3 Pro Tips for Choosing your Business Domain Name

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

Whatever your business or industry, choosing the right domain name for your online presence can have a big effect on your future success. While the wealth of options available to you mean there might not be one single best choice for your needs, making a bad decision can certainly hinder your efforts; your internet marketing strategy, your lead capturing, and ultimately your sales.

A good domain name should be unmistakeable and represent accurately what your company is all about, and there are certain ways to help ensure your chosen domain achieves these aims.

Once you’ve settled on what you decide to be the best domain for your business, you can even think about which others might work in your internet marketing strategy too.

Read on to find out how all this can be done.

Ease of use

Crafting the perfect internet marketing strategy, only to have it undermined by an awkward domain name, would be almost criminal in the modern business world. If you want people to remember your domain name and ensure it will always be typed in correctly, it has to be as catchy and simple as possible.

This means anything overly long should be avoided, as are aspects that can be commonly mistyped. These include double ‘L’s or ‘T’s, unnecessary points, dashes, underscores, or numerical figures.

Company initials are good for shortening long company names, easy to remember, and are very difficult to misspell. If your company’s initials are already taken, anything else you choose should be short, sweet and to the point.

Pros and .coms

For companies based in the United States, the .com domain is still the most desirable suffix for those wanting to be seen as an authority figure in their industry. Luckily, here in Canada, the .ca domain is just as recognized, and can actually be of benefit to your company image if you’re looking to serve mainly local customers.

Depending on the nature of your business, the recently released batch of new gTLDs (generic top level domains) can also help you to project the right image from the extension on your domain name. Although .gov has long been used by government sites, .edu by educational facilities and .org often used by non-profits, the options now include such evocative terms as .guru, .consulting, .world, and .ninja, extensions that are regularly played with in the world of the modern internet marketing strategy.

Smart use of any of these can result in a more memorable domain name for your business than .com ever could, meaning a little time and research before deciding on yours is highly recommended.

Domain event

If you are planning different campaigns, either as part of your internet marketing strategy or offline marketing, another tip is to create multiple domain names that include different keywords related to your business. These could be your location, your product or service, the benefit your product or service gives to your customers, or a combination of any of the above.

By registering bestpizzaincalgary.com or imhungrynow.ca, you can use them as a split test to see which yields the better results, both as part of your internet marketing strategy and on print material like flyers or distributed menus.

We’re often asked ‘what’s in a name?’ When it comes to domains, with all the options out there and the pitfalls inherent in choosing a bad one, there’s actually quite a lot. Take the time to make sure you get yours right.

To watch one of our one minute tips on this same subject, follow us on Youtube!

Put your LinkedIn Profile to Work for You Today

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

The world of online sales is constantly changing, constantly evolving, and constantly becoming a more competitive and crowded market for sellers who are all trying to catch the attention of the same group of potential buyers.

A good social media plan should be a part of any online marketing campaign, but even with the usual suspects of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, the message can still come across as being a touch faceless.

Fortunately, there is one social media platform that is perfect for making personal connections with potential customers. Unfortunately, it is often overlooked by sellers who may not understand the real value of spending time on their profile, networking, and content.

LinkedIn was designed specifically to connect professionals in a suitable, dedicated online environment, and top sellers know this. That is why they may spend up to six hours a week on LinkedIn. It’s part of their social media plan, and here are some tips to help make it part of yours too.

Look your best before your guests arrive

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and nothing looks worse on business social media than an incomplete profile. Like any platform used in your social media plan, the single most important thing to make sure of on LinkedIn is that your profile is 100% complete.

A photograph is essential, as nobody will want to deal with a profile without one. Remember also that LinkedIn is a business site, and you picture should reflect that. Professional headshots work better than a picture of you waterskiing.

Add a summary with all of your previous work history, including volunteer work and internships, and anything else you think might make a potential customer want to work with you. LinkedIn will even tell you on the right hand side how close to being complete your profile is.

Once you’re sure you’re looking good, you can invite anyone you know to connect with you. LinkedIn allows you to import your entire email contact list, which saves you the time and effort otherwise spent looking for them.

On LinkedIn, content is still king

Just like any other platform that is used in a social media plan, uploading content is a surefire way of being noticed on LinkedIn. Video or relevant images work well, as does linking to articles that you think will be valuable to your potential customers. They could be useful pieces you’ve seen elsewhere on the web, or links to your own company or personal blog. Sharing your own content should of course be another part of your social media plan.

If you have something to say but nowhere else to say it, it’s possible also to publish long form articles straight onto LinkedIn and have them show up in a very large sphere of LinkedIn members. Doing so can help you get recognized as an authority figure on a certain topic, and at the very least be a way of getting more eyes on your profile.

Whether posting links, long form articles, or just short status updates, remember to always add media. Even a simple image will be more eye-catching than just text, and will be far more likely to be shared into circles that you might not yet be in.

Professional social network is social

Despite being designed for professionals to connect with each other, LinkedIn is still is a social network, and that means you should be using it to be social.

This doesn’t mean taking vital time away from everything else you have to do in the working day. As part of your overall social media plan, just seventeen minutes a day spent liking, commenting on, or sharing your prospects posts will make them notice you, and encourage them to return the favor with your content too.

This has two main benefits; you will remain at the forefront of your prospects’ mind, and your content will be seen by people outside of your own circle, with a personal recommendation by proxy from your potential client.

Another way of interacting with people in your community is to make sure you give as many recommendations as you truthfully can. Similar to liking and sharing content, people will return the favor, and more recommendations for you will mean more credibility, increasing the likelihood of prospects taking you seriously.

With other social networks, it can be difficult to add a personal touch to business profiles without losing the professional message. For salespeople, LinkedIn is the perfect way to promote yourself personally as a respectable businessperson, and should be included in any relevant social media plan. Just make sure you follow our tips to maximize your LinkedIn potential.

Get On Google- How to Add Your Business To Google Maps

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

Here is a quick tutorial video that can help you add your business to Google Maps & get on Google for Free!

So first, type in your address into Google and it will show you the position marker on a map.

It should give you the option to add a place that is missing if you are not yet visible on Google, here you will want to fill in the relevant information like your website and name.

Once you have done that, there is a link asking “are you the business owner?” Click there.

Then you claim this Google Place.

Fill out the proper information and verifications. In the “Category” option – which is for search engine purposes – you want to think about what are people typing into Google that are going to be looking for what you offer.

You have to pick form the pre-populated category then hit continue. Follow the prompts.

Choose a verification mode and it will prompt you that it will not appear as verified until it is verified but it will be added.

Next you want to edit any information that may be missing and search engine optimize the area.

Click to enter your website and edit everything like hours of operation, photos etc. It is very, very important to fill in these fields as complete as possible.

Now, let’s focus on Introduction.

Here is where you want to add in links to your website in order to drive traffic back to your site and have it working as efficiently as possible for you. Here you can also add in as much information as you like.

Once you have completed that, go back and look over the page and double check in the future to make sure it has been verified.

After about two weeks, if this hasn’t been done, call Google directly and get your page verified!

Three Steps to Getting on Google

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

If you want your website to be noticed, you have to get on Google.

And if you want to get on Google, you have to make yourself as visible as possible to them and their web crawlers.

Then of course once you’re on, you’re going to want make sure you stay there.

Getting and staying on Google can be broken down into three easily remembered stages:

· Build (on-site SEO)

· Engage (off site SEO)

· Stay fresh (regular content)

Let’s elaborate and see what these points really entail.

Build – on-site SEO

Anyone who maintains their own website, be it for business or pleasure, should at least be aware that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a thing, even if they might not really understand it.

They also need to know that it comes in two flavours: on-site and off-site, and taking care of the on-site SEO while building your website is paramount if you want it to get on Google.

On-site SEO includes everything that your web design team can arrange for you, either behind the scenes or for public consumption; quality content with relevant keywords, page titles, Google text snippets, URLs, H1 or H2 headings, correctly tagged images, outbound links, and having a site map.

All of these will affect your Google rank, although some (content and titles) carry more weight than others (alt tags on images).

Engage – off-site SEO

As the name suggests, off-site SEO covers everything you can do in other places online to improve your own SEO and help you to get on Google.

One metric used by Google to measure your ranking is the quality of your inbound links; that is, links from other places directing people to your site.

The practice of link building has long been a big part of any SEO campaign, although the focus has now shifted to the subtly different but more interpersonal practice of link earning.

Advisable ways of earning the high quality links that help you to get on Google include reaching out to bloggers and asking them to link to your best content, or offer to write a guest post with a link back to your site.

Leaving useful, non-generic comments on relevant blog posts with a link back to your site also works, as does being active and respected on a forum that allows you to display your web address in your signature or in posts.

Building a community on social media is another great way to improve the engagement with your content, if you can encourage your audience to share it directly from your site.

Stay fresh – regular content

While on and off-site SEO practices help you to get on Google, the ubiquitous search engine also takes into account the freshness of your website and its content.

It makes sense; after all, Google wants you to keep using its service, so strives to give the most relevant, freshest results it can. Stale websites get punished by falling in the rankings.

Even if most of your website’s pages are static and don’t change, there are ways to maintain a steady stream of new content. The most common is a regular blog, with the opportunity for people to comment on the posts.

Depending on the nature of your site, running a forum is also a possibility and helps with the fresh posts and interaction that Google values so highly.