ELEMENTS Inc.’s executive team, Jeremy LaDuque (CEO), Michael Boyer (CMO) and Steve Bridge (CFO), participated in six roundtables at this year’s International Franchise  Association’s (IFA) Annual Convention in San Diego. The roundtables covered lead generation, online marketing and optimizing follow-up on online leads.

As we spoke with franchisors we discovered these invaluable strategies for increasing franchise sales:

1. Market within your own franchisee network:

Using what you have at your immediate disposal is always the most efficient and cost effective way of marketing amid an economic downturn.  Contact your franchisees to discuss any possible marketing opportunities that you may have in their respective regions.  This type of marketing can be a sensitive matter as you would need your franchisees’ cooperation and possibly customer lists. Make any campaigns of this nature symbiotic; it is essential to initiate a “win-win” scenario for both the franchisor and the franchisee.

A simple but effective example of this would be to arrange a marketing plan in which you send postcards or coupons to customers of the franchisee.  Your coupon offering could say “Franchise opportunities in your area” on the back. This type of initiative will not only promote the brand, but will provide customers with motivation and incentive to visit the franchise location as well.

A secondary benefit of this type of marketing is that you are establishing an “exit plan” for franchise owners. By courting interested parties looking to purchase franchises you are providing opportunities for franchises looking to exit. This also helps create a level of trust between the franchisor and the franchisee. This method of marketing was brought up time and again at IFA this year as one of the first and foremost ways to increase franchise sales.

2. In Store Advertising:

You can gain great advertising opportunities by harnessing the popularity and frequency of visitors to your franchise locations.  Again, find “win-win” scenarios for you and your franchisees and work with them to expand your lead generation opportunities.

3. Networking:

Networking is still one of the most important marketing solutions available in your arsenal. As the saying goes, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”  There are several ways that you can use this method sell more.  Anything from opening up the old-school rolodex to email marketing, and social networking sites (LinkedIn) are all effective strategies proven to lead to more franchise sales.

4. Local Media:

Local press is an important tool for creating lead generation.  In today’s precarious economical state, any publication of new business is hailed as a positive step for the economy and will be welcomed by all factions of media.  Be sure to announce that your franchise is interested in expanding locally, but emphasize the benefits and positive impact that a franchise will have on local consumers and economy.

5. National Media:

If you have the means, national press will provide your franchise with the highest exposure possible, however this is something that only a few franchises at the IFA convention were able to leverage. One innovative example of this case is the 10 Till 2 Part Time Placement Service company, which was able to attract national attention with their novel idea of providing part time work to people whose family obligations do not allow for a full time position. This type of creative thinking can lead to exciting results.

6. Internet Marketing:

The internet is an obvious and powerful tool which can be used in a myriad of ways to promote your franchise.  In fact, everyone at IFA attested to owning a website while working aggressively to refine their internet marketing strategies.  The majority of internet marketing strategies for franchises involved pay-per-click advertising scenarios. Pay-per-click marketing strategies are favored because advertising with the most popular search engines directly (Google, Yahoo, MSN…etc), still provides faster positive results while also supplying detailed and track-able information to help you optimize your marketing campaigns.

Yet another important aspect of internet marketing is catering to organic or natural search results, and many franchise companies were interested in further developing their organic marketing campaigns.  We introduced our ElementsLocal solution that directly addresses this growing need for organic results. ELEMENTS launched the ElementsLocal software last year to answer the three-fold need franchises have:

• Reduce pay-per-click costs
• Increase leads
• Protect brand identity

Simply put, the ElementsLocal software does all three of these by providing each franchisee with their own unique website. This larger network increases organic search results and provides the franchisor with BrandSecure tools to protect the brand.

7. Portal Websites:

Web portals present information from diverse sources in a unified, streamlined fashion and provide yet another powerful lead generation tool at your disposal.  Portal websites such as Franchise Gator or MatchPoint provide prospective franchises with multitudes of information about franchising as well as powerful search capabilities to further explore potential franchising opportunities.  These systems have been specifically designed to help franchisers, overcome many marketing hurdles.

8. Tradeshows

Tradeshows are a great way for current or prospective franchise owners to learn a great deal about the industry through face to face interactions with many other franchise owners.  Tradeshows also provide a significant opportunity for existing franchise owners to enhance brand and product visibility, promote new and existing products, generate leads, and drive sales.

These strategies and techniques should help you give you some ideas for marketing your franchise and franchisees. Attending the IFA Convention opened our eyes to the exciting opportunities we have to better market your businesses online. We truly enjoyed the time we spent with franchises, discussing what works and what does not work for them. Remember that significant results to your online marketing and advertising takes time and energy, but it’s worth the effort when you can measure that investment and see a return. Employing even a few of these strategies should help decrease your costs and increase your success.

Website Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is complex and requires a systemic approach when working to enhance your natural search results strategy. “Natural” or “organic” searches that drive traffic to your websites are just that: the natural choices a user would make in entering search words (or sometimes, a singlular word…resulting in the user finding a new universe on the internet rather than more directed results).

A natural search assumes that you may not yet have other strategies in place, or if you do, you are still trying to optimize this type of search. Other strategies you can pay for include SEO/Search Engine Marketing (SEM) analysis services, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, linkbuilding services and trend analysis.

It Happens Overnight?

Not exactly, it takes a few months, maybe as many as 4-6 or 7 after you’ve put these strategies in place for you to see good results. One source sites “over 200 SEO factors that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results.” So a working understanding of how search engines (SE) do their magic will help increase the chances of your site appearing high in a list of thousands or more search results.

Certain keywords and/or keyword phrases are highly competitive – meaning they describe and are used for a wide array of businesses with websites offering those products or services. “Cooking” and “appliances” describe a huge variety of products and services and keywords like these are competitive. So, logically, there are hundreds and hundreds of websites using these as keywords; it would be an uphill battle to achieve a Top 10 search result with natural searches.

Most internet users know what they want and often know specific details about what they want. One of the keys through this Labyrinth is to understand what specific goal or target users have when they search. For example, after a home fire, a user may know they want to find a “residential restoration” service or they may know they want to find a “residential restoration fire water damage” service or even more specifically “paul davis residential fire water damage  restoration theirtown.”

The last two sets are much more specific and competition for these is probably lower – they are applicable to fewer companies offering those products or services. Using more specific keywords and phrases can help better optimization and search rankings, providing there are enough numbers of people searching on those terms. Choosing keywords that are specific but not popular with users won’t necessarily deliver better results.

A Good Foundation

Doing some keyword research will help you build a good foundation for choosing keywords for your website. Doing some marketing research for your geographic area or your own target audience will give you even more ammunition. And trust yourself. You are the expert in your industry and your local area…how would your target audience search for you?  There are several free keyword search tools online. They give you an indication of how popular certain words or phrases are based on current databases from companies such as Google and Nielsen. Keep in mind, the results provide good indicator – not the end all of keyword results. Your industry, vertical market, product and geographic location are among the things that affect the outcome, not to mention results from automated traffic (you guess it, another Labyrinth path).

Cross check your word search with various free tools. We found a few:

• http://www.keyworddiscovery.com
• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
• http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/keyword-research-tools.html

Improving Your Search Results Ranking

When a user enters words into a search field, the search engines go to work and in seconds, have wound their way through countless number of websites and web pages looking for the combination of keywords the user entered.  By using some smart content strategies you can help increase your search results ranking. The following are some factors that affect page ranking and most are things you can put into place yourself.

So there are a few important “on-page” items and “off-page” factors that we look at:

Things to do On-Page:

• Include one or more keywords in your site domain name.
• Use keywords in your directory paths or folders on your site.
• Include keywords in your Title Tag.
• Use the keywords in your Title Tag in several variations that mirror your product or service and get a lot of searches as well:

  Home Fire Water Damage Repair – Fire Water Damage Mitigation – Residential Reconstruction and Restoration

• Include keywords in your H1 Tag (first header tag).
• Make your content keyword-dense; include your keywords often in the body content.
• You need to incorporate your keywords and phrases logically in your content; you cannot merely repeat these words over and over. Use your keywords in your content in a logical and relevant way.
• Create a customized keyword set for each section of your site, or better, each page.

Things that affect your site ranking Off-Page:

• Length of time your site has been live.
• How popular your website links are.
• Link popularity within the site’s internal link structure.
  ~ Whether others linking to your site are relevant to the topic of your site.
• Topical relevance of inbound links to site.
  ~ Whether the inbound links to your site are well-worded and use your keywords.
• Anchor text of inbound links
• The quality of sites who link to your site.
  ~ Whether your site links are popular overall and draw users to your site.
• Global link popularity of site

Several off-page items are dependent on other websites’ awareness of your website and content. There are strategies you can employ on your site that can influence this, especially when they involve other sites linking to your site. Since this is yet another path in the Labyrinth, we will save this topic for another discussion.

Search Engines Are Your Friends

These days there are so many metrics that add value to search rankings, but keywords still provide the foundation of attracting search traffic. Search engines, depending on how many (or few) words the user queries, return a list of relevant sites that is ordered by relevancy or importance to the keywords. Again – searching through what could be thousands of websites and thousands and thousands of webpages, almost in a blink of an eye. As the web designer and/or content author, you can help your search engines friends by making your sites and content more SE “compliant” – by getting with their program and using keywords in the same key positions on the webpage.

Page Construction to Optimize Keywords

Once you’ve determined your keywords and phrases that users most often use to find your company, product and/or service, you’ll need to incorporate them into your webpages. The days of hiding keywords with white text (stealthy invisible), or using them repetitively in every html tag are gone. Keywords must now be incorporated logically into your content and add to the usability of your page and content from a users’ standpoint. Using the stealth strategy will actually cost you SE ranking as the SEs will realize the tactic and penalize your site accordingly. Search engines and their algorithms don’t like when we webmortals think we can outsmart them.

On-Page Factors

Again, the goal is to place your keywords in positions on the page that SEs can find them easily. Search engines interpret how important the keywords are to the user by the keywords’ placement on the page. Roll up your sleeves and revamp your pages and content:

Title Tag. Place a keyword phrase in the title tag; the title tag is about the most important factor when SEs rank webpages. Including keywords in the title tag shows the SEs the page’s focus. It is important to have a title tag on pages such as special interest, product, and services pages.

Header – H1 Tag. In HTML-speak, your “H1 tag” is the “header” or “headline” – generally, the large one liner at the top of your page. Bigger is better in this case: SEs consider larger type to be more important because it is more visible and easily read.  HTML header codes go from largest to smallest, H1 to H6. Your H1 Tag should contain your keywords for that page.

Other Header Tags – H2 to H6. The H-Tags specify a text hierarchy for headlines or subheads on your page. The higher the H-Tag number the smaller the text size. Generally, H1 is the only headline on the page, appearing at the top of the page. H2 tags are slightly smaller and can appear as subheads for the page. H3 tags are even smaller and may serve as a header for a bulleted list. H6 is the smallest text size and you may want to use this tag for image captions.

You don’t need to use all of the H-Tags, but their hierarchy should stay in tact. Again, part of the SE search involves keywords in the H1 tag, so remember to use a keyword or two in the headline of the page. In this way, you are optimizing the relevance of the keywords on the page as well as providing reinforcement to your users. They’ll see the Title Tag and the page headline (H1) with the same words they’ve searched for and know that they’ve come to the right website.

Keyword-rich Content. This may be “logical” but it is still worth mentioning. Your page content should contain your keywords and phrases several times. If you have target keywords per page, each page should mirror the unique set of key words. The content should be relevant and different for each page.

Creating extra pages on your site with duplicate content is another strategy that SEs don’t like; they will recognize the duplicate page content and give your site a lower rating. Also, if you mindlessly repeat your content, SE filters would catch it and not rank your site.  Unique content using your keywords is critical when you are dependent on natural search results.

There are a few ways to increase unique keyword-rich content that make SEs happy:

• Break up your content by using subheads containing keywords.
• Include keywords in the first sentence of your content and tie it up nicely with a summary sentence containing keywords.
• Depending on the page design, bold your keywords now and then for emphasis. Create visual interest by pulling out important aspects of content as a bulleted list – keywords should also appear in this list.
• Attribute images with a caption containing keywords.
• Give your images and links Alt-Tags (or a Title Tag) using keywords.
• Also, provide a way for your users or solicit your users to send you testimonials about your product, service or company (for example, a blog that users may participate in by submitting comments)
  ~ Content from your users is highly coveted because it can provide relevant and unique content without you having to generate it.

Keyword-rich Links

Search engines also looks at your internal links (page containing a link and the page the link goes to within your website). By making some text a link, you create “anchor text.” When you use keywords in your “anchor text” search engines consider the page it links to important to that keyword.

Meta Description Tags.

Meta Description Tags summarize the page “in 25 words or so” and are put into a “hidden” or background part of the webpage. When search engines display search results, they typically display the Meta Description Tag under the title of the page in the results. Again, include your keywords and keyword phrases. Use the most important keywords for that specific webpage.

If you feel as if the Tasmanian Devil has just whirled around your head a few times, you’re not alone. Search Engine Optimization is logical, but its logic contains many, many variables. These variables must be in place for the SEs to find your site among possibly thousands in a natural search query. Some of the variables are more difficult to control (mainly the age of your site). But by following these key strategies, you increase your search result rankings within the SEO Labyrinth.

Let’s review:

• Update your site often – with photos and content. Activity on your site always verifies to SEs that your site is authentic.
• Generate key words and phrases for each page of your site. You can do this just by sections of your site as well.
• Include keywords in your Title Tag. Make sure your keywords are also in your Headline (H1) of the page; use the H1 to H6 tag hierarchy giving relative importance to text on your webpage.
• Mirror your key words and key phrases in your content at least 3 or 4 times. Use the terms logically – you cannot just type your key word over and over and over.
• Use bullet point lists containing keywords as a way to break up the page content and add key words w/out having to write longer sentences.
• Bold at least one of your keywords within your content – it gives importance to that word. If you can do this to several keywords without making the content awkward, this is even better.
• Use keywords in your text links to your own site pages.
• Give your images captions and alternative text – this is an opportunity for you to get more key words on the page.
• Acquire user-generated content.

Website Optimization and Marketing Consulting
ELEMENTS Inc. | 805-547-1160 x205

The primary objective of any focused marketing initiative is to drive qualified leads, which convert into users, customers and clients. ELEMENTS specializes in creating business results for franchise and mid-size companies using integrated website optimization and internet marketing strategies, with a firm belief that success can not be obtained with a singular focus on one small portion of “Search Engine Optimization”.

Successful website optimization requires holistic planning and management of all aspects of search engine marketing (SEM) including public relations, website content, keyword buys and search engine optimization, as well as most aspects of information architecture, user-interface and online community best practices. ELEMENTS applies both marketing sensibility and technical expertise for campaigns that focus on customer acquisition and retention.

Content, content and content.

As a business owner with a website I’m sure you’ve heard this chant a thousand times …

Content tells your audience about you, your company or organization. This mish-mash of text, graphics, photos and imagery is all “content,” in this post we’ll focus on text, the main type of content search engines find on your website.

Okay, enough with the small print, let’s break it down …

Relevant Content and Linking to Relevant Websites

Successful online marketing always begins with content that is highly relevant to your business or organization. Relevancy is one of the more important factors when writing your content. The textual content on your website should be focused around the topics that specifically describe your industry, your business, your local community and yourself. This content should be written to communicate to your human target audience, not for the benefit of search engines .

If written correctly, relevant content will contain a high density of keyword terms that your target audience can type into Google to bring up your web site in their search results. These keyword terms are very important to understand so you can make sure that your content is written to maximize relevancy.

Linking to other relevant website content is another way to help your target audience find relevant information. These links also help establish your website as a knowledge leader in providing relevant information and sources concerning your industry, your business, your local community and yourself.

The content you write and link to should ALWAYS be done in the best interest of your human audience. If you create this strong foundation of great relevant content your human and search engine audiences will both like your website.

Updating and Adding Content

Adding new content pages provide your users with up-to-date information about your products and services, your local community and your industry. None of these are static, so the information you provide on your website should not be static either. For example: every new customer changes your business just a little bit … the more of these customer testimonials you have, the better perception your audience will have of your products and services. Incorporating new content such as new testimonials will help Google will see more relevant content as well. For more one how search engines rank webpages …

Local Content

The reach of the Internet is huge … When you write content for your website, focus on the geographic location of your target audience. Your audience and search engines will have a much easier time finding your website if you provide City, County or State/Province information interlaced in your content. For example: case studies should talk about specific locations where services were rendered or products were successful. Content about local community activity with links to local community websites also enhances your ability to build trust for your business in the local community.

Quality Content

One thing is also certain, quality writing counts! The following are basic best practices for writing quality website content.

• Spelling and grammar: Few or no errors. No page had more than three misspelled words or four grammatical errors. Note: spelling and grammar errors were identified by using Microsoft Word’s check feature, and then ruling out words marked as mis-spellings that are either proper names or new words that are simply not in the dictionary. Does Google use SpellCheck? Keep in mind that no one really does know what the 100 factors in Google’s algorithm are. But whether the mechanism is SpellCheck or a better shot at link popularity thanks to great credibility, or something else entirely, the results remain the same.
• Paragraphs: Primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text.
• Lists: Both bulleted and numbered form a large part of the text.
• Sentence length: Mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.
• Contextual relevance: Text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword. (thank you to webcredible)

Keep these concepts in mind when crafting your website content. Know your audience, make your content keyword dense, include local content and add to your site consistently. Keep your content focused and relevant will put you ahead of the competition…your site search engine results will benefit and your business will as well.

… With Online, Browser-based Image Editing

San Luis Obispo, CA – August 7, 2008. Elements, an interactive marketing agency, today announced that they have added online, browser-based image editing to their ElementsLocal & ElementsConnect software platforms. ElementsLocal is an online local marketing platform for franchise companies, ElementsConnect is a website management system for businesses to manage their online marketing initiatives.

With the addition of online, browser-based image editing, ELEMENTS’ customers can now manage 100 percent of their website without leaving their ElementsLocal or ElementsConnect dashboard. No need to edit a photo before uploading, just upload the image and do almost anything to it with simple little sliders. :-)

“Image editing, mainly re-size and cropping, has always been an expensive, complex and time-consuming hassle for website managers,” said Michael Boyer, Chief Marketing Officer. “With the integration of Picnik, we have solved a problem for our clients that will save them money and time, without any additional charges.”

About Picnik – www.picnik.com

Picnik lets you clean up your pictures without knowing a thing about photo editing. Picnik is photo editing awesomeness, online, in your browser. It’s the easiest way on the Web to fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye, or apply effects to your photos. With Picnik you can do everything you usually do in Photoshop, but it’s so much easier.

About ELEMENTS – www.elementsinc.net

ELEMENTS is an interactive marketing agency, we design and develop online business applications and corporate web sites. Our online business applications provide industry specific platforms which enable companies to harness the power of the internet to streamline their business. Our world-class interactive services provide marketing solutions for mid-market and franchise companies. From conception and strategy to design and implementation we combine masterful creative services and proven technology expertise with forward-thinking business strategies to deliver a successful solution for deployment of enterprise web initiatives.

Choosing a name for anything is daunting. Your kid, your business or website domain, you want to make a good choice. Your domain name is your internet identity and should be a vital component in your overall business and marketing strategy. How do you figure out what your ultimate domain name is?

I Am What I Am

Ideally, the planets will align so that your website name and business name will come together at the same time. The name that you’ve been using in your marketing and branding efforts is the name you want for your website and domain. It’s the first thing users will try to enter into a browser.

If you already have a well-known name or brand, you should obviously get the domain that matches that name. You put a lot of effort into getting that name and branding established in your community. But what if that name is taken? Don’t change your company name because you couldn’t get the domain name.

Look up the current owner on www.whois.net and contact them to see if they are willing to sell it to you. If they are agreeable to selling the name, they will probably up the fee so you could be paying a higher rate than when you buy a new domain.

If your website and/or company is new, you might want to check out domain names first and find one that suits the name of your business. So, let’s say you find that bitsandbobs.com is available and buy it, it could be a perfect name for your Bits and Bobs business with your website being bitsandbobs.com.

Remember, the internet is an extremely fast-paced world and your customers want ease of use, so don’t make them work. A domain name that reflects your business and website is one less piece of information for users to remember. When visitors think of your business and website they’ll know it by name and where to go or what to enter into the browser.

The Long and Short of It

It’s true. Shorter domain names are easier to remember (but it’s harder and harder to get meaningful short names that make sense). Short names are also less apt to give users problems with typos. Todayisyourluckyday.com (sort of an average length) is much easier to remember and use than goandconquetheworldtodayisyourluckyday.com.

On the other hand, if a short name seems confusing or random unless the user is very familiar with you, then stick with something longer. So, tiyld.com is short and sweet, but it’s an odd assortment of letters that aren’t even pronounceable as an acronym. Spelling this out is probably easier to remember and use: TodayIsYourLuckyDay.com. Additionally, search engines will probably not pick up on your randomly-lettered domain name.

Word! What’s the Key Here?

Another point to consider is using site keywords in your domain name. Using keywords are likely to boost your site ranking with search engines. It’s not your business name, but the plus side is that search engines gravitate toward keywords that are also found in domain names. However, in order to make keywords in your domain work for you, you’ll need to know what words people are searching for. There are quite a few tools that will can help you figure out the best keywords to use. See Good Things and Do Your Leg Work below for a more detailed discussion.

So being that you can use up to 63 or 67 characters in a domain name, you could use several keywords…go crazy! But, and try to remember that run-on name and type it into a browser! It’s probably a good idea to avoid a horrendously long name…no one will remember it, much less want to type in out. The key to your domain name, long or short, is that it makes sense and doesn’t cause a lot of confusion for your customers or other potential users.

Spell It Like It Is

A correctly-spelled domain name will help your users find your website easily. It might be cool and fun to use z’s for s’s or even add a few zzzz’s to your name, but opt for simple and easy… kewlgurrrlsurferz.com …huh?

To Hyphen or Not to Hyphen

Some things to think about with a hyphenated name:

Not So Good Things:

• ~ You’ll have a hurdle making people aware of the hyphens in your domain and people don’t usually remember to type them in. Most people would type in todayisyourluckyday.com, not today-is-your-lucky-day.com
• ~ Adding hyphens in your name makes for a potential mouthful when users say your name…verbal marketing will sound clumsy. It would be almost more logical to buy clumsyhyphenandhyphenawkward.com because you’ll be saying “clumsy hyphen and hyphen awkward dot com.” If you aren’t clear about the hyphens, when people recommend your fabulous product or service and site, other users will type in clumsyandhyphen.com, not clumsy-and-awkward.com. Take a cue from most corporations and try not to use them.
• ~ Generally, they are a pain to type, especially several of them within one domain.

Good Things:

• ~ Hyphens help search engines identify keywords more easily. Because they distinguish your keywords better, your site will be better ranked in search results for those specific keywords.
• ~ It’s an alternative when the un-hyphenated domain name is already registered to someone else. If you can limit them, you may still be able to get a not-too-awkwardly-hyphenated domain you want.

Happy Medium Thing:

• ~ Buy both your natural and hyphenated domain names…since typing the name is easier without hyphens, this is the one you use for marketing and everywhere else. Since search engines usually like and rank domains with hyphenated names better and better ranking drives more users to your site, you’ll get the benefits of the hyphen.

What’s the Point?

Registering multiple domain names and pointing each one to a specific page or a few to your general website can help generate higher sales and traffic to your site. When you do this, you give users multiple avenues to your site. So, both customers who know the business name will be able to find you and customers who know your product or service will be able to find you.

Consider purchasing domains that are similar to your domain, contain hyphens or are even misspelled: coolcoffeeshop.com, coolcoffeeshoppe.com, koolcoffeeshop.com, cool-coffee-shop.com, coolcofeeshop.com, kewlcafeshop.com…you get the picture. Registering several domains will cast a wider net when users search for you. A word of caution: don’t point too many multiple domains to the same page because most search engines will dump your site.

Dot Wat?

.com is the most common and widely known extension. Like a good short name, finding your .com domain can be challenging. Most people now recognize .biz, .edu, .org, .net…but these also have certain implications. Be aware that .biz is generally recognized for businesses; .edu is intended for educational institutions; .org is widely used by non-profit and similar organizations; .net was originally for network providers, but it has a general use like .com now. However, there is nothing wrong with buying your domain name with several of these extensions.

iCUGOT12?

Numbers can present a similar problem as hyphens, especially with vocal marketing: is shineything4you.com – 4you or foryou or fouryou or 4u…..?

Shock Value

Using profanity in your domain name is unprofessional and gives you a negative image. Done.

Do Your Leg Work

Getting back to using a keyword or words in your domain name…this will help optimize search engine results, but to make your choices meaningful, you have to know what people are searching for.

• ~ Word Search – www.wordtracker.com is one of the many tools that can help you find good keywords. Enter the words or phrase/phrases you think people would use to search and the program shows you which words are most popular. You can use this information to optimize our website content, generate more keywords and improve your organic or pay-per-click searches. This site gives you a free 7-day tour, beyond that it’s a paid membership. If you search for “keyword tool,” you’ll find other tools to use as cross-reference.
• ~ Trademarks – If you have any question about your domain name being trademarked, do some research to verify you aren’t violating the law. However, if you register domain name and then a company trademarks it, you’re probably safe.
• ~ www.whois.net – You can do various searches on this site, obviously finding out if the domain you want already has a current owner. You can search by domain name, keyword and owner. Using the domain search will help you with trademark research. You can find deleted domains as well.
• ~ www.deleteddomains.com – The name says it all! Do a primary search for deleted and on-hold domains here. The site has a great feature that allows you to choose search parameters like character length or domains that contain specific words. You’ll need to register to get the full benefits of their services.
• ~ www.nameboy.com – This is a playful generator site. You search for words and let the program know if you want your domain to use hyphens or rhyming words. It also has a “who is” search. A cool feature is that you can submit your domain name and they will appraise the words for things like search frequency, terms and keyword advertising values, popularity. Using this tool will help you evaluate your domain relative to keywords.

Because your domain name is part of your image and branding, use all the resources available to make a good choice. Sometimes domains come easy and are a logical fit AND are available—the planets aligned for you! It gets tricky when your first choice isn’t available or you can’t find a good combination of words. Your domain should represent your company and product or service in order to better integrate your website into your marketing strategy.

The ultimate domain name does not make an ultimate site…you still need to put some work and effort into great content and design. Go the extra mile with keywords and some SEO work. Otherwise, your website will be all dressed up with nowhere to go.