Technology or Technologies

Saturday, 23 March 2013

Cheap Domain Name: Compare Domain Registrars?

OK, so you’ve decided to take a leap and register a domain name for your business. Now, the question is where do you register the domain? There are literally hundreds of sites where you can register a domain name, but you need to make sure the company you buy from is accredited by ICANN. Once you’ve figured out that the registrar is accredited, the next thing you need to do is compare domain registrars to see which one gives you the best deal.
To save you time, I put together a comparison of some of the top domain registrars. The chart below gives you a side-by-side comparison of prices and key features.

Yearly Pricing	.COM	.NET	.ORG	Whois Privacy	Domain Protection	Min for Bulk Rate
Above.com	$9.45	$7.95	$9.45	Free	n/a	100+
Domain.com	$9.99	$8.99	$10.47	Free	Free	inquire
DynaDot	$9.99	$9.99	$9.99	$2.00	n/a	$500+
GoDaddy	$14.99	$14.99	$16.98	$9.99	$5.00	6+
Moniker	$9.59	$8.59	$9.45	$4.00	$19.99	inquire
NameCheap	$10.69	$10.69	$10.69	$2.88	Free	50+
NameSilo	$8.99	$7.49	$8.59	Free	Free	50+
Register.com	$37.00	$37.00	$37.00	$11.00	n/a	10+

Domain in Domain $7.00 $7.00 $7.00 Free Free inquire
These prices are reflective of NEW domain registrations for the 1st year. Renewal prices may sometimes be different from the new registration price.
Based on default pricing and features, I’d say NameSilo offers the best overall value.
Most domain registrars offer a discount or a coupon code for new domain registrations, so be sure to take advantage of them.

What are Website Meta Tags?

Website meta tags can be found in the <head> section of a website’s backend coding. If you’ve dabbled with HTML at all, you may have seen some of these meta tags before. Here’s a few examples to give you an idea:

<title>Merry Christmas</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”merry christmas, happy new year, holidays”>

Meta tags not only describe what a web page is about, but they can also serve other purposes. As you can see in the example above, there are different types of meta data and each one is pretty self-explanatory. The “title” meta tag should be the title of the page in a few words. The “description” meta name tag should be the summary of what the page is about in a couple of sentences. The “keywords” meta name tag should include keywords that describe the page, separated by commas.

Currently, there are over 30 different meta tag elements. However, most meta tags are optional and not necessary for your site to function properly.

In the early days of the Internet, meta tags were essential because it was what search engines relied on to help categorize and determine what a site was about. And in those early days, meta tags were probably the biggest factor in how websites were ranked. Meta tags were so important that most early search engines were called meta search engines.

As you can imagine, this “primitive” search engine technology, made it easy for spammers to take advantage of meta tags and manipulate search engine rankings. Spammers were keyword stuffing their meta tags with all types of keywords just so they could get better rankings.

Thanks to these spammers, search engines have had to adapt and become smarter. We’ve come a long way since the meta search engine, and today, search engines like Google and Bing pay little attention to meta tag data. In fact, according to Google, the meta title tag is the only one that helps in terms of search engine rankings.

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How Much is Your Website Worth?

This article raises the question of how a website should be valued.
Website sales is big business. There are various marketplaces online where you can buy or sell websites. This includes sites like Flippa, Latonas, and even some webmaster forums. People buy and sell all types of websites – ranging from complex ecommerce sites to simple blogs.
It’s a funny business. I’ve seen some good sites sell for “cheap,” and some bad sites sell for insane amounts of money. The thing is though, there is no set standard for valuing websites. You can ask 10 different people and each one may give you drastically different answers.
Also, there are sites out there that give free website appraisals, but those tools should only be used for entertainment purposes and never be taken seriously.
At the end of the day, the value of a website is really determined by what the end-user (or buyer) is willing to pay for it – kind of like domain names. But, unlike domain names, putting a price tag on a website is a bit more complicated.

My Experience
I’ve sold a few sites during my career – a few through Flippa and some via the webmaster forums. For the most part, my experience has been good and I was able to sell my sites for decent money. But, this wasn’t because I’m a good salesman – but more so because I sold sites that had value.
Usually, experienced site buyers know how to evaluate sites because they understand all the intricacies that go into a website. However, there are some investors who are business-savvy, but they have no clue when it comes to evaluating the value of a website. I see some investors trying to buy sites solely based on revenue or profit. While, this might make sense for the investor, it is incredibly unfair for the seller. If you know anything about websites and SEO, you would understand how much work goes into it.

Here are some factors to consider when trying to determine the value of a website:

Revenue
Traffic
SEO (or site strength)
PageRank
Domain name value
Amount of unique content
Time spent on web design and development
Business model
Market and potential
Site maintenance and cost

Beware: Nowadays, scammers are boosting their website traffic stats by buying fake traffic, so keep that in mind.

Conclusion
As a seller, you should price your website based on the factors I’ve listed. The seller also needs to consider how urgently he/she needs the money, and adjust the asking price accordingly. As a buyer, you need to do a thorough research on any website you plan to buy. There are risks involved on both sides, but if both parties put adequate time into research, the result can be a win-win situation.

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Best Online Traffic Sources

If you’re new to doing business on the Internet you may be a bit confused by all the different types of traffic sources that are available. In this article, I will list the basic types of online traffic and explain each one.
What is the meaning of a traffic source?
A traffic source simply means where the traffic is coming from. As you can imagine, there are various ways that a visitor can find your website. The 3 main traffic sources include: search engines, type-in traffic and website referral.
Traffic Source #1: Search Engines
Search engine traffic is perhaps the most popular way for a visitor to find your website. There are 2 types of search engine traffic. One is called organic (or natural) search engine traffic and the other is called paid search engine traffic. Organic search engine traffic is the traffic you get from natural search engine rankings; displayed on the left side of the search results when people run searches. Paid search engine traffic is the result of advertising through a search engine ad platform, such as Google Adwords or Bing Ads. Paid search engine ads appear on the top or right side of the search engine results.
Organic vs Paid Search

Traffic Source #2: Browser Type-In
Type-in Traffic is the traffic you get when a visitor types in a domain name or URL directly into their Internet browser. Type-in traffic is also known as Direct Navigation Traffic because a person is going directly to the website and bypassing the search engines altogether.
New domains or websites would see little to no type-in traffic because the site is too new and it hasn’t been marketed yet. Established websites with returning users would have type-in traffic because the users already know the web address for the site or they have it bookmarked on their browser.
Google browser field box

Traffic Source #3: Website Referral
Website referral traffic is simply traffic that comes from another site. There are 3 basic ways in which traffic can flow in from one site to another: text links, banners, or popup windows. Links come in many different forms and sizes, ranging from direct static links to redirect and affiliate links. The discussion about the different forms of links can get pretty complicated for a beginner to understand, so this is a topic we can touch on later.

Web Links

Best Web Directory: Submit a Site
Best Bookmark Site: Face an Face

Why No Search Engine Traffic?

OK, so you launched your website and threw a few articles together thinking you might begin to receive some search engine traffic. You wait a few days, a few weeks, and now it’s been a couple of months, and you’re still trying to figure out why you haven’t received any traffic.
There’s a few reasons why you may not be receiving search engine traffic.
1. Competition.
Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s, it was a lot easier to rank for most keywords out there. Why? Think about it – there was a lot less competition back then. Today, there are literally millions of new webpages being added on a daily basis. Your article or content is only one out of over a trillion webpages currently in existence. That’s not to say that your article is competing against a trillion webpages at any given time, but you could imagine how much competition you’re potentially facing in your industry.

2. Targeting Volume-less Keywords.
Always keep this in mind – ranking for keywords with 0 traffic volume is useless. Ask yourself this: What good is a #1 ranking if no one is ever searching for that specific keyword? You’re right – it does no good. This is the reason why small business owners need to do keyword research upfront before they waste time on volume-less keywords or keywords that don’t convert.

3. You Need SEO.
Having a fancy looking website may be good for user experience, but it is not going to make the search engines like your site more than the next. Search engine algorithms are complex, and there are many different factors that go into determining how a website ranks in the search engines. Google claims to use over 200 signals to rank websites. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to micro-manage every part of SEO, so here’s a tip. Pay attention to the basics (major factors) of SEO and you’ll do fine.

4. Your Site Hasn’t Been Indexed Yet.
Your site needs to be indexed by the search engines in order for it show up in the search engines. If your site is only a few days old, there’s a chance that it may not have been indexed by the search engines yet. Google and Bing have gotten better about indexing sites fairly quickly, but the wait time is different for every site.
Unless you work in an industry with little to no competition, don’t expect easy search engine traffic. Search engine optimization (SEO) takes time to do properly and results don’t come overnight. Don’t take shortcuts and follow white-hat methods. It’ll save you lots of time and headaches later down the road.

How to Local Business Listings can help your Business Grow

Local business listings are more than just simple placeholders for your business. There’s more benefits that come from local business listings than you might think.
Here are some ways that local business listings can help your business.

Ratings and Reviews
Word of mouth is probably the best way to get quality referral business. Ratings and reviews are the equivalent to word of mouth referrals online. Most local business directories offer ratings and reviews of local businesses. By receiving positive ratings and reviews from real customers, you’ll be able to attract new customers to your door.

Communicate with Your Customers
Many local business directories have gone social. This means that your existing customers or your potential customers can “follow” your business and even send private messages to you via a contact form. This adds another channel for your customers to communicate with you. Some still like to use the phone, but more and more people are beginning to use the other forms of communication online.

SEO Benefit
Most local business directories allow you to add a link from the listing to your site. If you’re not well versed in SEO, you may not fully understand the benefits of a link. A link is more than just a link. A link can actually help improve your rankings in the search engines. Backlinks are what connects your website to the great world wide web. It is a signal to the search engines that your site deserves recognition. One or 2 business listing links won’t give you a big boost in rankings, but imagine if you had a bunch of them. It all adds up.

Traffic Benefit
When you add your business listing on a local business directory, you are essentially creating a profile page for your business. For example, you can create business profile pages on sites like Facebook, Submit Site, Face an Face, Yelp and Manta. Once these pages are created, they then get indexed by the search engines. Once indexed, your business profile page becomes searchable by someone searching for a keyword in your niche and location. You notice that when you run a local search on Google, you end with a bunch of listings from Yelp. Well, this is what I’m talking about. These could be your business listings at the top of Google.
If you haven’t submitted your business listing to any of the major business directories, you definitely should. You have little to lose and a lot to gain.

Search Engine Optimization for your URL address

One of the first parts of a page a search engine will read is your website URL address bar (or slug, in WordPress terms). So it is important to try and include any keywords for that page in there. As you can see for this post, the URL bar is carefully optimized for this pages content.

When creating a post in WordPress, you have the option to edit your slug. You may have a long title for you post, like (but most likely not) “Code Chewing offers free balloons for the summer season!”. In the post you talk about balloons being given away for free, of course. So your URL slug would probably suit ‘free-balloons” – reading something like www.codechewing.com/free-balloons. You don’t need to include common words that will be ignored by search engines, such as ‘for’ and ‘the’. This way you can create keyword dense & rich URLs which is great for your Search Engine Optimization.

Saturday, 23 March 2013

Search Engine Optimization for your URL address

One of the first parts of a page a search engine will read is your website URL address bar (or slug, in WordPress terms). So it is important to try and include any keywords for that page in there. As you can see for this post, the URL bar is carefully optimized for this pages content.

Best Web Directory: Submit Site