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Web News & Tips - Issue #282 $7.00 per month Small Business web hosting from MateMedia Web News & Tips Published by MateMedia, Inc. Your Partner on the Web Providing quality Web services at affordable prices since 1995 MateMedia provides the following services: * Web Hosting (Shared & Managed Dedicated Servers) * Web Design & Development - Custom Web Applications * Database Development & Hosting * Website Maintenance & Webmaster Services * Search Engine Promotion (Optimization & Submission) * E-Commerce - Shopping Carts - Sample Shopping Cart * Domain Name Registration * Domain Name Affiliate Program * Web Hosting Affiliate Program * FREE Website when you order a web hosting account! For more information about our services email sales@matemediainc.com or call us at 877-309-7521 - Read what our clients have to say about us IN THIS ISSUE: Become a MateMedia Domain Name Affiliate Become a MateMedia Web Hosting Affiliate Free Webmaster Tools Free Scripts for Your Website 5 Tips For the Perfect Domain Name Web News A Step by Step Guide to Getting Started on the Web Recommend this newsletter to a friend Advertise in Web News & Tips $7.00 per month Small Business web hosting from MateMedia 5 Tips For the Perfect Domain Name By Niall Roche What is a domain name? A domain name is the location of your website on the Internet. Your domain name will be what you become known by online so it's important to get it right. Each website on the Internet is labeled with something called an IP address which is the actual address of the website online. A typical IP address looks like this: 159.134.27.64. Remembering a string of numbers like that is difficult so a domain name translates all those numbers into something like www.amazon.com. This is far easier to remember. 1 Dot what? Each domain has what's called an extension. The most well known of these extensions is .com. This, however, is not the only type of domain extension available. There is also: .net If you can't find your preferred .com domain name you could always choose the same domain with a .net extension. It might not have the same ring as a .com but is still as just useful as a .com. .org These domain extensions were originally designed for educational and more formal websites. Anybody can register a .org however so you have more options for domain selection. .info A more recent introduction to the domain name game are .info domains. Many of the valuable .info domains were bought up overnight but there's still a huge range of good .info domains available. With a little creativity you could really make a .info work for you e.g. www.moviereview.info. Bear in mind that most web surfers tend to remember .com more easily than anything else. 2 Branding vs Business Name There is an age old debate on the whether or not you should establish a brand name online or use a domain that more actually reflects your real business. Let's look at Amazon as an example. Amazon sells books online. Most people setting up a business would have chosen say www.booksonline.com instead of www.amazon.com. Amazon has since established itself as a brand name of global recognition - proving the value of building a brand name. You'll need to choose between the two. Brand name or your own business name. Consider how your domain sounds, how it might look on a business card and how well it relates to your business. There's no one right answer to this question. You need to choose what makes most sense for you, your website and your business in general. 3 Hyphenated or not This is another area of debate. Should your domain be one single word or should the words be separated by hyphens? There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Single word domain names can be easier to explain, use on header paper and lend themselves to brand names very well. Single word domains are in very, very short supply. Hyphenated domains names can be slightly more difficult to explain, may not look as well on headed paper and possibly harder to establish as a brand name. There's no shortage of multiple word domains. The single biggest advantage a hyphenated domain has is that search engines can "read" the domain more easily. For example in a domain like www.foreignholidaysonline.com the search engine can only read the first word "foreign" and that's it. It can't tell anything else about the website domain name. If you hyphenated that to www.foreign-holidays-online.com the search engine can read "foreign", "holidays" and "online" as separate words and therefore knows that this website is about foreign holidays. A well chosen hyphenated domain name can be just as effective as a single word domain name. 4 Your Domain Registrar These are the people you pay to register the domain for you. There are dozens if not hundreds of these companies out there so which one do you choose? This takes some research but things worth checking are: * Do you retain sole ownership of the domain or do the registrar keep some level of control over it? * Search Google for any horror stories relating to the registrar * Does the registrar allow you to transfer the domain to another registrar? * Is there an online control panel for domain administration? * How easy is it to change the domain Name Servers? Shop around for domain registrars. What you really want to find is a previously satisfied customer to ask questions before you buy. 5 Cheap Domain Names You can save a lot of money on the domain names you purchase. A typical .com domain costs about $15 to register from most registrars. However you can get the same domain for as little as $7.95 from other, very reliable, companies. Oddly enough some of the cheaper domain registrars are more reliable, have fewer horror stories and offer equally good customer service as their more expensive competitors. Are there any disadvantages in using a discount domain registrar? Will it affect your website in any way? The answer to both is a definite No. E-mail: info@affiliate-advocate.com Author's URL: http://www.affiliate-advocate.com Niall Roche is the content author and owner of http://www.affiliate-advocate.com - affiliate ebook and software reviews $7.00 per month web hosting from MateMedia Increase your rank in the search engines! Check out our new search engine optimization plans Become a MateMedia Web Hosting Affiliate Web News $7.00 per month web hosting from MateMedia While a recent report found that more than half of digital video recorder (DVR) users have actually rewound or paused television commercials to better understand the advertised product, Lyra Research presents information that illustrates premeditated ad-skipping behavior. The survey of 611 U.S. DVR users found that a significant number of respondents delayed watching a TV show so that they can either skip ads or save time, with 10 percent reportedly doing this with all the TV shows they watched. Roughly one-third of the survey participants said they watched 61 to 100 percent of their TV shows with a delayed start time, with the largest portion saying they watched 1 to 20 percent of their TV shows delayed. Movie-goers don't have to look further than online to find reviews, trailers, and interactive content. Research from MIT Sloan School of Management suggests that online movie sites can influence a film's success, and Nielsen//NetRatings found substantial traffic to film-related sites as summer blockbuster season got underway. Leadership and vision will likely elevate technology in the school system, but strong commitments from the community along with the proper funding are also critical. The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and Grunwald Associates evaluated the K-12 educational community's capacity to use technology effectively and found divides in digital leadership among school districts of different sizes, along with stalled tech budgets. Copyright 2000-2004 MateMedia, Inc. |
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