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- Should I buy my own domain or go for a free host? by Daniel Scocco
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Buy a Domain Name and Choose a Good Blog Host.
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You now know what your intentions are with your blog and it’s time for your second step. You now need to choose a domain name that fits the name of your club, magazine or community. It needs to represent you or your product and it needs to be good for your blog’s SEO.
Choosing the right name can really be essential for your blog and this doesn’t need to be taken lightly. Of course if you only blog for your family and friends than your name would be perfect. But if you are starting a community in tuning cars or dog training the name peterharrysmith.com or henkvandesluis.com it isn’t okay, unless you are super famous but I presume that you are not super famous so let´s continue;).
First you’ll need to know the basics of domains. The most common domain names are:
.com commercial business domain
.net commercial network
.org nonprofit organizations
.edu educational institution
.gov government agency
.us - .co.uk- .nl - .de etc. etc. as the country code
If you are creating a blog that only serves local purposes than the country code .us, .co.uk or .nl will do just fine. If you are serious about your blog and you want a local extension than I would suggest that you throw in some extra money and buy the .com extension too and redirect it to your local domain. I’ll explain why in a minute.
The importance of the Domain extensions.
The domains .gov and .edu are found by google the most trustworthy because those domains are not buyable by everyone. If you perform a search in Google you will almost always see the .com extensions are the most common and are always ranking the highest in the search results.
My advice is to always buy the .com extension even if you already have the local extension. If you have a domain name that you type in your browser you’ll always go for the .com simply because it’s the most common one. All the 1, 2 3 and 4 letter .com domains are already registered but you can register the domain test.org.sc but after you finished reading this page you can’t remember this URL (have you forgot it already?).
Buying and selling domain names is a whole new industry.
These domains are bought for $8 or $10 US dollars.
Casa.net $35,000
Casinocruises.com $25,000
Xmasgift.com $11,000
Loseinches.com $10,000
Clickmypics.com $8500
Sitesfast.com $5000
Clicktowatch.com $3000
And what about the domain creditcards.com? It was sold for $2.75 million…
At the moment there are more than 128 million domain names registered and new ones are added to this list every minute. There is great software available and there are excellent books on the market that can help you but first we’ll try it ourselves. Okay grab a pen and paper and let’s get innovative and creativeJ.
We are starting with doing some SEO. You’ll need to make a list with all the keywords that are relevant to your blog. Let’s say that I want to make a blog with dog training tips specialist in obedience training of the bread Bull Mastiffs. Now this might be a wrong example because I have a Bull Mastiff and he never listens but okay, where starting a blog with dog training tips for Bull Mastiffs. Now we need to write down all the relevant keywords for dog training and Bull Mastiffs.
Bull Mastiff
Dog
Dog training
Dog training School
Dog training program
Dog school
Training dogs
Dog training center
Dog training centre
etc. etc.
I haven’t check this but I can say for 99.99% sure that all these .com, .net and .org domains are gone.
What you want to try to accomplish is that you have at least one of your sites keywords in your URL. If you already have your keywords present in your description, it’s easier to rank high in Google. Please note that if you have an URL www.sandys-dog-training.com it doesn’t mean that you rank number one if someone searches for the term dog training. The term dog training is a very competitive term which means that it is searched for a lot with more than a million search results. The real key for good profitable keywords is to find keywords that are searched for a lot but with fewer results. Since you are only starting out or are relatively new to keyword management I’m now not going to explain this into detail. There is very good software for called Keyword Elite but if only need several keywords than you can check this yourself. Go to Overture and type in your keyword and you’ll see how many times your keyword is searched for. Then go to Google and type it in again and you’ll see the search results.
Here’s an example:
There are 65600 Google Results for your keyword and 15016 Searches for your keyword.
Then the result/search ratio is 4.36 and this R/S ratio is pretty good. This result needs to be as low as possible.
But let me say it again: if you are new to blogging and this is your first blog or website don’t worry about ranking high in Google immediately. Ranking high isn’t done overnight. If you do want to learn more about keywords I suggest that you take a look on the site of Keyword Elite. And if you wonder why I only speak about Google… Google is the only search engine that really matters. From all the search engine traffic that I receive on all my blogs and sites, about +95 percent is coming from Google.
Okay be creative and choose your domain.
There are a couple of things you need to think of while making keyword combinations.
The domain has to be as short as possible, but it’s much more important to have a memorable one.
It has to be a memorable URL.
Not easily confused.
Hard to misspell.
Related to your blog intentions.
With appropriate sounding to the core of your business.
But you also need to think of…
What is your blogs style?
What are you trying to achieve with your blog?
Are you the only author?
What is the tone of your blog?
Who are your readers?
The last two tips that I want to give you are.
Don’t use the digit “0” in your domain, this can be easily confused with the vowel “o”.
And try to avoid using the “2” for “to” and “4” for “four” because this might be confusing for your visitors. And if you really want this domain then buy the extended domain too. Buy 4you.com as your main domain and redirect foryou.com towards your main domain.
Choosing the right domain is just like naming your business, you’ll need to think of the overall strategy.
With his list you should be able to choose the right domain for your blog. If you still have questions please feel free to contact me or have a look at the Keyword Elite site or buy this great e-book.
Choosing the right blog host isn’t as difficult as choosing a domain for you blog.
You know what your intentions are with your blog and you need to think of this while choosing your blog host. Choosing can be easy; you just have to follow the next mentioned tips.
Know the different kinds of hosts. There is shared hosting, collocated, unmanaged dedicate and managed dedicated.
Go for reliability and not only for price or size.
Find out what control panel they have for managing the account. It can be helpful if your cPanel automaticity monitors your sites and when they are down your ISP get’s notified automatically.
How experienced is your host? Is it a hobby host or a huge multinational? When you’re site is down you’ll need to have professional support.
Read other customer’s reviews of the hosting services.
The last question you should ask yourself is, is the blog host flexible. Your needs might change someday. You’re now only at the beginning of your journey. Can you already imagine that you have a blog with 10.000 subscribers and 500.000 visitors per month? Well you better because these numbers are possible and then you most likely need to change your hosting plan.
I’ve tried about 5 international hosts and I currently have two hosts where I’m very pleased with. The first is my main host Bluehost where among others a blog for bloggers is hosted. Although it’s possible to host an unlimited number of domains there I have several accounts there. I usually don’t host more than 5 blogs or sites on one account. This way if there is a server down then not all your sites are affected. I do this for a living and I do need to have at least a couple of sites online to make some money. My experience with Bluehost is very positive. They are easy to contact via mail and via phone (this is a big plus since I’m calling from the Netherlands) and they are always very helpful, friendly and they have real experts working for them. One other big plus is the US dollar;).
The other host is the Dutch host Antagonist which I only use for my .nl domains like een blog voor bloggers. Overall experience with Antagonist is also very positive. Real experts but unfortunately they don’t have telephone support but they have a great support forum.
So, this turned out to be a pretty long article but I just hope you’ve learned something from it. And if you liked it and still need to register your domain at a blog host I hope you click on the Bluehost banner in my sidebar and have a look there;).
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