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From: Kat McDivitt
3:14 PM
Hi,

My name is Kat and I’ve been an expert in custom web design and ecommerce web design for over 12 years.  In fact, I wrote the book for IBM to  teach their thousands of high priced consultants about online marketing.

I figured they shouldn’t be the only ones to benefit from my knowledge, so I made three videos I’d like to send you.

If you’re already have a site that is bringing you thousands of dollars every week, then you won’t need these… but if you’re just starting out, or have a site that doesn’t bring you new leads and sales every day then make sure you enter your email or to the right side and I’ll send you a new videos over the next few days.

You’ll learn:

• Seven Steps To Financial Freedom With Your Website.
• One Little Website Mistake That Cost A Small Business Owner $3,000 Per Month.
• How The Experts Build and Maintain eCommerce Stores.

Plus I’ll give you some quick and easy tips that I wish someone would have shared with me when I first got started.

Look, I’ve been a web design expert for over 12 years and REALLY want to help you get started. But you gotta take a little action to get off the ground.

Enter your email to the right, watch these freebie videos and start increasing the money in your pocket. You can thank me later!

Talk soon,

Kat

When I help a client choose a domain name I:

1.  Start with your primary keyword

I start by researching what keywords my visitors are likely to be using.  This is where we stop thinking like a furniture retailer, or a non-profit agency, or a seller of widgets, and start thinking like someone looking for furniture online, or like someone looking for the services your non-profit provides, or someone looking for a widget.

2.  Do keyword research on what your customers are seeking.

Go to Google and search for the Free Google Keyword Tool.  Do two different searches:

A)  Under How would you like to generate keyword ideas? First select the Website Content button, and type in the web address of a couple of companies that are doing really well in your niche or a similar one.  Look at which keywords come up, paying special attention to the Global Monthly Search Volume.  You can click on those words (Global Monthly Search Volume) and it will sort the keywords by volume.  Write down the words or phrases that are getting the most volume that are most related to your niche.

B)  Now, take these words and any other niche related words you come up with and type them into the search box and click the button for “Descriptive words or phrases”.  Again look at the words and find words or phrases that have lots of volume.  Write them down.

3.  Come up with some names.

Now that you have a short list (not more than 10) of possible keyword phrases that look attractive in your niche, start writing out a list of ideal domain names.

Examples

A site that sells sofa sets – then we looked for a domain name that was available that contained the phrase sofasets.

A site that does wedding planning for Kauai.  We searched until we found a domain name using that phrase and ended up with RomanticKauaiWeddings.com.

A site that sells Custom Web Design services – hmmm – We searched for a domain that contained the words Custom Web Design – in that order (order does count).

4.  See if your names are available.

Many of the cool domain names are already gone – so you need to get creative.  Some ways to get creative are:

Adding another word, like: center, online, my, today, now.  So some examples might be: ArcheryBowsOnline.com, ArcheryBowSalesCenter.com, MyArcheryBowStore.com, BuyArcheryBowsToday.com, ArcheryBowsNow.com.

Or, you can add industry specific keywords, like taking Kauai Weddings and making it -  Romantic Kauai Weddings.com, taking Industrial Magnets and making it PowerfulIndustrialMagnets.com, taking Boston lawyers and making it FairBostonLawyers.com.

5.  Check Domain Name Generators

One place you can go to explore names is www.nameboy.com – this site is up and down – so if it’s not available at the time I’m sorry.

Other tools:

• http://www.domainexposer.com/
• http://www.snapitnow.com/

Finally, while it’s important to have a good domain name, don’t put off creating your site because you are thinking too much.  Set yourself a deadline, get it done, and move on to actually creating a site and making money with it!

1.  Search Engine Optimization

Google looks at your domain name to figure out what your site is about.  So, for example I have a site called KatMcDivitt.com that I started back in the dark ages when I first got involved in Custom Web Design.  From looking at that name, Google has no idea what the site is about.  But, when google looks at the domain name for this site, CustomWebDesignBlog.com, it has a fairly good idea that my site is about Custom Web Design – so, all other things being equal, Google is more likely to show the CustomWebDesignBlog.com site when someone types in “Custom Web Design” (my primary keyword) than they are to show the KatMcDivitt.com site.

2.  Business Card – make it easy!

Second, you want your domain name to be easy to spell and remember.  I was working with a surgeon who had a very complex and difficult to spell last name.  He wanted his site to be in that name.  When I pointed out both that Google wouldn’t know what his site was about from the site name, and that customers would have a hard time remembering and typing in his name correctly, he realized that sticking with a simple name – like Hawaii Surgery Center, was in his best interest.

One challenge is that many of the “good” names are taken – for example I couldn’t get CustomWebDesign.com.  This gives you the opportunity to be more creative.  Some other options might be:

• GreatCustomWebDesign.com
• CustomWebDesignofCalifornia.com
• CusomWebDesignByKat.com
• CustomWebDesignSecrets.com
• JoyOfCustomWebDesign

You see the idea – and I’ll be getting more into the actual technique of selecting keywords in another post.

3.  You are stuck with it.

So, here’s the deep dark secret – and why I think choosing a domain name is so very important.  You are doing all of your Search Engine Optimization on that domain name.  You can change the entire content of your website – every word, the design, every image, and if it is done by someone who understands Search Engine Optimization, it won’t drastically effect your placement on Google.

But, if you move all of your content to a new domain name, it’s going to take time and work to get your placement back – it’s like starting from scratch.

So it’s important to think it through, not be flipant about your domain name if you are looking to get Google Search Rankings.  If you only want to use Pay-per-click, or you are getting all your traffic from the radio or some other source, it’s less of a problem.  On the other hand, you may at some later time decide you want to get Google Search Traffic – so take the time and energy up-front to choose a name carefully.

This is the question on every marketers mind.   The online equation:  Success = Nice Lead Generating or Sale Generating Web Site + Good Rankings on Google = $$$$$.

1.  Good Keyword Selection

The first step is choosing keywords.  You aim for the awesome, super-competitive keyword and start with less competitive keywords until you build your search engine strength.  For example, if you are in the Archery Bow market, which is somewhat competitive (2,010,000 pages competing for that top spot in Google), then you hold Archery Bow as a goal, and start with something slightly less competitive, like maybe “Buckbuster Bow” (a type of archery bow) where there are only 13,000 competing pages.

You can find out what keywords people are using to search by:

1. Go to Google
2. Type in Free Keyword Search Tool
3. Click on the Google Free Keyword Search Tool
4. Type in your main keyword and see what other keywords people are searching for, but are not as competitive.

2. Custom Web Design with Strong Internal Linking

When your site is being designed and built, it is critical that your designers / builders understand Google and build the site to make it Google-friendly.   They will ask you specific questions about your keywords, finding out your primary (goal) keywords and secondary keywords, and then build the pages with those keywords in mind.  These keywords  go in the title of the page, in the links going to and from the page, and in the headlines of the sections of the page.

When you are adding content to the site, you can be conscious of your keywords and include them in your writing.  So, for example, the title of this article includes the words “Higher Rankings on Google”, which is one of my targeted key phrases.  The title of this section includes the words “Custom Web Design”, another key phrase I am targeting.  So with an awareness of your key phrases you can use them to build your site rank.

3.  External Linking To Increase Google Page Rank

The third aspect of increasing your position in google is who links to you and how popular they are.  It’s kind of like a popularity contest in high school.  If popular sites link to you, then you are popular.  If less popular sites link to you, it still increases your popularity, but not as much.  If no one links to you – then you might be listed last in all the site results in google.

A couple ways to get links:

1. Within your own site – you can cross-link your own pages
2. Write articles and submit them to places like ezinearticles.com – just be sure that your articles are unique – Google, like my high school English teacher, punishes us for reusing writing.
3. Get all of your friends, neighbors, suppliers, vendors, customers to link to your site.

Unfortunately this is only a very brief overview of a fairly complex subject.  I have people full time on my staff who focus only on getting our customers higher rankings on Google, and it’s a quickly shifting market.

I will be posting more articles that get into more detail on the subject – so check back!

When people find out that I’m an ecommerce expert, one of the first questions they ask if they are getting started is: What is an easy / cheap / google-friendly ecommerce solution?  Unfortunately, the answer is: It Depends.

Three Types of Ecommerce Sites

I divide the world into three kinds of eCommerce Sites.

1)  I have a website, and I sell a few products.

For these folks I usually suggest Paypal.  It’s fast, it’s fairly easy, it’s cheap (no need for merchant services and the associated monthly fees).  Basically you create a website (or have someone like us do it for you), add the products, and add a Buy Now button. Then your customer can use Paypal or a credit card to make the purchase.

Some people worry that their perceived value or status will go down with a big ugly paypal button on their site.  Unless you are selling high end products, generally I find that customers are fine with Paypal.  At some point soon I’ll add a posting on how to add a paypal button to your site, but for now – go to YouTube and look for “Adding a Paypal Button to My Website”.

2)  I sell downloadable products

I have a client who sells books and slices of books (a chapter at a time).  He has a lot of products – hundreds in fact.  For that I suggest a full blown ecommerce package.  You might want a package that allows for the downloading of products, is google-friendly and is easy to update.   I suggest 1ShoppingCart for these clients.  It does take more time and effort to set up, and you do need a merchant account for it, but it does the trick once you are set up, and it will grow with you as your company grows.

3) I sell a lot (over 20) physical products

For my clients who sell a lot of products, or need to keep track of inventory, or do email marketing (highly advised), I am currently suggesting the Volusion shopping cart with either a merchant services account to take the clients money, or a Paypal account.

Volusion is quite google-friendly, the basic installation is quite straightforward, they have a number of free store templates (although we always use custom designed templates), and their customer services is pretty friendly.