Business internet marketing seo blog site

by Terri Wells

It can be very tempting to go with a free web hosting service that takes care of all the details, without your having to own your own domain name. That’s a route that many individuals, bloggers, and even small businesses take. It can be a false economy, however, especially if you’re trying to build a brand.

Let’s start from the assumption that you either have or are planning to launch a small business. It almost doesn’t matter what kind of business. You see the Internet as a way for you to reach customers, and you want to project an air of professionalism. Even if you’re aiming for a “down-home” friendly feeling to your business, you want your potential customers to trust that you’ll handle their orders promptly and properly, fix any problems, and – above all – that you’re not going to pack up and vanish overnight. If you’re using a free web host, your site will probably have a domain name like http://www.freewebhost.com/youronlinestore. How professional is that?

Let me answer that in two words: not very. Your customers would much rather shop at a place like http://www.youronlinestore.com/, which gives a greater sense of permanence. It gives you a brand you can build on. With the other URL, people can tell at a glance that you’re using a free web host, and what kind of message does that convey? It says that you’re not willing to invest money in your own business (and with how little it costs to register a domain name, there really is no excuse for that). Would you buy from someone like that? If not, why would you expect prospective customers to buy from you?

Also, if you’re using a free web host, as you would have to if you don’t have your own domain name, you can expect that host to place ads for its service on your site. It doesn’t matter what kind of site you have. To make matters worse, the free web host might even place AdSense or other search-related ads on your site. Think about this: because you don’t own your own domain name, your free web host could even place ads for your competitors on your site – and make money from them! If that doesn’t seem likely, remember that AdSense and similar services display ads that are related to the content on the web page, so it’s entirely possible that ads promoting your rivals could show up on your site.

The Joys of Email

If you’ve surfed the web for at least a year or two (or maybe even less), you know that it’s constantly in flux. A business that is online today may be bankrupt tomorrow and close its web site the following week. Even large companies can fall victim to this, and that includes companies that give you access to the Internet itself.

Let me put aside web hosting companies for the moment; I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about the companies that handle your Internet connection from your home and/or business — the Comcasts and EarthLinks and other Internet service providers of the world. Usually, when you have an Internet connection, you also have an email account with the company providing the connection, like yourname@comcast.com. That’s fine – but what happens if and when you change ISPs? Whether it’s because the ISP goes out of business, or you move into an area to which the company doesn’t provide service, or if you’re simply unhappy with them, your email address changes, and you have to tell all of your contacts (or risk losing messages).

The same thing can happen if you have a free web-based email account with Google or Yahoo or Microsoft or even Lycos. To give a personal example, I started using a Lycos email account several years ago because at the time they offered the largest mailbox: 5 MB. When Google came out with its Gmail, I wanted to switch, but by then I’d been with Lycos so long that it would have been a pain. Lycos has since expanded its mailbox, but it took months to do so, and I’ve had some issues with it that it didn’t have before the expansion.

If you have your own domain name, you can set up an email address with it – say yourname@yourawesomesite.com. And you can set it up in such a way that it forwards the messages you receive to whatever email address you’re currently using, whether it’s with Gmail or Hotmail or Comcast or some small local ISP that gives you an incredible deal because your brother-in-law owns the company. Then the only email address you hand out is the one associated with your domain name. If you change the address at which you’re receiving email, all you have to do is change the redirect that you have set up.

If you have a web site and an online business, another nice thing about having your own domain name is that you can set up lots more email addresses than most free web hosts would permit you to have. When web surfers see that they can contact sales@youronlinestore.com, support@youronlinestore.com, feedback@youronlinestore.com, and others, they figure that they’re dealing with an established company. From your point of view, this helps you organize and filter your email.

Getting Spotted by the Search Engines

If you’re planning to optimize your web site so that it shows up in a good position on the search engine results pages (SERPs), you definitely want to have your own domain name. If you’re planning to use SEO on your web site, then you know about key words and how they relate to the way that the search engines index your site. Well, the key words in your domain name matter, too.

Let’s go back a moment to compare potential URLs. Earlier I said that if you set up a web site with a free web hosting company and didn’t have your own domain, your site’s URL would be something like http://www.freewebsite.com/yoursite. If you own your own domain, your site’s URL would be more like http://www.yoursite.com. Aside from looking more professional, it’s much easier to rank higher for the right key words for the second URL.

You see, with the first URL, your index.html page may be the home page of your site – but it isn’t the home page of that domain. And Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines will be looking at the whole domain; your site is just a sub-domain to them. Since search engines tend to pay more attention to home pages than to other parts of a web site, you can pretty much guess where that leaves you.

If you own your own domain name, however, at least you have a fighting chance. It’s hard enough already to work your way to a high rank on the SERPs, especially for some of the more competitive and sought-after key words. Why make your job harder by setting yourself up to struggle against the SEO handicap of being a sub-domain on a free web host’s site?

Another SEO issue worth mentioning is permanent 301 redirects. Let’s say you decide to change the branding on your web site, and move it to a different URL. If you own both URLs, it’s much easier to tell the search engines that your web site has permanently moved to this new address.

Other Reasons for Owning Your Own Domain

I’m going to keep with the idea that you own your own business and your web site serves that business. If you have your URL printed on business cards, flyers, brochures, or other marketing material, and you don’t own your own domain name, what happens when you change web hosts? You have to change all your material, because your URL has changed! If you own your own domain name, your URL remains the same, regardless of how many times you change web hosts.

Here’s a side note. Say you have decided that your web site does need its own domain name, but you’re willing to have someone else register it (like your web host). Resist the temptation. Articles can and have been written about the nightmares people have gone through getting back their own domain names from their web hosts, or trying to transfer a domain name under those circumstances. By the same token, you should read any contract you have with your web site designer carefully; make sure the domain name will be registered in your name. The registered owner is the one that receives notice of renewals, and all major changes to the account must be approved by the owner. If you’re not the registered owner, you may never hear about these matters, and they’re important to your livelihood.

What if you’re a blogger? There are many sites now that make it easy to set up a blog, but they don’t give you ownership of your own domain name. Do you really need to own your own name? Well, that depends in part on what you plan to do with your blog and whether you mind being stuck with whatever platform/interface the blogging site offers. Many blog sites do not provide their users with an easy way to move their blogs from one site to another; they don’t exactly have an incentive to do that, after all. If you host your blog on your own domain, you’re not locked in; you have far greater freedom and control as to what you can do with it.

When it comes right down to it, those are perhaps the biggest reasons for owning your own domain name: freedom and control. You don’t have someone else telling you what you can and can’t do with your site (or at least not to the extent that they would be if you didn’t have your own domain), and you can control what goes on it. You aren’t at the mercy of any one particular web host or email company or Internet service provider. Why start your business with those kinds of handicaps anyway when you can be the master of your own domain?

█ GOVIPHOSTING.COM - Free domain for life with Free pvt registration
█ Reliable web hosting, Free domain web hosting, linux web site hosting, Business web site hosting,

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed