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Choosing the right domain name is important, even critical, in positioning and branding your website. So what are the considerations for an Irish business?

Dot what

.com is still the king of the castle when it comes to generic top level domains (TLDs). .com is the TLD your dad will remember. Highly memorable, inexpensive and easy to register. Sometimes tough to find the right one. Second to .com is .net - still fairly memorable, inexpensive, and easy to register. Third, recommended for charities and non-profits is .org.

Go local - and establish trust

Despite the comparative difficulty of applying for a .ie it is often worthwhile. The local domain establishes trust by making it clear to your audience where you are based. Many people are also familiar with the lower cost of .com - making the slightly bigger investment in .ie could help differentiate you from fly-by-night operators. If you want to expand further afield, registering a .co.uk is inexpensive and allows you to further localise - for example your ecommerce site could have euro and pounds sterling versions… and perhaps you could register for a London-based virtual office to support the latter!

Branding vs Keywords

Your domain should be memorable, short, easy to spell correctly first time and unique. So should you go for a descriptive keyword or brand? Descriptive keyword domains like pets.com, diy.com, jobs.com are valuable for 2 reasons: type-in traffic and anchor text. Type-in traffic is just what it sounds like - Monster get a lot of business from people typing jobs.com straight into their browser. It’s common for single keyword domains to get thousands of hits per day from this kind of traffic - which is why they’re highly sought after and very expensive.

Anchor text is a big deal because Google and other search engines weight the text used in these links as very important. So if you have ladies-golf-equipment.ie and that’s linked to with “Ladies Golf Equipment Ireland Ltd” then that’s receiving more google juice for the search term “ladies golf equipment ireland” than e.g. golfglam.ie with a link of “Golf Glam Ireland Ltd“.

The advantage of a brandname, however, is about differentiation and how memorable your domain can be. Amazon, Monster, Google - none of these are descriptive keywords - but they’re all strong brands, easy to spell, sort and unique. golfglam.ie is a good example of a brand domain name: it’s memorable and creates a picture with two short words.

To hyphenate or not to hyphenate…

In general, hyphens are bad. Stay away from them in domain names unless you really know what you’re doing. Unhyphenated names are easier to spell and read aloud and communicate to others. On the flip side, hyphens can add legibility and are reported to have a higher weighting for the keywords with google because they can distinguish between the words: it’s clear to Google what ladies-golf-equipment.ie sells, but they don’t know what a golfglam is! Maybe some of these guys might have considered using hyphens: PowerGenItalia.com, ExpertsExchange.com, PenIsland.net, TherapistFinder.com!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alastair_McDermott

Many people are paralysed by the thought of building a website. It looks like a daunting task if you have never built a site before. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Building a website isn’t as hard as you think.

In fact, if you can use a word procesor like Microsoft Word, you can build your own website easily and quickly. It’s as easy as using Microsoft Word and they are many web building or authoring software available to help you.

The web authoring software I use is XSitePro. The reason I chose XSitePro was because I have never build a website before and I know nothing about HTML. I needed a software that is very easy to use.

XSitePro is the solution for me. It only took me two hours to learn and another two hours to create my first website and publish it to the world wide web. It’s that easy.

The aim of XSitePro is to allow you to learn and develop your site for profits easily and quickly.

The documentation is very well written. There is one complete manual and one tutorial. Must start with the tutorial first, only take two hours to complete and then you are ready to create and publish your own professional site that can generate profits for you.

Your can create your site in 6 simple steps. And note that you can do steps 1-5 offline (no need to connect to the internet).

1. Create a New Project (just a click & enter the project name).

2. Add a Website (just a click & enter the site name).

3. Select a Template (just a click & select the template you want to use).

4. Start typing your content (just like using your word procesor).

5. Preview or Save it.

6. Publish your site to the Web (just enter your domain, web host name and password) - this is the only step you need to be connected to the internet.

That’s it. Very simple.

After I have successfully created and published my first website, I was totally hooked and I couldn’t wait to create my second and third sites. Now I can literally create a site within one hour. It’s really as easy as using a word processor such as Microsoft Word.

Of course XSitePro also comes with advanced features. Once you have gone through the tutorial and if you want to use the advanced features, you can always refer to the manual. XSitePro also provides a member forum where you can ask questions or discuss with other fellow XSitePro-ers.

Some of the XSitePro advanced features are:

- Built-in Search Engine Optimization (on-page SEO)

- Site Map Generation. Functionality

- Affiliate Manager

- Automated Navigation.

There are many more but these are the most unique and impressive features I found. If you go to the XSitePro site, there is a nice list of 47 features.

One very powerful feature worth mentioning here is the On-Page SEO. This SEO feature is built-in in XSitePro. It checks things like page title, keyword density, meta tags, heading, alt-image, etc.. to ensure that your web page is fully optimized for the SE. Very powerful feature. I always use this feature to make sure that my web page is fully optimized before I publish it to the Web.

Whether it’s an e-commerce site, an online tool, or just your company’s corporate sites–smart marketers know that web site usability is key to the success of any online presence. What a lot of marketers don’t know is the basic principles of web usability and how to apply those rules to their own online presence. Here are ten very easy ways to make an immediate impact on the usability of your site:

1. Home – Users want a home and they expect to see a link to home in the same place: the top left-hand part of your site. Don’t try to be creative and place your link on the right hand side, or at the bottom of a left navigation, or even worse, leave it off your navigation completely. You’ll just end up frustrating your users.

2. Links – Make links look like links. Designers hate the ugly blue, underlined text that indicates a hyperlink, but users love it. The standard blue, underlined text shows users implicitly that the content is a link. Now you don’t have to use that blue, underlined text, but do make sure your links look like links. You’ll want to also make sure that a visited link changes color.

3. Text Size – Another Designer pet peeve is text size. Designers tend to use the smallest size they can get away with. If users can’t read your text, they’ll bail out. Make sure your text size is 11pt. or above. One of the great trends that stemmed from Web 2.0 is the use of really large text, buttons, and features.

4. Navigation – Your navigation is central to the usability of your site. Your navigation should be placed on the top of the page under your logo, or down the left side. Never place your navigation on the right hand side, or worse change the location of your navigation Users are used to seeing navigation in the same place. If you make them hunt for it, they’ll bail and you’ll lose out on that sale, lead, or client.

5. Orientation – If your site is deep, meaning it has a lot of pages and many levels of navigation make sure that users know where they are in the site, and how to get back. A great way to accomplish this is by adding a breadcrumb trail. This basically shows users their click path. For example, a user who is shopping for skirts might see: Home > Women’s > Clothing > Skirts. Each of these categories should be a link that takes the user back to that category.

6. Content – Though content is usually not mentioned as an aspect of usability, it is so important to use web best standards for your written content. In this case, less is always more. Your site is NOT an online brochure. Web users don’t read, they scan. Use short, active sentences and calls to action that are engaging. You can do this with bold, bullets, buttons, and call-outs.

7. Placement – Put features where users expect to see them. Your logo goes on the top left and is a link to the homepage. Search belongs at the top right hand side. Contact Us should be the last section in your navigation. Login should be at the top left. Eye tracking studies show that users start at the top right, scan back and forth from left down the page, and end up at the top right expecting to complete an action.

8. The 30 Second Rule – The 30 Second Rule states that users should know who you are, what you do, and what they should do next on your site. Do a gut check and make sure you pass. Ask anyone who is not familiar with your site or business to perform this test.

9. Search – Fifty percent of users prefer to use a search tool rather than drill down through your navigation. Give your users search so they can find what they are looking for fast.

10. Speed – Users hate nothing more than waiting. Do you think they really care about the fancy Flash effects your designer talked you into? Every last study also says that Flash-based intros are useless. So, if you’re considering spending good money on a fancy intro, think again.

At least 8 out of ten websites are breaking at least one of these rules if not all of them. Do your users a favor and fix these issues right away; your users and your bottom line will thank you for it.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ivy_Hastings

It is no secret that China is becoming a main attraction point for internet investors. While in U.S. internet companies are busy raising money for the next web2.0 venture, internet businesses in China are busy replicating what already proved to work in the west. And with existing dozen biggest investors in Beijing - Silicon Valley venture firms like Sequoia Capital are also quick to take notice. But as foreign firms begin to take first steps, they quickly realize how remote the Chinese market actually is. Not only do they have to adjust their brands to the local language, but their global internet presence suddenly becomes everything but global.

Mirkin Group, the parent company of 33Link, believes this internet trend is only on its first rise. As such, they now also aim to serve individuals on low budgets. Their recent announcement of a new dedicated option for high-traffic sites shows the industries acceptance of a moving change in Asian Markets.

As Sergey, company’s CEO & Founder, states “the company has grown to the size well enough, where we feel we can finally scale this to serve the increasing demand for our unique services. I believe, with recent Taiwan earthquake and general everyday cross-country connection delays, people are beginning to realize – if you want to market your products to China, you better have presence in China. All of my business colleagues agree - no one can succeed in Chinese Internet without serving the content from this country. It’s not just about Wikipedia and Google! There are just too many unpredictable influencing factors, end of story!”

Unlike all Chinese owned companies, 33Link primarily serves foreign customers and as such understands the many inconveniences these businesses face everyday operating from abroad.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Huskey