Biggest Traffic Generation System

The biggest traffic generation system you could ever get, has to be built by yourself. Building your own traffic generation system is not hard at all, it just takes work and effort. Once you have built your own traffic generation system you will have the blueprint to sell anything online.

What does your traffic system need to consist of? First we will start with the traffic that you can pay for. Before hiring any company do your research on their past performance, and how effective they are at their jobs. In order to get your website on the search engines I would hire a company to submit the website for you and to optimize your webpage. Make sure the company is doing hand submissions for you, automatic submissions get penalized by some search engines. Next depending on your budget I would hire a traffic specialist to drive traffic to your site. There are huge firms that can charge anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 dollars and there are freelancers who will charge only a couple of hundred dollars. A freelancer may be a little more risky than going with a big firm. Once again it just depends on your budget. Lastly I would use Pay Per Click advertising as well. You can hire a specialist to handle this for you as well or you can do it yourself. If you are going it alone make sure to start with a small amount of money at first. As you begin to understand the process then add more money accordingly.

We will now cover getting traffic on your own. There are a number of ways to get traffic on your own. First the easiest way of gaining traffic is to write articles and submit them to different directories. The next way to get traffic is to create a blog and give out daily tips on your business. Also promote your business offline with business cards, fliers and other promotional tools that you can hand out to people. There are many other ways to create traffic, the key is being persistent. Taking one day off can affect tomorrow's sales.

The biggest traffic generation system is right in front of you. Everyday you should be hiring someone to drive traffic for you or driving traffic yourself.

About the Author:
Eric Fields
Biggest Traffic Generation System was written be Eric Fields. To learn in detail more techniques visit: http://www.leadgenerationworld.com.
This article may be reprinted provided no part thereof is edited in any way and this resource box is included.
This article was posted on November 21, 2006
Article Source: articlecity

10 Ways To Ensure Your Flyer Avoids The Bin

Flyers are an excellent marketing tool to promote a club night or event. They are commonly used for student promotions throughout the country.

You want your flyers to travel all over town, only you'd probably prefer it wasn't in the dustcart or stuck to the bottom of someone's shoe. What steps can you take to avoid this?

Here's a few hints and tricks to help your flyers avoid the trash:

1. Don't miss the boat before you start. Double-check local Fresher's week and 2005/06 term dates with your local universities, as they vary nationwide.

2. Make sure there's a reason for students to keep your flyers. Can you include a drinks' promotion, discount or special offer in the copy?

3. Always include the key facts. Students need to know what, when, why, how and where. List all relevant info, such as prices, times, dates, venue or address, contact details and your url.

4. Always double check your spelling and grammar before you go to print.

5. It may sound obvious but do a spot check on the reliability of your delivery agents. You've got a great deal on print, don't blow it with distribution.

6. Remember to leave your flyers in the places where your target student hangs out, read Meet the students for some helpful placement ideas.

7. Strong visuals or topical humour help students to remember your promotion. They may even stick your flyer on their bedroom wall; beats the Simon Cowell poster their mum bought them for Christmas.

8. Ask a few local students their opinion of your sample flyer designs to see which one has the most market appeal.

9. Want to increase sales and profit? Handing out the flyer yourself can maximise your budget. Your personal enthusiasm and a friendly face can work wonders.

10. Er, try not to stand near a bin.

About the Author:
Chris Riley
Guide provided by www.facemediagroup.co.uk
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Watch Out For Misleading Pharmaceutical Advertising

In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration relaxed the rules for drug advertising on television and radio. Since that time, the airwaves have been flooded with commercials for all sorts of drugs. Some of them are vague, with a simple “Ask your doctor if drug x is right for you”; others spell out what the drug is used for and devote the commercial to telling you how much you will appreciate your product. Most consumers will probably assume that these commercials are honest, that the drugs will do what the ads say they will do, and that there are no side effects other than those mentioned in the ad. That may not be true, and consumers should be aware that the ads may not tell the whole story, and that they may be misleading.

The pharmaceutical industry spends $9 billion per year advertising their products, and the money they spend on television and radio ads is probably the most effective. Doctors may be skeptical of a product touted by a salesman, but consumers are easily swayed by television ads that show people living happy, productive lives while being treated for an ailment using the advertised product. Unfortunately, these ads may not be completely honest. In 2004, the FDA investigated thirty-six ads for drugs that the agency found to be misleading or incomplete in their descriptions of side effects. Consumers might think that the commercials must be honest, since the FDA wouldn’t allow dishonest commercials to air. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The FDA does not require pharmaceutical companies to provide screening copies of their advertisements prior to airing. The FDA doesn’t actually see the ads until the consumers do. Several months may pass before the FDA takes action. In the case of misleading advertising, the most the FDA can usually do is ask the companies to either stop running the ads or to change them. These requests aren’t always timely, however. In the last five years, the FDA has asked the drug companies to stop running several ads that had already stopped running!

What this means for consumers is that some doubt should be exercised while viewing a commercial for a new drug. If you think an advertised product may be useful to you, discuss it with your physician, but ask if they know of any problems associated with the product. Research the product on the Internet. When your health is at stake, a little caution may be a good idea.

About the Author:
©Copyright 2005 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Retro Marketing, a firm devoted to informational Websites, including http://www.Bextra-Info.net, a site devoted to the withdrawn drugs Bextra and Vioxx.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Overview Of Common Internet Advertising Strategies

Internet advertising methods are popular because virtually everyone knows HTML. As a business owner, you have to choose the best Internet advertising method for your enterprise. Before you decide you must look at the benefits of both cheap and expensive Internet advertising methods. Most people will automatically tell you to choose the expensive methods, but actually they dont know that cheaper advertising methods on the Internet have huge paybacks as well.

Here is the scoop and a comparison between cheap and expensive Internet advertising methods:

Costly Ones:

1.Pop-ups.
This is an expensive method that is also bothersome because people normally close these pop-up windows and dont even try to find out what they are about. Using this method is a waste of your money. Fly ads that are derived from pop-ups are equally irritating to surfers.

2. Pod Casts.
Pod casting on the Internet is like broadcasting on the TV. This is a stylish new method thats very hard on your budget. However if you want results then this will be money well spent.

3. Paying Search Engines.
This is an expensive method that lets your sites URL be listed in the top search results when a person types the related keyword. You pay a fixed amount to the search engine. This is expensive but if you can pay search engines such as Yahoo or Google then its definitely worth the money. Pay-per-click is also the same thing.

Cheap Ones:

1.Blogs.
This is one of the latest Internet trends. Go ahead follow the crowd and write a blog advertising your website. Its simple you just sign up for a blog, post your messages and just like that! It doesnt even cost anything!

2. Choose smaller search engines:
This is inexpensive and reliable. By putting your site on smaller search engines you increase your chances of getting more results. Bigger search engines can easily ignore your site, so to ensure you are noticed use this cheap method of Internet advertising, it just might work for you.

3. Text link:
This one is almost free! Ask someone to text link your site and do the same for them.

Expensive versus cheap, this is a dilemma we always face when making decisions to get something. When it comes to Internet advertising you must find out what your needs are and which method best fulfills them. Go with what you like but make sure you get results.

About the Author:
Jeff Burdic is a highly successful Internet Marketer. His concepts and ideas are extremely innovative and easily implementable. He has shown hundreds of people how to earn a living online. To learn the most effective advertising strategies visit: http://www.NetworkMarketingAndYou.com
Posted: 15-11-2006
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

Website Promotion - Directories

Online directories are locations where people go to find websites, the same way they do with search engines. However, there are considerable differences between the two. In order to be successful at increasing website traffic, it is crucial for people to understand these differences.

Whereas search engines usually accept almost any site that is submitted to them without looking at its quality, directories typically only accept sites that offer quality content. Since humans review all websites submitted to directories, low quality sites rarely get accepted.

Therefore, it makes sense to make sure that your website is ready before submitting it to any directories. Remember that directories list sites, not pages. In most circumstances, you should only submit the front page of your website to directories.

WHICH DIRECTORIES SHOULD YOU SUBMIT TO?

You should always begin your website promotion agenda by listing your website in the most popular online directories. These directories can significantly affect your search engine ranking so it is a wise move to list your website here before you submit to the search engines.

Directories can also send significant traffic to your website. Make sure you are listed in all of the major directories before you try any other promotional methods. In this way, you will have laid the groundwork for a successful marketing campaign.

Submitting your website to the directories is an easy process, requiring very little effort. However, making certain that the site will be accepted is the difficult part.

Since directories are far more selective than search engines and require much more preparation, you must become familiar with their policies before you submit your website. If you do not follow their instructions carefully, your website will be rejected.

If you are unsure about the appropriateness or quality of your website, research web page design articles to see what works and what does not. The primary goal of a webmaster should always be to have unique, high-quality content and lots of it.

OPEN DIRECTORY PROJECT: The best directory to start with is the Open Directory Project. Make sure you read their instructions carefully before you submit your website. The editors usually review sites quickly and will not reject them unless there is a good reason for doing so.

The Open Directory Project is free of charge, making it a perfect place to start. Once you are successful at listing your website on the Open Directory Project, you should move on to the number two directory.

YAHOO: Try to get your website listed in the Yahoo directory. Commercial websites are charged a fee but it is worth the price. Non-commercial websites are free. Again, make sure you read their instructions and guidelines carefully before you attempt to list your site.

LOOKSMART: The third biggest directory is Looksmart. A good listing in it can send a lot of visitors your way, but it is expensive. Looksmart does not draw as many visitors as Yahoo or the Open Directory Project. However, MSN, Altavista and Dogpile all use Looksmart's data in their search results, making it attractive to a lot of people.

SUBMISSION PROCESS:

Now you know where you should submit but how do you get started? It is quite simple. The first thing to do is to carefully read the rules and instructions on how to submit. They are usually displayed when you are beginning the submission process. Read them over a couple of times and follow them to the letter.

Most directories consist of various categories and subcategories. Each category consists of sites related to the category's name (e.g. the Business category will only have sites relevant to business). You need to find the category (or more often, subcategory) that most closely fits the subject matter of your site.

You can accomplish this by browsing around the directory or by doing a search on the keyword or keywords that are most relevant to your website. There may be several categories that fit your website and you will have to choose the one that most closely describes it. Make sure you submit your website to the most accurate category for your site since submissions done to the wrong categories are usually thrown out.

All directories will ask for the title and description of the website you are submitting. Give careful thought to your choice. A good title can significantly boost the amount of traffic you receive. A bad title can work against you and decrease the amount of traffic you obtain from the directory.

Your title should be brief and include your most important keyword and start with a letter that is close to the beginning of the alphabet. Many directories list websites in alphabetical order and getting listed near the top can boost your traffic.

Since the title has to be the official title of the site and it must be used on your pages, you might be required to change the name of your site. The title must sound like it just happens to start with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet or it will get edited. Do not use hyperbole (best, unbelievable, etc.) or all capital letters.

As with your title, do not stuff your description with cheap filler words (greatest, cheapest, fantastic, etc.) Never use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Write a short (20-25 words) description that exactly describes your site and includes one or two of your best keywords. Your description should flow smoothly. If the editor thinks your description is just a list of keywords, he/she will reject it. Try to make it sound like an objective review.

After you have entered all the information, check and re-check for any possible typos or spelling errors. Be very careful typing in your URL as a typo in it would result in your site never getting reviewed. When you are ready, hit the submit button.

You will be notified by email if your website if accepted but not, as a rule, if it is rejected. Therefore, it is difficult to know whether your site has been reviewed and rejected or if it has not yet been reviewed. Give them enough time to process your submission and wait a few weeks before you resubmit your site.

About the Author:
Chris Chenoweth writes articles pertaining to health, nutrition, and online business.
If you would like information on additional methods of effectively promoting your website, learn how to deliver an unstoppable flood of traffic and sales with BUTTERFLY MARKETING: http://www.ezniche.com/data/article.php?l=283
Added: 03 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/38170.html

Paper Or Plastic? Reusable Tote Bags Will Advertise Your Business

As a food retailer, do you provide shopping bags to your customers? Is your company inadvertently contributing to the litter problem in the United States? Over the last twenty years, plastic or polyethylene shopping bags have become very common in the United States. Although they require less energy to produce and they generate less solid waste than paper bags, plastic shopping bags are petroleum based and can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. While customers often reuse plastic shopping bags for carrying lunch or picking up animal waste, the main problem is their ultimate disposal in land fills or as litter along our highways. A plastic bag bearing your store name floating along in the breeze is not good advertising for your business!

According to the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), the average American makes 2.3 trips to the grocery store each week. As an average consumer, if you bring home 5-8 bags per shopping trip, you are using 600 to 1,000 bags per year. To combat the waste and litter problem, some retailers have proposed ideas such as charging a fee for each plastic bag used, or encouraging re-use by offering a small discount for each bag brought into the store. Ireland has had great success with the fee charging scheme, reducing plastic bag use in that country by 95% since 2002.

Eliminate your dilemma over paper v. plastic and do the right thing for the environment! By successfully implementing a reusable bag system for your business, you will:

• reduce the use of disposable bags, and help the environment
• advertise your business in a positive manner, and generate sales
• foster goodwill and customer loyalty, and sustain your business

Reduce the use of disposable bags

Reducing the use of disposable bags will not only reduce litter, but will save retailers money and storage space. Yet encouraging customers to use reusable totes is a behavioral habit that will take time to change. Plastic bag use is ingrained in our shopping culture, and many consumers do not realize their impact on the environment. Successful implementation of a reusable tote bag program in your retail business will require some marketing. Prominently display your reusable tote bags near the cash registers. Create a brochure explaining your discount program for each bag brought into the store, such as a 25 cent discount on a customer’s total purchase. Since you would prefer the customer carry a reusable tote bag advertising your business, perhaps offer a higher incentive with the purchase your customized tote, such as a $5.00 in-store coupon. Shifts in consumer attitudes take time, education and patience. Over time, your reusable bag program will gain acceptance and be a success.

Advertise your business

Besides the benefit to the environment, your customized tote bag provides public advertising for your business. Putting your business name on a reusable tote bag is a powerful, useful, space-efficient promotional tool. Consistent, repeated marketing imagery is known to increase sales. Customers will not only use your tote bag in your store, but while shopping at other businesses and visiting other communities. Your promotional reusable tote bag becomes a walking advertising billboard for your business. And, by selling your promotional tote bag to customers at your cost, you are paying for your advertising.

Foster goodwill and customer loyalty

The ultimate goal of any business is repeat customers. Repeat customers represent satisfied customers, but they may not be loyal customers. Loyal customers are those who think of your business first, make a special trip to your market, talk about your products, your business’s atmosphere, and encourage their friends to shop there. Recent studies show that consumers are loyal to businesses that promote their community, who sponsor and participate in local events, contribute to local charities and care for the local environment. Businesses with loyal customers stay in business.

Implementing a reusable bag program in your retail business will have long lasting positive effects on your business, your community and your environment. Adding your store name, logo, and business message to a reusable tote bag provides the extra benefit of positive, consistent, repeated free advertising. Leave the floating plastic bag litter to your competitors, your customers will notice and your business will benefit.

About the Author:
Joan Tobin is owner of Eat Local Food LLC, a marketing and promotional merchandise firm that specializes in local, organic, and natural food promotions for food retailers, farmers markets and restaurants. At Eat Local Food, “It’s art, it’s advertising, it’s a values statement all in one colorful image”. http://www.eatlocalfood.com/
Article Submitted On: November 15, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Meaning of Catch Phrases in Ads For Homes

If you are buying or selling a home, the chances are good you struggle with the meaning of descriptive real estate terms. Here’s the first in a series of articles explaining them.

The Wise Seller

Be very truthful if you are a seller advertising your home. Mention your home’s best features, but do not exaggerate. If someone comes to look at your home and feels disappointed, they are not apt to buy. You are probably wasting your time and advertising money if your ads mislead.

The Wise Buyer

Take advertisements with a grain of salt and don’t get too excited until you’ve seen the property. Many sellers do not take the advice given above.

Now let’s examine some of the terms themselves and what they commonly mean.

“Open Floor Plan”

Describes a home in which rooms open out of each other and it’s possible to see from one room to another. Often entertaining rooms (living room, dining room, sun room, entrance foyer) are open to each other, and family living areas (kitchen, breakfast room, family room) are open to each other, while bedrooms have doors and open off a hall in a more traditional way.

“Traditional Floor Plan”

Used to describe a home with rooms opening off a hall or halls. Each room can usually be closed off with a door.

“Split Bedroom Plan”

A term often used to describe a home (usually one level) with the master bedroom on one side of the living areas and the rest of the bedrooms on the opposite side.

“Dormer Window”

A window in an upstairs room that has a slanting ceiling which follows the slope of the roof. The window is in an upright position, but that causes it to stick up above the roof, so it gets its own little roof (usually a gable roof) that is tied into the main roof where they meet at right angles.

If you can get the verbiage down, you’ll be way ahead in the real estate game. Look for future articles on this subject or visit our site to read more terms.

About the Author:
Raynor James is with the FSBO site - FSBOAmerica.org - homes for sale by owner.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Humor In Advertising

Many of the most memorable ad campaigns around tend to be funny. Advertisers use this strategy to attract customers to their product. Audiences like to be entertained, but not pitched. People will pay more attention to a humorous commercial than a factual or serious one, opening themselves up to be influenced. The key to funny advertising is assuring the humor is appropriate to both product and customer. The balance between funny and obnoxious can often be delicate; and a marketer must be certain the positive effects outweigh the negative before an advertisement can be introduced.

The best products to sell using humor tend to be those that consumers have to think the least about. Products that are relatively inexpensive, and often consumable, can be represented without providing a lot of facts, and that’s where there’s room for humor. Candy, food, alcohol, tobacco and toys/entertainment related products have proven to benefit the most from humor in their campaigns. One of the most important things to keep in mind is relevance to the product. An example of an extremely successful humorous campaign is the series of “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” commercials. The star, a tiny talking Chihuahua who is passionate about his Taco Bell got people repeating the company’s name across the country. The repetition of the company name and the actual content of the commercial reinforce the message in a relevant manner. Taco Bell saw a substantial rise in sales and their own mascot became a pop icon.

Another point to consider when using humor in advertising is that different things are funny to different people. A commercial that may leave one person gripping their sides from laughter may leave a bad taste in another’s mouth. The target market must always be considered. What’s funny in a client presentation may not be funny on an airplane, at a country club or in a hospital. An example of a recent humorous product introduction is Mike’s Hard Lemonade. These commercials feature over exaggerated and comical violence with the underlining message that no one's day is hard enough to pass up a Mike's. It failed, ranking as one of the year’s most hated campaigns by both men and woman according to 2002’s Ad Track, a consumer survey. The series of commercials are aimed at 21-29 year old males and the repetition of comical violence (such as a construction worker being impaled on the job and a lumberjack cutting off his own foot) gets less and less funny every time it’s viewed. Eventually the joke just wore out and the commercial became annoying and offensive.

Humor in advertising tends to improve brand recognition, but does not improve product recall, message credibility, or buying intentions. In other words, consumers may be familiar with and have good feelings towards the product, but their purchasing decisions will probably not be affected. One of the major keys to a successful humorous campaign is variety, once a commercial starts to wear out there’s no saving it without some variation on the concept. Humorous campaigns are often expensive because they have to be constantly changed. Advertisers must remember that while making the customer laugh, they have to keep things interesting, because old jokes die along with their products.

About the Author:
Mark Levit is managing partner of Partners & Levit Advertising and a professor of marketing at New York University. Partners & Levit's clients include Procter & Gamble, UnitedHealth Group, and GE Commercial Finance. For more information call 212-696-1200 or visit http://www.partnerslevit.com.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Top 10 Tips For Using Pay-per-click Advertising

Pay-per-click advertising has completely revolutionized how advertising is done over the Internet. No longer must advertisers purchase banners or text link ads on sites for a flat rate per month, but with virtually no guaranteed results (not even a guarantee of a click); instead, they can purchase "pay per click" advertising through a massive contextual ad server service, such as Google Adwords.

Now, with this new ability to advertise effectively comes several responsibilities: in order to use it correctly, you must understand how it works. You can't simply purchase the top right corner of a site for a flat rate per month. Below, I've included 10 important tips for PPC advertising:

1. Actually browse through sites that serve your advertisements. Eliminate those that are low quality or that are likely to inflate the price of advertising by giving you too many clicks per 1000 views.

2. Remember to always determine whether or not it is cost effective to advertise on contextual ad networks; or whether you should restrict your pay-per-click advertisements to the search engine itself.

3. Use "day parting" features to determine when your advertisements will and wont be shown. If, for instance, you find that at certain times during the day, you get a lot of clicks, but none are serious buyers, you may want to remove your days from that period of time.

4. Use the statistics program on whichever pay-per-click advertising program you are using to determine the effectiveness of ads. If ads are not effective (or are too effective), replace them with something else.

5. Test and refine your ads until you have the best possible advertisement (i.e. one that pulls visitors, but not visitors that don't buy).

6. Determine how many clicks you can afford to pay for per sale. You should be able to mathematically determine the optimal price per click.

7. Use Google Adword's keyword tool feature to search for additional keywords to use in your campaigns. The more you have, the more traffic you will pull.

8. Remember to segment each campaign into a list of keywords and an advertisement that matches that list. The smaller the list of keywords, the more narrowly focused the advertisement can be, making it more effective

9. Remove keywords from your campaigns that are not cost effective. Many keywords will pull searches, but will end up decreasing your click through rate or not converting to sales after someone clicks through.

10. Use negative keywords to prevent freebie seekers from running up your click through count. For instance, get rid of keywords like "free" and "cheap," unless your product is free or cheap.

Follow each of these ten tips carefully and you will find that using pay per click advertising isn't as hard as it may seem initially.

About the Author:
Aurelius Tjin is The Publisher of The ’Unstoppable Internet Marketing’ Newsletter. Discover His Secret Strategies To Skyrocket Your Internet Marketing Business. To Find Out More Go To http://www.UnstoppableInternetMarketing.com
Posted: 19-11-2006
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

Website Traffic And Search Engine Optimization: The Domain Name

Whether for business or personal use, before there can be a website, there must be a domain name, and one of the most important steps of a search engine optimization plan is to pick the right one.

So what IS a domain name? A domain name is that thing that people give you when you ask for their website. TexasToyota.com, for example, is a domain name. (That's a plug, by the way. They really treated me nice when I bought my car from them, so I thought I would pay them back a little. If you don't believe me, look for an article I wrote titled "If Michael Is Selling, I'm Buying".)

Some things to consider in choosing a domain name are:

1. Keep it short and simple. If your website is for your business, a short domain name has its advantages. Whether you want to print it on business cards or display it on a billboard, making the domain too long or too complicated may make it too hard for potential customers to catch in one reading or recall later, if they did not have a chance to write it down. An exception to this is if you can get a phrase which will be remembered into the domain name (Example: buytwogetonefree.com) ...which leads us to point number two.

2. Make it easy to remember. Your customer won't always have a pen with them, or maybe they won't even think about your domain name or website until later. Short, simple, and easy to remember can be important, but you normally shouldn't just opt for something like qdipe.com, and we are about to tell you why.

3. Relate it to your business or organization. If you sell bicycle parts, try to put "bicycle parts" in the domain name. This is not only for the eyes of internet surfers, but for the search engines as well. They use various factors to rank the pages they visit, and sometimes the words used in the domain can increase the rank of the page. This brings up another point.

4. Think about keywords. Although we are not going to get into Meta tags in this article, keywords are important. Even if hardly any search engines look at the "keyword" Meta tag any more, they are still searching the content of your site for keywords found within the text of the body, "alt" tags on the images, and "title" tags on anchor text and other links. Taking number 3 and number 4 together, the best of both worlds is to have a business name that is a keyword or phrase relevant to the business and use that as the domain name.

5. Cute's nice, but...! Some people try to make their domain name memorable by using puns, jokes, wordplay, or number combinations. Just be careful. A few years ago I needed a domain name for a weight loss product. I went through all the "short" and "easy to remember" names I could think of, but they all were taken! I then came up with the domain name NoDiet4Me.com. It made perfect sense to me! I went to have a magnetic sign made for my car, and the lady read it this way..."No die t-4-me?" and shook her head with a confused look on her face! The site worked fine and got a lot of traffic and made me a lot of money, but now I wonder if I lost any traffic because of my domain name.

6. To dash or not to dash. There have been a lot of discussions about whether to put a hyphen in the domain name. I can't honestly answer based on my own experiences, as I use both, but the consensus seems to be from my research that it is easier for a search engine to categorize and rank a site that has a hyphen than one where the words are run together. Example: chickensoup vs. chicken-soup.

There is one danger to be recognized if you choose to use the hyphen. You must make sure it is clearly shown in any printed advertising or representations, and if giving the domain name verbally, go to great lengths to make sure that your listener understands the hyphens MUST be inserted. Many people are not that internet savvy and will hear "bobs dash bicycles" and still type in "bobsbicycles".

7. Alphabet soup. Ever wonder what's best? Should you get a .com or .net? Will it be okay to get a .biz or .us? What the heck do those things mean anyways and does it matter? Well, in today's world, most people entering the internet world are familiar with .com and .net. After that, they tend to get confused. I will not get into country specific top level domains at the moment, as this article is primarily directed at those either doing business in the U.S. or those doing business worldwide with a generic type product where a country-specific domain name would not matter. So, in most cases, .tv, .ws, or .org will not matter one way or another. By the way, .tv is the top level domain for the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu and .ws is the top level domain for Samoa.

Just to continue this discussion on extensions for a moment. When passing someone your domain name whether verbally or in writing, make sure they see or hear the extension. To use my earlier example, simply saying, "My website is bobsbicycles", will probably cause people just to type in the .com on the end as that is what they are most used to hearing.

8. Branding. In some cases, a domain name may be associated with an easily recognized, or branded, product. Wal-Mart and Ford do not have to worry THAT much about such niceties as keyword density or "easy to remember" names. However, if you are working with a product or company which has or is in the process of branding itself, some of the information given above about selecting domain names might not be relevant.

I am going to assume that most people who read this little article are probably trying to do some SEO (search engine optimization) themselves, and one of the best places to start is with the domain name itself.

About the Author:
Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and network marketing professional. Learn how to use domain names to make money online at http://donsdomains.ws/.
Added: 13 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/39217.html