Now you have your niche, it’s time to turn that basic topic into a
business model. This is where things can get complicated for some,
but it’s also the most fun and exciting part!
And it all begins with choosing your business name, which is highly
likely to also be your website name, which is highly likely to also be
your domain name (the address that visitors type into the browser to
find your website!).
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• Choosing Your Domain Name and Site Name
If you are preparing to launch a new website, then there are several
things you will need to do in preparation before you can even begin
to think about content writing or SEO. Of course, one of the most
fundamental starting points is to find a hosting service and to choose
a domain name for your site or blog. This will give you somewhere
to store the files that make up your site, and it will give your visitors
a way to access them.
But deciding on a domain name is more than just a practical matter,
it's also going to have a huge impact on the way your visitors view
your site, and on the way, you'll go about promoting it. Here we'll look
at how to choose a domain name that will make sense from a
business standpoint, and from a creative one too.
Branding
Coming up with a name for your website that you can build a brand
around makes a lot of sense for several reasons. For one, Google
has explicitly stated that it will be trying to give more prominence to
brands and to bury 'exact name domains' (keyword URLs) in an
attempt to show better quality sites. At the same time though, if you
can create a brand name this will give you more opportunity for future
expansion meaning that you can more easily market your site and
create awareness while using that same branding in your advertising.
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Memorability
Of course, if you want people to come to your site often and to spread
the word, then it also makes sense to choose a URL that will be easy
to remember. If your website name is too long or nonsensical then
this will mean that people struggle to return to your site, or to tell
others about it. Avoid complex combinations of dashes and
underscores, and try to make the URL as catchy as possible.
Uniqueness
While Google is no longer giving any advantage to exact-namedomains, typing your URL into Google is still one way that people
are likely to get to your website. If your URL isn't at all unique though,
then you'll be buried somewhere around page 100. In this regard
then, calling a company 'Apple' would be a bad move (fortunately the
Apple already had a lot of clout behind them).
Likewise having a more unique company name will help you to be
more memorable again, and will also help you to avoid using any
trademarked names. Of course, you may also want to do some
research to ensure that the name you want is available and that
you're legally entitled to use it. Having a unique domain will also
allow you to buy up similar domains (for typos etc.) with less chance
of them already being taken.
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Other Considerations
There are many more considerations to bear in mind besides these
points though the degree to which they apply to your site will vary.
For instance, if your business is likely to be listed alphabetically, then
coming up with an URL beginning with 'A' or even '1' could be a good
way to get yourself near the top. Likewise, you may also want to
consider the length of your domain, and of course this is all just
academic until you take into account the price and availability...
Top Tip: While you don’t necessarily need to buy the trademark for
your domain name, it is a good idea to make sure that nobody else
has already bought it. Check that there are no websites that have
very similar names, and likewise do a search for trademarks to make
sure that yours is unique
(https://www.uspto.gov/trademark).
• Buying Hosting and a Domain Name
Now you have a name for your website, the next step is to build it.
This means doing a few things:
o Investing in a webhost
o Buying your domain name
o Creating the basic foundation of your website
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A webhost is where your site will be stored. Popular options
include:
➢ Bluehost – www.bluehost.com
➢ GoDaddy – www.godaddy.com
➢ HostGator – www.hostgator.com
All of these will provide what you need to get started, though our
recommendation is to choose BlueHost. A webhost essentially
provides you with space on a huge, always-connected computer
called a server. You upload the files that constitute your website to
this computer, and then when someone types your URL into the
address bar, they will be shown those files.
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That’s why you of course also need to buy the domain name. You
can do this separately, but the good news is that most webhosts will
also allow you to buy a domain name through their site directly. Once
you click that you want to sign up, this will be the first thing you do
before you pay for a deal.
There are plenty of different options and settings when choosing a
plan for your hosting. As you are starting out as an internet marketer,
you won’t have a huge amount of traffic to begin with, and nor will
you need to deal with lots of very big files – so the most basic options
will do.
Finally, you need to set up the basics of your website. To do this, I
highly recommend using WordPress.
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WordPress is a completely free tool that is readily available on most
hosting plans and can be installed from the dashboard via a single
click. This then gives you a skeleton website, and lets you easily add
new posts, change a host of settings, and even install entirely new
themes and mini apps.
WordPress powers over a quarter of all websites on the net, it is used
by many of the best-known brands in the world, and it is completely
open-source and fully customizable. There is a huge community of
support (just do a quick search for “how to set up a WordPress
website” to get started), and it works with the largest
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proportion of third-party apps and plugins. In short, there is no
reason not to use WordPress.
• Get Started with the Most Basic Promotion
Over the next few chapters, we’ll be looking at some advanced
marketing and promotion you can use to get your site to the top. This
includes social media marketing, email marketing, and more. Before
we get ahead of ourselves though, you might want to simply start
populating your site to get more people to go there.
Your job now then, is to find the blog section of your website and to
add a new post that directly relates to your niche once every week
to once every day (the more, the better). Simply adding more content
to your site gives visitors a reason to keep checking back, to share
your content, and to consider buying anything you’re selling.
Likewise, adding content will help to give Google something to use
to identify the topic of your site, thereby helping it to present your
page when people search for relevant terms.
Keep in mind that you can do this a lot more effectively if you also
use basic SEO. That means integrating search terms. This is a more
advanced form of marketing, but one that you can look into as you
progress.