Domain Owl

One of the biggest challenges that site owners face is link building. Whether you run an e-commerce site, a niche blog, or a reputation management website, generating quality backlinks is absolutely vital. SEO used to revolve around the on-page optimization, but since the Panda update it seems that backlinks (especially those from relevant sites) are now playing a more important role in the ranking of websites. There are lots of ways that backlinks can be generated, but not all of them are easy. And the ones that are tend to be not worth your time. So let’s look at three mistakes that many webmasters make when trying to boost their backlinks – and how to avoid them.

Assuming that a link from a high PR site is more valuable

The Page Rank system is useful because it lets people know how highly regarded a site is in the eyes of search engines like Google, but it’s not always a green flag. It’s understandable that if a site with a PR of 3 or 4 wants to link to you, that’s a tempting offer, but if you have to pay for the privilege you should do a little research first. The first thing to check is relevancy: does this page have anything to do with your site and topic? If not, the backlink won’t pack as much punch with Google. Another thing to check is how many other links this high PR site has. If your link is one of ten or more on a page, you might as well be throwing money away. Carry out these simple checks every time you’re considering a new paid backlink and you’ll be much better off in the long run.

Believing that NOFOLLOW links are useless

When Google is considering its rankings, it takes into account a great many factors. Some of these are well-known, like keyword densities and the age of the site, but others are a little more obscure. Take NOFOLLOW links for example. While it’s true that these don’t have a direct effect on your page rankings, they do affect the ‘spread’ of your links across the web. For example, if you had spent time and money generating 100 backlinks and they were all FOLLOW, this could count against you because the link spread doesn’t appear organic. On the other hand, if you have a nice mix of FOLLOW and NOFOLLOW, your link spread is much more natural. The bottom line is, don’t always assume that FOLLOW is best – try to mix it up a little.

“1000 backlinks for just $5.00? What a great deal!”

There are lots of places on the web that you can get something for next-to-nothing. In fact, there are sites that provide nothing but $5 services. And very often you’ll find someone there offering thousands of backlinks for very little money. Now, your logic should kick in here and tell you that these aren’t going to be quality links, but it’s easy to be blinded by what you consider a ‘steal’. The truth is that, wherever you find them, these cheap backlink services are a waste of money. Not only that, there’s a chance you’ll get your site blacklisted because your link will inevitably appear on spam sites. So the end result may be the opposite of what you intend, and your site will be penalized by Google. This will reduce your Page Rank, lower your site’s visibility in SERPs, and make all of the time and effort you’ve put into your SEO a waste of energy. No matter how cheap they are, no matter how smooth their patter, don’t be fooled into buying cheap backlinks – it’s a recipe for disaster. That’s not to say that buying backlinks can work, just always remember that you get what you pay for – and five dollars isn’t going to get you much.
Remember, the generation of backlinks is one of the best tools in a site owner’s toolbox, but going about it in the wrong way can have negative consequences. Tactics such as guest blog posts and link exchanges with other relevant sites are generally successful – just don’t let yourself get suckered into anything that sounds too good to be true. Because, as we all know, it probably is.

Continue Reading

The type of material one carries in one’s wallet tells people who you are and what you make, where you live and how you spend. But in the wrong hands this could be deadly. Your Social Security Card, pay stub, occupational health membership card, even your health membership card can be used to social engineer a password or reset at a moment where your email account is compromised. Hackers are that clever, and in this world of online job competition they are motivated indeed.

1. Too Much Information

Take a look at the information inside your wallet. The worst type of identity slacker has their computer password or even printed out documentation with their passwords on it folded inside. This is the mother lode to a hacker looking to hack your corporate account by way of your personal email account. Little strips of paper and notes tucked inside for later use can be forgotten, but a hacker has plenty of time to figure out why they are so significant to you.

Solution: Carry a sport version of your everyday full wallet. reduce the full wallet and use it only during travel or International commerce, such as stock exchanges, border travel, or purchasing cruise tickets or anywhere you’ll need passport level documents with you. Keep a drawer in your desk with spare bit  of addresses passwords, and other task reminders. If you think you need the information somewhere in your everyday travels, transfer it in code to an email. A hacker won’t even know what it means in a sentence or subject line but you will.

2. Stacking the Deck

Another crime of wallet stuffing is carrying every credit card you ever got in a rubber banded stack. This can let thieves know you won’t miss one if it goes away or if you copy them the job you’ll have canceling every card will give them enough time to run up some charges. Hackers have bogus mail drops they can ordered goods delivered. Do NOT keep blank checks in there “just in case”. Keep your checkbook separate or have your wife carry it in the purse.

Solution: review what cards you carry every day and slim down the deck.

3. Layers Upon Layers

If you can’t tell tell by one look at the cards in your wallet what is missing, reduce down the number of cards and information you carry. Just trying to check if everything is there could take another ten to fifteen minutes hackers can use to set up a bogus account and use it to qualify for charges. Pickpockets know to steal the cards and information behind the visible layer. A man finds he left this wallet behind and has no idea someone has looked through it and seen what cards he has, what car he drives and his work and home address.

Solution:

4. Schedules

That work schedule or the department’s work layout plan?  Thieves really want to get their hands on these. This shows where you will be (and where your car will be left unattended) and when certain co-workers of yours will be present or not. Why do thieves and hackers want to know when you are not at home? because they can drop by you place and use your router or hack your desktop.

Solution: Keep your schedule online in a scanned version or text yourself pertinent days and hours you need to be at work.

5. The Phone as PDA

Think twice before committing a lot of sensitive information to your portable device or planner. If your phone is stolen, what will be more compromising, the renewal of phone service, activation of a new device, or chasing all the Internet access services you accessed by phone? And how much information about you social network is in there? Hackers usually start with emergency contact data, since this is a close relation to you and subject to being more vulnerable to social engineering.

Solution: carry either your cellphone with ID scanning and smart payment option  and some cash or your wallet, but not both. That’s two payments methods muggers can steal that hackers can enjoy all night long online. Or at least make sure you use a password on your phone that hackers can’t break.

Source: ClickJacker.com – July 30th, 2011

Continue Reading

Hey domainers get out your small change. The $4.95 Godaddy special is up and working!

Continue Reading

Remember when Groupon was just a funny little website with a unique sounding domain name? Groupon has now become the domainer’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But the GroupOn story has grown and grown, until the tombstone headlines in the business journals have proclaimed it a blue chip investment worthy of underwriting on the metropolitan stock exchanges worldwide.

The ongoing opportunity in the online space for a domainer to build a brand, establish a service, deliver a product and find a market still exists. As many experts observe, the SEO search result B2B offering has barely been tapped, domainer clams to the contrary. The SEO business available online is a green market ripe for plucking. Domainers needy for SEO development and cementing into the virtual universe on the vine.

Domainers and their service providers have fallen short of delivering the full scope of SEO quality services, as one observer notes in an article “The B2b of SEO”.

“Even with the popularization of SEO value present in the current online media community, actual search engine penetration is rare. But the cause of this is more counter intuitive than even the most qualified experts can defend.”

GroupOn was smart enough not to listen to the naysayers who scoffed at their idea or nodded knowingly at one more undevelopable app coming down the pike. They ignored even further the people who said according to the extant rules GroupOn might fail. Every domainer should doff their cap to GroupOn for extending the domaining possibilities for every name in every domain portfolio in existence.

Yes, I am talking to YOU. Why aren’t you marketing your domain harder? Don’t you want an IPO? Get on the stick and get your marketing department clicking. It costs NOTHING to plant urls and post comments, yet so many ambitious domain owners haven’t posted a self-serving blog comment or forum post in YEARS.

Physician, heal thyself.

Continue Reading

DirectI, parent of BigJumbo, DomainAdvertising.com, Logicboxes and ResellerClub (amongst others) announced this week the merge with the DomainAdvertising and BigJumbo brands into a single Domain Parking Platform. The merged entity will function under the brand DomainAdvertising.com. this signals a shift in parking offerings from seller side features to a more customer based approach.

Do you need an entire company to structure a parking offering? Aren’t these generated by scripts? Where does the human factor add value? I have yet to see a compelling content generation model from any parking company, which emphasizes the metrical aspect to website and domain promotion but skips the content angle. This mirrors how I feel the parking industry should be developing. Once the arrogance of a parking company fades away, the utility of their service offering improves.

Continue Reading

One of the worst and most ignorant comments I heard this month about doing business online is that you “can’t promote your website on Youtube because you don’t have any videos to upload”. I had to stop laughing after a few minutes out of sheer disbelief. When you wonder why the competition isn’t winning inflating the value of their domain names, statements like this will emerge as big reason why the strategy bubble on the other side has burst.

I actually read an email where this man claimed that “nobody” could watch the content of the TV site on YouTube because it was ”all taken down”. I was gobstopped. I absolutely stared at the screen in horror at this comment. Since I had spent days watching films and clips and fan videos concerning the very subject, that would not be taken down, and been on Youtube for years, this guy was full of it.

I guess that’s why Google bought Youtube, because it would “all be taken down”. At this writing, Youtube has billions of videos up and people taking part in discussions and comment exchange worldwide. These are the kinds of statements that “ROFL” was invented to cover. All i could think of was that this client was so removed from the actual user experience at his website that he had no clue how organic web traffic actually grabs hold of one of his pages and stops by for a visit.

The opportunity to gain valuable first time end user feedback from YouTube contacts is one of the most exiisting online. Using the browser traffic to get a concrete opinion about how your site fits user needs, by users who have already passed the subject and interest test qualification, is priceless. This is specially true the when the domainer is the webmaster. The communication cycle is very shrunk indeed when a user says “that picture is awful” or “There’s no place to comment”. These golden kernels of user feedback can be directly incorporated into site redesign steps.

I could tell that the client not only had never traced the end user’s navigational path to the website, but had errantly shut out all related wisdom. This client insisted Youtube was not the place for any links back to his website. He also insisted that dropping links in forums was not a good idea either. Yes, these are usually the people who come crying to me at the end of the year saying they can’t figure out where the traffic is going.

Catch a clue, buddy. People search YouTube because they want video formatted content. They search YouTube because it is entertainment not found anywhere else. They look for the sarcasm, pathos, satire, comedy and witticism that makes human communication surprising and worthwhile. I know these entries stay up for a long time because I can get response emails from youTube a year after I commented. That’s the longevity of a YouTube link marketing effort.

Nobody goes to a search engine page looking for humor. But people online check out YouTube on the hour looking for diversion. But that’s not the only end user online at YouTube. The information from a slideshow or clip, video or narrated upload is infinitely more appealing to some than blocks of dry text. If you can engage even the operators of other channels that is a dozen more users watching your site, or citing it in communications than you had before.

Youtube is the most popularly used website on Earth. That’s the planet you are now on, by the way. People go to Youtube to look for things because going through a search engine is a needless extra step when they know they want video. And when users want video content, the default is all the content that Youtube has. Video has become the easiest information to digest, both visually and by audio “entertaining” an end user into learning or knowing more about any topic.

Any website owner who does have one single Youtube to their credit deserves a stay in the domainer’s penalty box. This is because even a narrated version of a slideshow of the website, images to match, or a progression of clicks through the site can work as the uploaded video content. Why would any website manager or webmaster not want a descriptive tour of their website ready for interested would-be visitors to assess? Why waste a search opportunity and gift-wrap it for your competitors?

YouTubes has all kinds of ways to put out the SEO sign. (They’re kind of in on the whole thing). Titles, search tags, captions, bubble comments, Facebook links and channel comments drive YouTube interaction. Getting the debate going and reacting to a comment from someone else is the most exciting social networking interaction happening online today.These kinds of content triggers are exactly what spurs web traffic in the first place.

What kinds of videos on YouTube might lure viewers to your website? While several thousand domainers believe users will visit their site for no reasons, using grass-is-greener techniques with game-the-system strategies for empty parked pages, several hundred thousand domainers know a YouTube link can only help traffic stats and end user satisfaction. In fact, by qualifying your next end user by subject type and word associations, clickthrough likelihood and overall site visit times will only rise.

Continue Reading

A recently published article in Entrepreneur Magazine quoted a Google employee as citing the probability of getting funding from Google Networks, when connected to a member of the Google Networks employee’s own networks as a sizeable influence. Google ventures, launched in 2009, seems to play favorite son with only it own siblings. Does Google hope to attract all the best opportunities, or only venture it is already invested in through third parties?
Google’s article expresses candidly that referred deals from the personal networks of the seven investing partners are the golden children of Google’s venture arm. But opportunity seeking franchise or startup investor might scratch their heads about the point of applying for funding from a “global” venture capital grower that specifically only funds its own grandchildren. What do other investor funds think about such a narrow minded approach? And how can Google Ventures maintain a competitive profile in modern B2B business arenas with such core values?

Google has both promoted (to the Web) and denied (o the FCC) its business goals toward cornering the online market in forward thinking enterprises. Only Google can afford to overlook business opportunities not blessed by their own strategic development and those without personnel already in its own immediate business networks. This leaves good opportunities for angel funding for companies which don’t have the Google seal of Good Housekeeping on them. As a business strategy the entire functionality of a separate funding company seems like an elaborate bit of paperwork.

A curious quote from the Google Ventures article says “We don’t invest to help Google sell products or services. We don’t avoid companies that do that, but it’s not an objective of ours”. This sounds like the way companies talk when they are distinctly trying to not say their fundings are targeted to individuals already associated with their company. Life science companies and bioscience starups don’t really have an association with Google ventures or Google products, but it’s a safe bet the workplaces of those funded startups utilize Google products and apps. Just as if they were really Google business partners.

If you think this doesn’t sound like an equal opportunity funding resource, you’re probably right. Which makes it a target for every ethnic based startup requiring venture capital funding. Google Funding claims it invests in areas which Google “understands”. This is obviously the strategy behind the conception of Google Funding in the first place, to make sure a Google Ventures employee was already part of the ownership of anything they fund. So, what was that about Google not trying to monopolize its business venture clients in a monopoly-type business practice?

So, all a startup CEO needs to do to secure B2B enterprise funding is to target Google Funding using one of its own “areas of understanding” and tapping a Google Funding staff member or employee to be part of the enterprise. Just a hint: you’ll probably get accepted. In case the original CEO’s or partners look for fersher pastures, this leaves the Google ventures staffers holding the bag, and the blueprints and the copyrights. Just as Google intended it to be. (or B2b).

Continue Reading

Think you are too right-angled to forge a TV site? The days of cheesy, gray area TV links and download fears are past. This is not a niche site concept, this is the site everybody and their brother will visit. And Emmy awards traffic could be driving users to your site right now. As the big awards show comes up on the calendar for the best in television programming acting directing and production, savvy viewers want to catch details they missed.

TV sites promote themselves, but even business cards can get passed out on the train bus or wherever you have lunch. What’s the most likely thing you will be talking about people can overhear? When people ask you what show you are talking about, tell them what site you found the information on. Give them a card. No kidding just yesterday two different people wanted to know what TV sites I wrote blogs for. Yes, Virginia, they will come.

Make sure you provide formats for end users looking for TV new and updates. Visitors today are using whatever is nearest when they overhear a conversation or see a Facebook entry about a TV show. Facebook has even expanded its pages to allow a personal blog page for a Facebook group to follow a specific TV show. As everyone knows by know, a website without a social media adjunct isn’t worth anything.

Use are looking for information and discussion about their favorite TV show and the characters as well as the latest happenings. They are using laptop, desktop, tablet, cellphone and Iphones for information. The way to capitalize best is to launch right now. I would be willing to cut my rates in half for a TV site client, it’s that easy to write for. And the payoffs during international searches are to die for. Just keeping a running blog people can Twitter during the Emmy show is real, viral content.

Today the SEO value of any TV site is now is huge with potential. The person who collects the most updated information is the winner of the public’s never-say-die taste for new television related content. The only websites more frequently visited right now than TV sites are gaming sites. And when TV and game site visitor niches interconnect, you’ve got statistics gold.

If you have a TV name in your domain portfolio and you are not developing it right this second, shame on you. Time to roll up your sleeves and get out the hostings passwords because this is the time to make a website about TV shows like there never has been before. Provide some HD video options, connect the site search tools, and rewrite the title bars and you’re already haflway there. Start linking up new streaming site links and locating RSS feeds to populate secondary pages.

So many domain owners know how to buy great domains but they do not know how to fashion a website the public wants. The money needs to be earned! But Google searches and Bing searches and Yahoo searches for TV shows are stellar every day! Why not be part of that traffic that has to go somewhere.

Right now the searchable keywords for any television show are very clear, the name of the show, the network it is broadcast on, and the character names or the names of significant episodes are all a webmaster needs to know. Putting this together in a basic blog can be the beginning of your own social media success story.

Continue Reading

First time purchasers of discount web hosting ask the question: Can budget hosting perform as well as cheap web hosting? What is the better deal, Godaddy $1.99 hosting or the Hostgator offer of $3.99 a month for web hosting? Fatcow is offering hosting for $4.67. One bright part of a downturn in the economy is that server farms and wire hotels can’t support indefinite co-location, and even the biggest webhost has to lower prices in search of new business.

Hosting usually can be discounted using a prepaid model. But many experienced webmasters can investigator such discount offers and find key attributes to their web site architecture plan missing. Then adding this extra feature in can bring the cost to a premium web hosting package cost. So where is the savings? Justhost, InMotion, and others have tracked the pricing of major competitors and offer similar packages. Hub, Ipage, Greengeeks and Powweb offer price-competitive web hosting platforms with variable feature profiles.

Powweb even offers extended attribute web hosting packages for $3.88 Canadian. This is a great break for the Canadian and North American webmaster looking to shave costs if a reputable web host is attainable. Load balanced servers make sure static server installation never give viewers blank white screens again. Statistics interface programs and social media credits make budget web hosting not only a cost reduction option, but an improvement to current resources.

The savings in a budget web hosting plan eliminates the additional costs of the amortized license payments, administrative costs, and server upkeep that makes a hosting happen. The costs might be backup generators, additional staff, or updated programs and upgraded scripts that keep third party applications fresh and allow new web hosting account users optimum flexibility and choice when designing their newest site. Such budget web hosting accounts have full price features, such as online stores, search engine credits, and Cpanel, as well as multiple site builder options.

What does the webmaster sacrifice choosing low cost web hosting? Nothing, if they are a smart shopper. Increasing security concerns on the part of webmasters should restrict low cost server choice and budget web hosting accounts to well know web hosting companies with sterling customer service histories. Better yet, researching the probability that the new web hosting company won’t be shutting its doors is a safeguard against having to migrate the project files all over again.

Today, web hosting companies are competitive in their search for the low cost high volume web hosting customer. They understand that an individual client or a bulk buying domainer wants the least expensive cost possible for mounting their new domain name projects. The domain customer looks at every aspect o the web hosting offering, such as MySQL and Plesk features. And a budget web host offering can allow for variations in the website development model. The new hosting buy can allow testing of scripts and sites through cross-platform hosting access.

Such Linux or Windows choices can allow demonstration of tools and open source applications from customers with hosting that does not cross the Windows/Linux barrier. This can yield benefits by looking to a wider range of choices in the
internet design and coding model. Cheap web hosting with Linux and Windows can admit webmasters into a staging area for the operational environment of their choosing.

Continue Reading

A website should serve its customers, educate the public, and form a basis by which clients can decide whether or not to use the services provided. The website for a public facility such structures as a college, university, hospital, government building, or large shopping mall or a business plaza or public bureau block can diffuse frustration and allow the public to navigate their business smoothly. Domainers can spot the opportunity to mount a website such as this when a company fails to do so.

A survey of a company website from internal and external sources can yield surprising results. Factors for consideration should ease of use, correctness of information, updated technology, language, terms and standards, grammar, bilingual options, and feedback or contact opportunities for customers who need help getting to the next step. This information can be amassed by careful research when a domainer obtains a hot domain name property, preferable a short name with direct search engine keyword value that can quickly gain optimized traffic.

The company website for a corporate entity should not necessarily be the public-facing website. The corporate internal site and the company network should not have the same functionality and thus will not serve the public. If administration officials and staff choose to believe their website has a functionality for the existing user base, the existence of a better site made by a outsider can come as a rude awakening. It can also be an embarrassment for management.

Websites that follow a model of corporate jargon company philosophy, and frank inefficacy beg to redone by a domainer or webmaster who can deliver real utility to researcher and site visitors. The architecture of a site should hold enough virtuosity that no copycat will take the time and trouble to reap marginal advantages. But a weak company website begs to exploited by domainers and webmasters capable of making a superior site.

Administrators should capture the opportunity to own their own online presence instead of underdelivering on their website enough to beg an improved site from a non-stakeholder. If the staff do not have the skills to construct a professional looking website, outsourcing should take place. A consultant should be brought in if there is any doubt holes in the current website leave room for an outside to reap a benefit from the company’s own facility and services.

Architecture of a facility website should include a perspective of the physical layout that allows visitors to navigate the premises as well as convey a sense of the organization as a whole. The system map should naturally progress to questions a newcomer would have about how the location or campus interacts with visitors. The TLD .org can be used to promote a information feel for site visitors, although an official disclaimer should be placed somewhere on the site.

The public institution website can also furnish background data on staff and allow outside agencies to research data objects in the proper manner. These can be helpful to print out, or give or send to someone else who may find them of use. Companies who overlook this basic functionality of web publishing are letting their slip show. Every type of public facility should form a committee of persons who can give feedback about the condition of the current website and how it meets the needs of visitors and customers.

What a customer based website should do is allow potential customers and clientele to understand what using your business will entail what it will be like, and what path they should navigate to get the services and products they need. It is a pain point of management if an outsider can deliver this better than the host company.

In every case, people who experience the premises as a daily job or familiar place may not be best suited to understand how the physical layout looks to a stranger.
Customers, visitor, members, or clients need to have an idea of what they are going to be doing. This includes where to go, where to ask questions, where to park, and where to get related services.

Transportation and communication are two elements which can be smoothed over by providing needed information, such as distance from freeway offramps and proximity to bus line stops nearby. other unique data points will present themselves as the site project unfolds.

If a location or campus processes require detailed explanation, directions, coaching, or expansion, this should be done in a bulletin point list, slide show, or even an audio stream which mobile visitors and website readers alike can experience.
An Adobe PDF document ,in an easy to print format, encapsulating the necessary information, makes an excellent addition to any facility or campus website, or a website that aids newcomers and first time visitors to use the physical location the website refers to.

In the year 2011, people are used to referencing the internet before making the trip to any physical campus or premises. They want to know what they will need, what documentation to bring, and what telephone numbers to have or other paperwork/and or materials. A roadmap of how to get to the correct department of office is helpful, especially in a large building. Site administrator, both of physical locations, institutions, and public facilities can grasp the website as a information tool for the next generation.

Continue Reading