6 Steps to Better Blog – Part Two
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I use godaddy.com, too, but I find them an annoying company, both from their site design and sales practices and on they're glee at their own appallingly bad advertising.
They are cheep, though.
I agree with all you said. When I get to hosting I will have some other things to say about them. They have two very good things going: Inexpensive registering and excellent call-in support. Rarely do you see a company anymore that even has call support, let alone not out-sourced.
I have to agree with Randy on GoDaddy. I have had good luck with BlueHost (to my knowledge, they have all support located in Utah)
I'm halfway through the article and already have to comment. First, Freemason? Did you read the latest Dan Brown book? Just askin'.
Second, I've been waffling on my blog name – you come to it enough to give me an HONEST opinion – is it a problem that the url and the title are different? url being gifts2love and title being loving my children's gifts? I think I messed up branding that way, but am interested in your opinion. Ok, back to the post asap. Kids up, snow day here.
No, I didn't read Dan Brown's latest. Many of my Brothers have, and seem to enjoy it. I can't stand his fast-food style of writing. I may read it sometime in the future. Incidentally, more has been written about Freemasonry than anything except the Bible. Do keep in mind, this is NOT a call to anyone to become one. I just threw that in thinking I would get a question about it. But to your question.
No, I don't see a problem with the domain name (URL) being different than the title. Both should, without a doubt reflect what you do. One of my sites adwt.com (I've had that for years) is “A Digital Walk through.” Size matters, and for once short is better. :)
If you mean registering a domain, I don't know about BlueHost. GoDaddy is good and cheap for domain registration. I don't host my sites there.
Good advice to anyone who has yet to purchase a domain name, Hal, especially noting the odd transformations that can occur when words are strung together without spaces. When my partner and I named our design firm Para Designers Inc. in 1988, our motivation was to emphasize that we are a pair of designers with a little humor. With the evolution of our internet presence I chuckle thinking that someone might think we are Parade Signers, but what is a parade signer anyway?
I've seen some high-money sites where not much thought was given to the domain name. Or they simply screwed up. Take expertsexchange.com. This is a huge site. Or gotahoe.com for Lake Tahoe.
Para is kinda hard to take wrong I guess – makes me think of the old joke about a paradox.
OK, http://www.getaclewis.com is mine, all mine! Now… about that hosting…
::wondering why I have to wait a whole week for MORE::
Haha.
Good stuff.
Thanks Cheryl. It does take some time to put this together and not make any assumptions. It would be easier to simply say do it, without explaining why.
Thanks for you comment.
Dashes are preferable if you want search engines to recognize separate words in your domain name. Google also doesn’t penalize for dashes in the url.
I believe this is true. SEO is a strange animal. The thing I wanted to point out is, people despise dashes in in URLs. Maybe not being great typists has something to do with it – I'm not sure. Between SEO and people, I'd go with the people.
I have a domain with dashes in it and given the member base I had I don't think people minded them that much. I say had as it was a writing community that changed over domains. It's about to be launched as a woman's network.
Personally I don't care if a domain has dashes or not.
I'm only telling you what I know as a website builder, Rose. If you do this for money dashes matter. Maybe you and your group don't mind at all. In fact, I don't care if a URL has a dash, but others do. I've heard it too many times from clients.
Also, if a dash will fix the URL so it doesn't look strange, then it is better to use a dash. sams-spoons.com is definitely better than samsspoons.com.
A short, straight, *memorable* URL is always best for people in general. Broken URLs are not as memorable, tend to be misspelled and are harder to brand. The resale value is always lower. If you use more than one dash they tend to look spammy.
Whatever you do, don't use an underscore. Google will treat it as a dash, but people will see it as a space, and of course you can't have a space in a URL.
Check out some URLs at http://ajaxwhois.com/ with dashes and without dashes. You will find that it is easier to get a domain with a dash than one with a single word.
The bottom line is, if you and your clients are happy that's what matters.
Oh, I found it. Apologies, apologies.
Thanks, Randy and Hal, for those comments. I think gift2love is easy to remember (even if it violates one of the rules of no numbers)! :)
And, should I start “building as we are going along with the series, or would you suggest waiting until more are posted?
I like to plan . . .
And this is my fourth comment today. Someone's gonna shut down my comment pass! I'm still debating the name. I like your advice to do more than one – just in case. I'm thinking of something a little broader than gifts2love, but not sure. Thinking through comments – a blogger's favorite thing!
Websites that suck – never heard of it and love it.
Thank you again for doing this. I just retweeted it, by the way.
You should follow this as we go. I'll tell you how to have your web online so that you have it prepared before the search engines find it. We will get into that as we go. BTW, gifts2love appears to me as perfectly OK. Rules are not set in stone. Think of them more as common sense guidelines.
Keep it coming – That's what this is about. And thinking about different names is a good idea even though gifts2love is good. Think of it like this: Does it easily roll off the tongue? Is it easy to remember? Does it reflect my business or organization? Is this how I want to be branded? You get the idea.
The only possible problem with gifts2love is, people will constantly ask if it is 2 or to. When we get into promotion you'll see, you should have business cards etc to solve this problem.
I'm working on the next part, hosting how-to. This is a biggie. Looks like I can have it ready by Monday.
Ok, great. Thanks so much. I will do this before Monday! And thanks for the advice about the name.
And it was all for naught – gifts2love is not available! How do I have a blog of that name and it's not available “out there?”
Bummer, been there more than once. A assume you've tried various combinations and alternatives? Keep in mind, this is probably a good thing for SEO, since you've already used that name on Blogspot. Starting fresh won't ring Google's chimes about possible redundancy.
I'm not an SEO expert by any stretch of the imagination. I am going to suggest blogs about blogging you should read as often as possible at the end of this.
A good one to start is seosmarty.com by Ann Smarty. I also suggest anyone serious about promotion follow her on Twitter @seosmarty
Ann has implemented a great idea about how to seriously promote your blog.
Good luck with the name.
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