that you link on sites which have a garnered high ranking. This will logically help you ride on the popularity that this site has.

c. Remember that linking with other sites when done in exaggeration also poses bad implications on your end. The search engine may think about your site as deliberately doing it for the sake of gaining pop without much thinking on the relevance of the linking.

d. As a general rule, do not engage into linking with free for all links sites. These free for all link sites do not generally help your site to get popularity at all. In some instances this action usually takes more bad implications than the good ones.

Opting to gain popularity thru link pop is not a bad idea at all. In fact it is a bright pigment of mind that has evolved into a more genius form.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize

Popularity in the net spells more fortune for a business site. When your business site is popular to many other sites and a lot of net users, it basically means more profit, more income, and generally a good business. However, just like any other endeavor online, building such popularity requires no more less from a web owner. You need to extend a little of yourself and your skills in order to gain the nod of other sites so they get to link with you. Below are some of the smart and intelligent ways on how you can build links with others and attain the popularity that you want:

a. You can initiate building links with some other sites. The first thing that you have to do is to look and search for well established sites that cater similar things as yours. Initiate an invitation and make a good deal that is hard to resist so you can get the approval of the other site. Let their site have the link to yours that directly points to your own site.

b. When invited webmasters do not respond to your invitation, it is not a bad idea to make a follow-up. At times, webmasters are just too busy working their way out to build links on their own. Give them a second e-mail of invitation and make sure that you follow-up either through phone or fax, if they have any.

c. You can create other means of gaining popularity by creating and submitting original, relevant articles to potentially all article directories and Ezine publishing sites. This will give you and your site a better way to expose your expertise to some other people and will thus will allow for more potential popularity that you can get. Joining in forum and message boards can also help a lot.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize