What is Domaining?

Domaining

What is it?

There are volumes written on the topic of combining. I think it’s interesting that the spellchecker program on WordPress still does not recognize the word as a valid word. You have to add it to the dictionary every time you set up a new site. The occupation has been around since the internet began and yes, it is an occupation. Anyone that has ever tried their hand at combining can vouch that it is hard work.

So what exactly is combining? In short… it is the process of buying and selling domain names. It’s speculating on Virtual Property. Every domain name is a visual display of your websites physical location on the web. It would be very difficult to remember that Google was located at 74.125.227.99.

So what exactly is domaining? In short… it’s the process of buying and selling domain names. It’s speculating on Virtual Property. Every domain name name is a visual display of your websites virtual location. It would be very difficult to remember that Google was located at 74.125.227.99 (the actual IP address…If you type those numbers into the address bar of your browser, you will see that it resolves to Google.) so they made up a name to represent that address. The names however are limited due to the ability of humans to remember them. We can usually remember dictionary names, or names that have been driven into our memory by advertising, but we soon forget names that are unusual, misspelled, or just don’t quite make sense. In a sense, it’s exactly like Real Estate. You know exactly where the nearest McDonald’s is because chances are good it’s in a highly visible location with a lot of traffic. What if… just to save money… McDonald’s had decided to locate their business out in the middle of nowhere. Do you think their business model would have been as successful? Doubtful! They knew they would have to spend money advertising. They could either spend it upfront by purchasing a high traffic location or they could spend smaller amounts continuously forever trying to bring people to their remote location.

When searching for a domain you must realize some things. All the high traffic names are taken. There is no more beachfront property to stake your claim on! You must pay for a good location or pay to advertise one that’s not so hot. Domainers constantly search for the deals and then resell those properties at a premium. It’s a risky business at times just as Real Estate speculation can be. If you want to keep up with some of the latest domain name sales simply visit www.DNjournal.comon a regular basis. It can be very eye opening!

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It’s My Brand!

It’s My BRAND… it belongs to me!

You want to know what branding means? It’s simple… It’s mine, and it belongs to me! It’s my “mark”, my label, my design, my work. No one should be able to take it from me.

I’m a carpenter by trade. I’m amazed at the number of tools that have evolved over the years yet interestingly enough, no matter how advanced a tool may become, it is still often referred to by its originally branded name. For example:

“Skill Saw” – branded by Black and Decker. Technical name is “circular saw”. Everyone still calls it a “skill saw”.

“Vice Grips” – branded by Irwin tools yet technical name is “locking pliers”.

“Crescent Wrench” – branded by Crescent. Technical name is “adjustable wrench”.

The list could go on and on. These are perfect examples of a product that was branded correctly. Your name means something and your brand should do the same.

My Brand identity

The outward expression of a brand – including its name, trademark, communications, and visual appearance – is brand identity. Because the identity is assembled by the brand owner, it reflects how the owner wants the consumer to perceive the brand – and by extension the branded company, organization, product or service. This is in contrast to the brand image, which is a customer’s mental picture of a brand.The brand owner will seek to bridge the gap between the brand image and the brand identity.

Effective brand names build a connection between the brand personality as it is perceived by the target audience and the actual product/service. The brand name should be conceptually on target with the product/service (what the company stands for). Furthermore, the brand name should be on target with the brand demographic. Typically, sustainable brand names are easy to remember, transcend trends and have positive connotations. Brand identity is fundamental to consumer recognition and symbolizes the brand’s differentiation from competitors.

Brand identity is what the owner wants to communicate to its potential consumers. However, over time, a product’s brand identity may acquire (evolve), gaining new attributes from consumer perspective but not necessarily from the marketing communications an owner percolates to targeted consumers. Therefore, brand associations become handy to check the consumer’s perception of the brand.

Brand identity needs to focus on authentic qualities – real characteristics of the value and brand promise being provided and sustained by organizational and/or production characteristics.

My Visual brand identity

The recognition and perception of a brand is highly influenced by its visual presentation. A brand’s visual identity is the overall look of its communications. Effective visual brand identity is achieved by the consistent use of particular visual elements to create distinction, such as specific fonts, colors, and graphic elements. At the core of every brand identity is a brand mark, or logo.

Color is a particularly important element of visual brand identity and color mapping provides an effective way of ensuring color contributes to differentiation in a visually cluttered marketplace

Back to this Google SEO Thing

This Google SEO thing

Okay… so I’m back on this Google SEO thing. All search engines have their own algorithms they use to determine what is the most relevant answer to the search a user requested. It’s interesting to me that Yahoo and Bing are almost always 2 steps behind Google. For instance… I’m working with one of my clients on SEO for his website; www.AdirondackMountainRentals.com and I’m using strategies that worked with Google just 1 month ago. We chose the domain name based on a highly searched (for its category) keyword phrase knowing that gives you an automatic advantage. It generally only takes a few days to get to the top of an exact match keyword if your domain name is an exact match. Not anymore with Google. We’re page #1, Organic spot #1 with Yahoo and Bing , but not with Google. We’re still languishing on page 3 with Google. They changed the algorithm once again!

If you want to gain the number one position for a keyword or key phrase with Google, you have to think like Google. So what is their logic? Really, it’s not that difficult. Their goal is to provide the end user with the most relevant answer to the search. So what would someone be searching for that typed in “adirondack mountain rentals” in the search bar? A cabin to rent in the Adirondack Mountains! So we gear our content to make sure it carefully explains that we are promoting cabins and cottages for rent in the Adirondack Mountains. We say it with every page and every blog post. We make sure Google knows by searching our content that we are all about cabins for rent in the Adirondack Mountains! That’s how you do search engine optimization!

I know I’m making sound quite simple and it is. The difficult part to good SEO is making sure you speak like a robot (the tools Google uses to search your site). Your content has to appeal to both man and machine. That’s the hard part. Tags, focus keywords, titles, meta descriptions, etc. Those are the things that you need us for.

If you have a great website already but just can’t seem to get found, call us or email us. We are SEO experts… we can get you there!

A Thought…

A Thought Just Occurred to Me

Problem is… it’s gone now.

I decided to add this section called Website Ideas to our company site at Nameowners.com because my mind NEVER stops working. I am constantly coming up with cool website ideas so rather than hoard them to myself, I’m going to start sharing them with you. Maybe one of our clients will take one of these ideas and allow us to make it happen for them. We don’t DO business… our business is to help you DO business!

So what was my latest idea really? How about this:

Non profit organizations are just that… “non-profit”. That doesn’t mean that the folks involved can’t make a pretty good living while at the same time helping someone in need. How about a website entitled “Man of The House”. Set it up as a 501-c-3 organization and enlist an army of husbands to lend a hand. The beneficiaries of the company would be ladies whose husbands have been deployed in the military. The organization would provide free labor to women whose husbands or boyfriends are gone just as though that capable person were still there. I know it sounds kind of sexist but I don’t know any young mother that would not appreciate her yard being mowed or the plumbing being repaired just as though her husband were there. Someone needs to take this and run with it!

Great Web Design

So what exactly makes GREAT web design? There are 3 elements:

1. The “Grab” element. You have less than 3 seconds to “grab” someones attention when they land on your site. If your landing page is too informational or boring… forget about it! If the design doesn’t fit the site or is too overwhelming… once again, you’ve lost them. In all my years of searching the web, I’ve only run across a handful of sites that had the “grab” factor. Great web design begins with serious thought given to the purpose of the site and the immediate reaction that will ensue.

2. The “Answer” element. Does your site provide a short, immediate answer to the search? I don’t want to dig through link after link trying to find what I was originally looking for. Neither does anyone else! The thing that amazes me most about web designers today is how often this simple element is overlooked. If your website is about your vacation rental, make the pictures and the price apparent immediately. After all… isn’t that what the potential renter is looking for? If your site is designed to promote your business as a Tile contractor, don’t make the customer dig through your site to find pictures of your work and prices you charge. Give them the answers immediately!

3. The “Contact” element. Great web design lets the potential client or customer quickly see how to contact you. Is your phone number quickly visible? Maybe you don’t want the phone number plastered over the internet… If that’s the case, can they find a quick, short, and concise “Contact Us” form to complete and get information quickly?

These are 3 simple elements to great web design. At Nameowners.com, we can make that happen for you!

Marketing 101

Marketing is not …

Web design
SEO
Branding
Advertising
Graphic design
T-shirts
Signs
Social media promotion

Marketing is …

Marketing is the utilization of all of the above to promote your business! It’s that simple. Good marketing can be summed up by the term “awareness”. Your company can have the best designed website (designed by Nameowners.com of course!) , a top of the line SEO expert (like us!), an awesome brand recognition (that we created), a lucritive advertising budget, great graphic design, T-shirts, signs, and continuous social media promotion (through Nameowners.com of course), but each of those things individually is not marketing. Marketing includes all of the above… and more!

Marketing is the process of making your product or service known to potential customers. Not to everyone! Potential customers is the keyword here. What good does it do to advertise in Canada when you only do work in Nashville, TN.? To market correctly, you have to know who your market is. Determining who your potential customers are and then targeting them with the above methods is always a sure way to success. At Nameowners.com we have many tools to help you determine EXACTLY who your potential customers are. It’s what we do!

Web Design – Nashville Style

Web Design Nashville Style

Demands for web design vary greatly from business to business… at Nameowners.com, we do it Nashville Style! For most businesses, it’s simply an interactive yellow page ad. The website needs to be a graphic display of what the company is all about as well as a showcase for their products or services. For other companies, the website is a place they do business. Demands are far greater with database requirements, customer support modules, and the list goes on…

At NameOwners.com we do it all! We are the new kid on the block with years of experience and knowledge. Our philosophy is to keep things current, trendy, and unique. Many of our design projects are cutting edge technology utilizing mobile, web 2.0, and html5 coding techniques.

Where Does Web Design Begin?

We get this question often. Without a specific blueprint, your website is doomed to failure from the start. Ask questions. Who is my target audience? What do we hope to achieve with this website? Are we going to sell products through our site or simply draw customers in to our sales department? What does our competitions’ site look like? What impression does their site give? How do we want our site to be different? At NameOwners.com we have a 50 question survey that covers these issues as well as future plans and goals for your web design.

Don’t Over Design

Once a potential client finds your site, you have less than 3 seconds to make him/her stay. 3 seconds! A cluttered front page will quickly drive them away. Interestingly enough, when Google first started, they watched people’s reactions as they visited the site. Most people just sat there and did nothing. When asked what the problem was, people responded that they were waiting on the rest of the page to “load”. That was the norm back then. A “homepage” typically took 30 seconds or more to “fill the page”. Google authored FAST! Their landing page is simple and uncluttered. It has served them well. Don’t worry though… if you are unsure of how to do this… we can help! Great websites begin with great web designers.

Branding Methods

Some things you just remember… but do you realize how much thought, money, and effort that went into making something “effortless” to remember?

Branding DIFFERENT!

Be different but not stupid! It seems that some companies have gone overboard in the stupidity department. Most often it’s under the guise of being different. Branding can be different by simply pointing out what makes your product or service different from your competitors. What is it exactly about your product or service that is different? Why is your product or service better? Include those benefits in your brand. It’s really that simple. If your product is cheaper than all your competitors then brand your company on price or value. If your product is safer, focus on a brand that demonstrates safety. Whatever you do, don’t focus totally on being memorable… Remember in the 80’s when Subaru wanted their commercials to be remembered so they created commercials with “Joe Liar”? They were extremely memorable, but they had the unintended consequence of people associating Subaru with liars. The commercial was a huge success but car sales took a nose dive!

Branding CATCHY!

Being Catchy can be the most difficult task in branding your product or service. Being catchy begins with the naming of your company, product, or service. Some things you just remember… but do you realize how much thought, money, and effort that went into making something “effortless” to remember? Think about names like Twitter, Viagra, Picasa, and Google… all of these are relatively new companies, products, or services (within the last 15 years), yet they all evoke emotion and memorability. At NameOwners.com, we spend thousands of hours each year helping clients become “catchy”. It’s what we do! From choosing an available domain to designing the perfect logo, this is our niche!

Branding SIMPLE!

KISS… still applies!

Branding CONSISTENT!

Once you take a direction, stick with it! Coca Cola almost killed themselves in the early 2000’s by changing the color of their can. What were they thinking? O’Charlie’s Restaurants has recently done the same thing. They might as well be a new start-up! They just threw away hundred of thousands of dollars spent in brand recognition over the last 20 years. Think about the most successful franchise in business history… McDonald’s. Seen any changes to those “golden arches”? NEVER! If it ain’t broke… don’t fix it! Stick with the plan and be consistent.

Waco Hyundai

Combined E-Commerce and Infomercial Web Design…

The folks at Waco Hyundai wanted a site to showcase their inventory of new and used vehicles. Hyundai corporation had a strict set of standards to follow for uniformity and design. We were able to put it all together into a nice package. We even picked up the domain for them from a fellow domainer!

Click on the picture and check out their site!

Adams Construction

Showcase Style Webdesign…

Danny Adams Sr. wanted a site featuring extensive photo galleries, customer testimonials, and a complex back end “job scheduler” that would be interactive with current clients. As is the case with many “old school” builders, Mr. Adams had NO domain, NO logo, NO website, and NO idea how all of this would work! He knew he was losing business to competitors that were online and he knew he had to move into this arena. The yellow pages just weren’t paying off anymore.

Click on the picture and check out his site! If you want to see the back end, you’ll need to let Adams Construction do some work for you… it works awesome.