In the world of case sensitivity, it’s always refreshing when I tell people their domains and email address are not case sensitive. The major benefit of this is course, is that you can use capital letters at the beginning of words in multi-word domain names and alleviates the temptation to buy a domain with a hyphen.

So here’s some examples, see how the capitalisation makes them easier to read:

getwebservices.com.au > GetWebServices.com.au

evolveenergy.com.au > EvolveEnergy.com.au

tourstogo.com > ToursToGo.com

goodsexporter.com > GoodsExporter.com

Did you get caught on the last one? *shakes finger at you* You have naturally naughty thoughts!

The examples show how much easier it is to read a business name in the domain or separate the words with a capital letter. Have you seen any domains that have tricked you up when all written in lowercase?

Back in the old days search engines were different creatures. They’ve gradually grown more intelligent, especially to people trying to trick them.

The beast of the link exchange came about because everyone wants to rank higher. The number and quality of incoming links your website has is a very important part of search engine’s ranking algorithm. So naturally millions of website owners across the world went about inflating their incoming link count by participating in link exchanges. Often you’d get an email like this in your inbox:

Dear Webmaster,

My name is Wild Earth Adventures, and I run the web site Wild Earth Adventures: http://www.wildearth-adventures.com/

I recently found your site http://www.cairnsconnect.com and am very interested in exchanging links. I’ve gone ahead and posted a link to your site, on this page:

http://www.wildearth-adventures.com/linkmachine/resources/links_adventure_travel.html

As you know, reciprocal linking benefits both of us by raising our search rankings and generating more traffic to both of our sites. Please post a link to my site as follows:

Title: Wild Earth Adventures
URL: http://www.wildearth-adventures.com/
Description: Adventure Holidays Canada, Wilderness tours and Eco tours

This email is generic, impersonal and somewhat irrelevent to my business. There is an industry theme, travel. So how could it hurt to exchange links with them?

• A link is an endorsement
  By linking to this company on your website you’re saying to your customers that you stand by this company and support it. Consider how embarrassing it might be if this company also links to dodgy sites, or worse, pornographic websites. Not a good look for your business.
• You might end up in a ‘bad neighbourhood’
  The search engines will trust your site less if you appear to be linking to many websites, especially if they’re not related to your business. Having a link to a website who has dodgy outgoing links cause cause your website to receive a penalty from the search engines.
• Customers don’t like it
  Your potential customers come to your website to find out information about you, your products and services. By sending them off to various links of an unrelated nature indicates you don’t really know how to support your product with complementary businesses.

Years ago search engines decided they’d had enough of reciprocal linking monkeys, and removed the value attached to a reciprocal link in terms of your rankings. They now reward you when someone links to your website, without you needing to link back. That’s a real endorsement.

In an earlier post I wrote about electronic domain name renewals and why it’s important to have a company manage your domain names on your behalf. Unfortunately over the years various clients have been burnt by the increasingly convincing domain name scams.

Most people know what a spam email looks like, and business owners don’t usually get caught by these. It’s the paper scams delivered to you in your real mailbox that get people. You’re busy, and it just looks like another bill.

There’s two major types of scams:

1. Domain Renewals
   A company will attempt to have you transfer your domain name to their control and renew it on your behalf. These renewals scams most frequently look like an invoice, and threaten that your domain will expire and you’ll lose it if you don’t act quickly.
2. Similar Domains
   The scam company will send you a letter that looks like a domain renewal invoice, but is actually a very close match of your existing domain name. For instance, if you own cityofcairns.com, they might send you an invoice for cityofcairns.net. Note the alternate extension.

Here’s some things you can do and watch for to avoid getting caught.

Have your Domains Managed by a Company

This means that if an invoice turns up in your letterbox from a company you haven’t heard of, you can safely dispose of it. Become familiar with your domain management company’s logo so you can easily identify legitimate invoices.

Look Carefully at the Letter

Is your correct domain name actually listed as the on invoice? Also have a good look at the company details, as scam letters are often generated from a foreign entity.

If in doubt fax through the questionable correspondence to your domain management, web hosting or web design company and ask them what you should do.

Have you ever been domain scammed? Let us know your experiences.

Web based businesses being bought and sold around the world are faced with uncertain questions surrounding their value. How much value do they hold as part of a business sale?

Many business buyers strongly believe in using an ROI multiplier, as the value of many traditional businesses are determined. However sellers argue value also exists in the domain name, search engine rankings and link popularity. The cost of building the website is also often a consideration in determining the value.

Seasoned business people will tell you a business is only worth as much as someone will pay for it. Web businesses have a history of surprising us with seemingly outrageous sale prices.

How much value would you place on the domain name, rankings and links? Comments, please.

High search engine rankings in competitive spaces are undoubtedly very attractive for potential buyers. Why is it then buyers are so reluctant to place monetary value on the rankings as part of a business sale? Determining how much the rankings are worth is tricky, dubious and inexact.

Rankings are fickle because of the reliance upon the search engine. This third party is one you have no control over, and they can change their ranking algorithm at any time, without warning. There is significant risk in paying large sums of money for a marketing resource completely outside your control.

Undoubtedly, there in value in the rankings though. For many web businesses the search engine rankings draw a significant percentage of their customers. Consider also that the business may have paid a search engine optimisation company to achieve their rankings.

One formula I have seen used in valuations examines the keywords the website ranks for, and cost of acquiring the same customers through pay-per-click advertising. This formula also has the added bonus of giving you a realistic idea of what it will cost you to advertise on the search engines should something happen to your rankings in the future. Is the web business still viable if the traffic is fully paid for?

Do you have other ideas about the value of search engine rankings? Please sure your thoughts by commenting.

There are many reasons why you should avoid owning a domain name with a hyphen.

1. It’s harder for customers to understand.

Customers will trip over the hyphen and need to double-check your domain name. People stumble over hyphens. Don’t place any extra barriers in front of your customers, they’re fickle enough.

2. They sounds dorky when you say it.

Think about how you present a domain name with a hyphen over the radio. “Just log on to city hyphen of hyphen Cairns dot com for more details.” Seems kind of ridiculous, doesn’t it.

3. They’re worth less.

If you ever want to sell your business, there is more value in domain names without hyphens.

Many businesses use hyphens in their domain names to separate words, and therefore make them more clear in their marketing, particularly print marketing. Hyphens are also popular for new businesses where their business name has already been taken, or for competitive keyword rich domains.

Be creative with your domain names, and avoid hyphens. Anyone disagree? Please, your thoughts.

It’s a bad idea to register your own domain names. It’s easy to forget the domains you register, because it’s another year before they come up for renewal for a .com, and 2 years for a com.au. A pivotal piece of your registration is your email address. Your domain registrar will use it exclusively for corresponding with you when it comes time to renew your domain.

This is a problem for new businesses who might not yet have a business email address, and are using businessname@ozemail.com.au or some similar email address at their ISP.

It is amazingly common for domain names to expire because the owner changed their ISP, and so their email address changed too. This similarly occurs with free online email addresses like at Hotmail, or Yahoo.

By having a company manage your domain names, you can have peace of mind your registration will always be renewed on time and your website will never embarrassingly go down due to the expiration of your domain name.

If you have purchased the domain for a future project or as an investment the consequences of not collecting your renewal email can mean losing your domain forever. Most recently expired domain names are purchased by domain-squatters, so the chances of recovering it after expiry are minimal or expensive.

Check with your web host as most offer a service to manage your domains.

I am eternally frustrated with the number of ISP email addresses like businessname@bigpond.com I see in advertising. In newspapers, magazines, Yellow Pages and even on business cards it seems many small businesses are unaware this is so naughty. Using an email address at your own domain is very important for these reasons.

What happens when you change of ISP?

Inevitably, you will also need to change your email address. Having your primary business email address at your ISP means if you find a great deal on internet access there is a large cost associated with changing the email address over across all sources of advertising.

Owning a domain name and operating email addresses on your domain means your email is independent of your ISP, and you’re free to move as you please.

Brand Awareness

Strengthen your brand at every opportunity. This includes your email address. By having your own email address shows you’re operating a serious business.

Which is better in your mind?

nickycitycairns@bigpond.com or nicky@cityofcairns.com?

Every now and then I come across a fantastic website with a strong concept and spectacular delivery. I strongly recommend business owners to consider spending an hour with a good glass of red and the Flying Solo website.

Flying Solo – www.flyingsolo.com.au

Essentially Flying Solo is an online community for small business owners with an abundance of articles, tips and advice. The articles are short, punchy and relevant to hectic life in small business.

Their immensely popular weekly eNewsletter, Soapbox, is delivered to 14,000 Australian business owners, and is one of the few eNewsletters I always read as soon as it arrives.  Consider signing up to this for your weekly dose of inspiring goodness.

I’d love to know what you think of their website. Please leave me a comment.

It’s very disheartening when businesses have their name tarnished by an ambitious competitor who understands the internet just a little better than they do. So how can you protect your business’ good name online?

Brainstorm for permutations of your domain name. This can be as simple as considering the alternate extention on your current domain. So if you have a .com, consider the .com.au, or expanding into other extentions like .net, or .org.

Next think about different ways in which your business name might be written. For instance, if your business name is The Rock Man, then you might consider both TheRockMan.com.au and RockMan.com.au.

Protecting your name has an unlimited number of possibilities, and can be an expensive exercise. Major companies go even further than the methods outlined here to include typos and less common mispellings of their domain to protect their brand. My best advice is to always purchase your .com and .com.au, and if you’re in a particularly competitve industry, also buy the .net and .net.au.