What do James Robertson and Shane Cultra have in common?

If you are reading about domain names, you have probably heard of Shane Cultra – if not, go to his site, DomainShane.com, now, it is way better than this one… :)

Have you also heard about James Robertson?  Did his story remind you of anyone you knew?  Well, whether you have heard of James or not is irrelevant.  Lessons we can all learn from him are what is important. (I’ll give you some context later, but the image is a hint)

NY to Los Angeles to Orlando

NY to Los Angeles to Orlando

Think of the most successful person you know and keep that thought in your head while you read this and let me know what you think at the end…

What James Robertson can teach you about success

The life lessons/success story of James Robertson(your person’s name here) come down to the answer to this question:

Aside from the obvious money aspect, what separates a hobbyist from a professional?

Seems like a simple question, but lately I’ve been thinking more about why I treat domains and this industry like a hobby compared to two types of other people:

  1. Most people who just go away quickly because they were looking for an overnight success or million dollar flip
  2. Others who I’ve watched who have progressed to “Guru” or very successful levels from seemingly nothing

To give you some context, I started hobby buying domains back in 2010 and I am still at that level even though I follow the industry to some degree and love learning about it… not a success by any measure – what some domainers would call a hobbyist… what I would normally call something much worse :)

Two Success Factors for Domain Name Investing

There are two main factors that I realize have made all the [Read more…]

Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin III? Which is more valuable?

Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin III?

That is the multi-million dollar question many will be asking today as the NFL draft conducts the first round of minting new millionaires.  As with many things when you buy and sell domain names, you start looking for related domains as the high dollar question!  So a better question would be:

Which Domain Name is worth more?

AndrewLuck.com, RobertGriffin3.com, Luck.com, Draft.com…

Since I’m not a big fan of the NFL, you wouldn’t think I’d even bother to look, but I am a big Alabama football fan.  Even though I hate to see them leave, I really hope for the best for all the young men coming out of college and making their initial fortunes in one fell swoop!

Most of us aren’t that lucky genetically or have any expectations of getting a ton of cash from any other source such as inheritance or lottery winnings.  We can however, look at buying domain names for a way to make some money!

Trends and hot topics in the news are often the most lucrative quick flips in domains, but you have to act fast if your dreams of hand registering  a great domain associated to a fairly viral social event are to come true.  The general process is to:

  1. Look for overall trend/product name in the .com first and then other extensions
  2. Look for specific products/examples/subtrends preferably in the .com so it is easier to flip
  3. Check out related names or slight variations.  If it is a product, try adding buy to the front or review/s at the end

People involved in the trending event often register the primary domain, but leave many available.  That is what I want to look at today to let you know how my mind works on topics like this.  Way late to the NFL draft game so I expect to find poor or no domains available, but you can apply this process to any upcoming trend you see.

If you didn’t know or weren’t aware of how big an event this has become, do a quick google search for “NFL draft” or “mock draft” and you will see some amazing content:  contests for picking the draft order,  entire sites dedicated to  top recruits, pre-draft analysis of what position each team needs to draft, post-draft analysis of previous years, etc.

So here are my thoughts – Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III will be the highest profile draft picks as they are both quarterbacks with incredible talent.  Very different in skills and abilities, but each has the potential to make a great name for themselves… which of these can you say would have the same effect for domain names?

Note that I do NOT recommend you ever buy trademarked domain names or high profile people names as you are just asking for trouble.   For this hypothetical discussion though, I’d put AndrewLuck.com ahead of RobertGriffinIII.com or even RobertGriffin.com.  Both names are fairly common so I would expect someone registered these a long time ago.

A quick whois search and I see Andrew’s name was registered in 2005 to a guy in Seattle with the same name (who also needs a new profile pic by the way…sheesh).  My guess is he has received several offers to buy the domain especially since he only has it redirected to his LinkedIn account.

Another quick search and I see Robert’s shorter url was registered way back in 1999 and has an old website on it.  RobertGriffiniii.com was just registered this year to someone NOT name Robert Griffin so my guess is that is a domainer.  RobertGriffin3.com is a little older with a November 2010 born on date and a quick look at the domain shows it is parked at godaddy.com so I’m sure that is a domainer as well.  A quick look at valuate.com shows RobertGriffin has the edge in domain value but neither are super valuable to anyone other than the guys who wear the same name on their jerseys on Sundays next Fall.

Andrew Luck and Robert GriffinIf you happen to like some of the other extensions, a quick bulk domain search reveals there are only a handful still available for either name.  Other people are looking at the same idea I see!

Now for some real fun!  What would be even better names related to these two names and the draft in general.  Well, if you listen to what the broadcasters call them I’d say Luck and RG3  are good words to start with.  No way any of those are available.  I’d also do a little brainstorming and come up with names like draft, nfldraft, mockdraft, recruit, recruits…you get the idea.

Still don’t expect any of those to be available, but it will be interesting to see if any of the newer extensions are available since these words were probably registered a long time ago and sometimes you’ll see new extensions still available…

Well, not much luck there either if you’ll pardon the pun :)  Only MOCKDRAFT.CO, MOCKDRAFT.INFO and MOCKDRAFT.ME.  Have at ‘em.

In this case valuate offers what I would expect – a huge price tag on luck.com, a medium price on draft.com all the way down to a reasonable price for rg3.com.  No big surprises there.

You can apply this 3 step process to most any trend… speaking of 3, what about 3d – more specifically 3d printers?  That model ship has sailed, but it is going to be a huge market and you see new breakthroughs and lower costs every day which will bring 3d printers to the mainstream markets and raise the domain values in the process.  I’ll take 3 minutes here and see if anything jumps out at me…

Nothing much still available and valuate hates the names that are available giving most of them zero value.  I would agree for the most part, but a couple could be of some value in a few months/years… if you grab one let me know how you do.  I bolded a couple that at least have some obvious potential.  Available domain names:

  • 3DPRINTERINK.CO
  • 3DPRINTERINK.INFO
  • 3DPRINTERINK.ORG
  • 3DPRINTERINK.ME
  • 3DPRINTERINK.US
  • 3DPRINTERSINK.COM
  • 3DPRINTERSINK.CO
  • 3DPRINTERSINK.INFO
  • 3DPRINTERSINK.NET
  • 3DPRINTERSINK.ORG
  • 3DPRINTERSINK.ME
  • 3DPRINTERSINK.US
  • BUY3DPRINTER.CO
  • BUY3DPRINTER.US
  • BUY3DPRINTERS.CO
  • BUY3DPRINTERS.INFO
  • BUY3DPRINTERS.US
  • 3DPRINTERREVIEW.CO
  • 3DPRINTERREVIEW.US
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEW.CO
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEW.INFO
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEW.NET
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEW.ORG
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEW.US
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEWS.CO
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEWS.INFO
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEWS.NET
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEWS.ORG
  • 3DPRINTERSREVIEWS.US
  • 3DPRINTERSUPPLIES.US
  • 3DPRINTERREPAIR.CO
  • 3DPRINTERREPAIR.INFO
  • 3DPRINTERREPAIR.ORG
  • 3DPRINTERREPAIR.US

I hope you catch a trend or create a trend and cash in on some domains – good luck!

99 Domain Names Website Case Study – Number 1

You may have seen that I already built a beta website on a domain for this case study on how to make money with Domain Names and Websites. That was a beta that you can read more about if you are interested.

This is the kick-off/real/first Domain Name using the 99 Domains process where I choose a Domain Name and build a website in 99 minutes every day for 99 days – at least that is the goal…

Since I did the beta site and tried to keep timings I knew this first site would probably take more than 99 minutes as I clean up the process and documentation.

What surprised me most was how long the articles are taking to write – about 45 minutes each at this point! This may have to be something I outsource and I am ok with that practice in general, but not for this effort so I’m going to keep writing my own articles for now and if I change my mind I’ll let you know.

The Domain Name…

RefundAnticipationLoan.net is the domain and site I chose for this first 99.

Refund Anticipation Loan

RefundAnticipationLoan.net


The tax year has ended and people are looking to file their income taxes. Many of them will want their tax refund as quick as possible so this one has to be online and indexed very quick. More of a seasonal domain so it may make a few bucks this year and hopefully quite a bit more next year.

The website and traffic analysis

This domain fits my case study requirements exactly in that there are at least 500 and preferably at least 1,000 exact match searches for the keywords in the domain with a Cost Per Click of at least $1.00.

To be fair, there are 18,500 exact searches which is way more than my minimum. Actually, it may be getting to the range of too many as competition from competing sites gets tougher the more searches there are.

Also, the CPC is around $3.75 which is over 3x my minimum. Again, it is borderline too competitive because if I want to drive traffic with an ad campaing it could get really expensive.

Building the website in 99 minutes

Since I followed the process I established in the beta, this site only took about 23 minutes to have up with analytics, a new theme and the basic pages like privacy and Contact form.

Where it fell apart and what is making me rethink my 99 domains idea is just how freaking long it took to write the articles. Granted, I don’t know anything about refund anticipation loans, but wow! 45 minutes went by like nothing – about 60 or 70 minutes to research, write, SEO and format each article… I have a whole new appreciation for copywriters! 70 minutes each is totally unacceptable.

I say unacceptable because for this to make business sense, I need to build the site and have reasonable expectations that I will get enough ROI based on the value of my time and the domain cost to make it worth it. So in this case I’ve spent less than $25 on the domain and renewals, but I’ve spent about 5 hours on the site. I also need to spend more time on backlinking and some more articles so if you count about $50 an hour I will need about $400 just to break even… I am not in business to break even. I guess I could take that money, pay for articles on a few other sites and pay for backlinking…

Guess I need to talk to some people who have helped me out before and have done this successfully over a long period of time…

Back soon I hope with an update.

Domain Name Website Case Study Number – beta

This is the first Domain Name I will be developing for the 99 Domains in 99 Days challenge I started recently. Take a look back at that post if you are wondering why I am building this site…

This is my test/beta domain so I can get the timing and tasks down plus it will be a bit more extensive than a minisite.

Domain Name Test Beta

The Domain Name…

ClickHereDomains.com is the domain and site I will be building first.

The website and traffic analysis

The reason may not be clear because most of the domains I am doing for this challenge will be some sort of product related domain name where there are lots of exact searches for the keywords in the domain name. In this case I am building it to start a new brand and company so I’m not as concerned about having exact matches as much(I did make sure the word domains was in there though).

Click Here Domains will be a flagship site for a services company that will build sites on domains to get people to “Click Here” :)

Maybe not as funny, ironic or clever to you as it was to me, but when I got the idea for this challenge it was while I was listening to a podcast and they mentioned you should never put the words “Home” on your link back navigation and almost every site you see has that. They also mentioned you should never put “Click Here” on your button links which is another thing you see all the time.

I looked at HomeDomains and the .com was parked and for sale with BuyDomains which is one of the larger players in the domain name reseller arena. I knew they would want a decent amount for the domain so I moved on and I’m really glad I did.

Then I looked at ClickHereDomains.com and it was expiring on GoDaddy THAT DAY! I liked it immediately when I thought of it anyway because it would be easy to make a cool logo and it was simple, memorable and descriptive… everything you would want for a new business name and web brand. Having it available for 16 bucks including expiring auction fee and domain renewal cost made it a no brainer.

Building the site in 99 minutes

Since I bought the domain on auction it never expired which is good since it had been registered on 9/11/09… There are those 9’s and 11’s again… odd isn’t it. I’m not going to count that time on this domain so we’ll start with…

Minute 1
(Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with the exact details of each minute – I am tracking it though for those of you who might want to know and I’ll put it on another page at some point)
Change the DNS to point to my HostGator hosting where I’m going to build the site. I already have a couple hosting accounts so I’m not going to count that time either, but I will say I really like two hosts after having tried several and I can recommend them for their stability and ease of site management. Try these hosting companies.

I have to go finish the other 98 minutes now so I’ll update this page when I’m done so you can go take a look! Leave a comment if you like this domain, hate it or have an opinion on what I am doing here…

*** update *** The site is now live, but not quite complete – still ironing out details, but it will never be “done” so go take a look and let me know what you think in the comments below. Here is a quick screenshot of the site as it stands today:
ClickHereDomains.com screenshot

WordPress Theme change

Domain names are way more fun to talk about than what theme your WordPress blog is using, but several people have asked about the makeover of Domain Nitro so bear with me for a second and we’ll get back to the domains…

If you are a regular reader of Domain Nitro then you might have noticed the clean, easier to read, and faster loading theme I changed to recently. The reason I changed is simple – I wanted the focus to be more on the domain names, news, and overall content. I also wanted to make sure I was optimizing the site for loading as well as SEO so it was just the perfect time to change.

In the beginning…

I started off with a free theme and soon swapped to a “free” theme from WooThemes using their framework which I really like especially given the price. WooThemes has some great premium themes, but I just wanted a super clean theme so I’ve been on the lookout for a while.

I also have a subscription to ElegantThemes and their themes truly are elegant :)

I use their themes quite successfully on some of my sites and they are rock solid and very visually appealing… very focused on elegant design and aesthetics – just more than what I wanted for this one site.

WordPress Theme evolution…

I read a lot of domain name, marketing and seo type blogs and I have always liked CopyBlogger’s site layout and how easy it is to read their content. Imagine my surprise recently when they posted that they were changing themes and rebranding a bit… NOOOOO!!! Then I saw the site and thought… oh, ok not much really changing from readability. Meh.

The GREAT thing was they were giving their old theme away for free! I’m all over that especially since they had a black Friday deal for the Genesis Framework from StudioPress which is required to run their premium and free themes. Seems crazy to pay for a framework and get a free theme, but it is the best framework I’ve seen and a LOT of people use their themes on some major sites. The setup and configuration, stability and overall usability is unmatched from every theme provider I’ve seen. Check them out if you are looking for a good WordPress theme.
Nitrous Theme - High Energy Theme for WordPress
Let me know what you think of the new design in the comments below!

99 Domain Names, 99 Websites, 99 Days – A case study in why 110% matters

Domain Name questions

Domain Name puzzle

Originally I was going to call this The Domain Name Puzzle because I have found the missing piece to my story, but the 99 kept coming back into my thoughts… hope you enjoy…

Domain Names, Websites, and Minisite development

This is the beginning of a personal challenge/journey to demonstrate how to make money online with Domain Names, mini-sites, full-blown websites, domain flipping and website flipping. Read along if you would like to learn more!

If you’ve been following Domain Nitro for very long then you know my real passion is finding, buying and selling domains and then how domain names can be developed to make money online.

So why would I bother taking 99 domain names and turning them into 99 websites in 99 days? Glad you asked. What follows is a little history, a case study intro, and hopefully a new outlook on making money online.

A little Domain Name background

When I decided to buy my first domain name back in ‘99, I decided I wouldn’t spend more than $99. I had no idea how much it cost to register a name, get hosting or anything else. I spent a ton of time trying to register a domain and for every name I thought up and tried to buy, I met the dreaded “domain is already registered”.

I got really lucky when I just typed one of the domains into the browser and it redirected me to a domain purchase page. I can’t even remember who the reseller site belonged to or which company had it listed, but I immediately paid the money and took ownership of the domain…

…and promptly did absolutely nothing with it. Sound familiar?

Domain name mistakes abound

I held onto that first domain name for 9 years and due to some issues I had to part ways with it. Worst mistake of ’09.

Well, maybe that was the second worst mistake of ’09. Worst mistake was only brewing…

When I got rid of that first domain it got me even more curious about the domain name business. It was then that I found SEDO, GoDaddy auctions and Afternic.

I bought about a hundred domain names in two days and sold one of those within a week that covered the cost of all the others. In retrospect that was probably the worst sale I ever made because it made me believe I was a domain name genius and from that point on I was hooked.

I promptly proceeded to buy about 1200 domain names… WooHoo!!! Wait, how many do I have? WTF?

After buying 1200 domains you’d think I had a plan on what I was going to do with them… and I did… Sell them all for lots of money!

The problem was I had too many plans and not enough action. Classic noob domainer error I’ve come to find out, but that doesn’t make me feel any better and it sure didn’t get my cash back.

I’d spent $15,000 and thought I’d sell them within a year for at least $99,000 or more… surely that will work after taking a look at all the sales over on Ron’s site that documents weekly domain sales.  Right?

Reality sets in…

After my initial early success I only sold a few domains here and there over the next few months… but it was enough to keep me thinking I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t even actively trying to sell domains, just listing them on the bid/auction sites and domaining sites.

Then things started to slow down. I soon realized I had about $10,000 worth of renewal fees staring me in the face in just a couple months. Reality had set in and sheer panic soon followed. I HAD to start selling some of these quick!

Domain Name Extensions

Domain Name Filing

I revised my pricing and listed a lot of domains cheaper and cheaper with mild success, but nowhere near enough. I finally decided to drop 80% of them.  Painful because I still liked most of them and had developed an attachment to them.  

Personal feelings and attachment can hurt you in business and I wasn’t treating it like a business – more like an expensive hobby where I was just collecting.  Kind of like the rusty piles of junk you see on old guys farms on American Pickers or something…

I had started to learn more about domain names on blogs from people like Domain Shane, Chef Patrick and Morgan Linton and I didn’t like what I saw.

If I had read their blogs and ebooks earlier I could have bought one or two domains for a few thousand bucks and would have been much better off… Most people make this same mistake, but it still doesn’t make me or my wallet feel any better.

Making money online is hard, but should it be?

After I did a fire sale and dropped domains left and right I became very frustrated. I didn’t actively try to sell anything, just told myself that people who claimed success were liars about how much they earned online and that making money online was just too hard.

It was then that I looked back at my parking stats, Google analytics, and Google adsense and was amazed at what I saw. One site that I had built in a few hours for a friend who was sick was getting consistent traffic and had brought in more traffic and money than all the domains I had parked combined.

Wait a minute here – why would this one site with less than a dozen pages be getting that much traffic? I looked a little closer and it was obvious… The site was very focused, all original content that was inadvertently SEO’d by some miracle and was laid out in a clean, easy to navigate format.

The AHA! Moment

That very moment I knew I was onto something…

I decided to build out a couple domains with small sites and focus on them for a few months. I’ve gotten good traction and more traffic on one of those sites than I had ever seen before.
Finally! Something that can make money online. Now I need to focus!

So how do I proceed when I know the following facts:

  1. I love looking for domains, buying them or just seeing what is selling.
  2. I love Internet Marketing, SEO and all things related.
  3. I can get lost for hours browsing new domain listings, new internet marketing products, domaining blogs, internet marketing blogs, domain auctions, etc
  4. I have very little free time considering I have:
    • A normal job
    • An hour commute each way to said normal job
    • Two daughters who participate in competitive sports, student council, math teams, journalism team, GRC, media masters and more
    • A wonderful wife… Hi honey!
    • Tons of emails every day
    • Oh, and I like to work out every day as well. I pick things up and put them down at 5am routinely.
  5. In other words, I have a normal life for the most part. Crazy hectic and busy from 4:30am to 10:30pm.

The PLAN!

I was contemplating how I was going to get more sites built and weakly trying to work out a plan. Looking at the calendar I saw 11/11/11 was here!

Yo 11!!!!
You may have noticed the title and repeating 9’s in this article… Odd, coincidental and yes, purposeful.

I was trying to pick a large number of sites to develop in an aggressive time period and the 99 kept coming up. Pair that with 11 and you get one of the classic motivational numbers of all time – “give it 110%” (99+11 for the mathematically challenged he-he!). So I decided on 99 domains and 11 for the month or day (should have been 11/11/11, but I’m deliberative/procrastinating so what can I say)

Then I saw where Matt Cutts does the 30 day challenges and I was onto something. After a little more research on his site I found the NaNoWriMo which seems crazy hard to me, but the point is knocking it out in small consistent chunks. Plus I have a writer friend who is killing goals left and right with this process!

I knew I couldn’t build 3.3 sites per day to get it all done in 30 days, but I thought about how busy Matt is and what he could do in 30 days so I decided to go after one site per day… thus 99 days.

It’s on, baby! Let the games begin.

So starting on 1/2/12 I will be building a site every day… in 99 minutes or less. (edit, this used to be 11/30/11, but life happened and I got started late)

Everything included from setting up hosting, installing WordPress or an HTML5 template, creating a simple logo, writing content pages, adding analytics and reporting on how each site is doing on a weekly basis.

The challenge will end on 4/10/12 and it should be crazy fun! If you have an idea on what to call this challenge leave me a comment below – I’d really appreciate it!

Most of these will be mini-sites. One site each day usually Monday thru Saturday with additional content and backlinks on Sunday.

A choice few will be more robust sites. One each week that I will build up over time to have something more than just simple sites.

The 80/20 rule.

I fully expect that the 80/20 rule will be in full effect. 20 percent of the sites will provide 80 percent of the revenue.

I also expect 80 percent of my success will come from 20 percent of my efforts – I just don’t know what those are yet, but I will be testing that hypothesis. And vice versa I expect 80 percent of my problems will be in 20 percent of the work. Don’t know what that is yet either, but I expect it will be content, or ads, or both.

I will also write a short post about each of these domains, my plan and thought process, and site development that I will post here on my blog.

Sound interesting? Want to know how the sites perform and how much money they make? Inquiring minds want to know!

I will be posting summaries weekly, but they won’t include the domains or specific site amounts since I don’t want to publicize the domains in that way too much. I’m also going to keep a progress meter prominently featured at the top of the blog so you can see progress at a glance.

I can hear it now… “AHHHH!!!! Please give me the details, I won’t tell anyone, PLEAAASSEEE!”

Ok, I’m a pushover so if you want to know what the specific domains are such as how much traffic they get, and how much money they make, how long they take to make it in Google page results, etc simply sign up for my email list and I’ll give you the details. You can sign up here.

P.S.

As an added incentive, I’m going to have a give away or contest at the end of the 99 days where I give the winners(not sure how many at this point) their choice of a site I’ve built in this challenge (I’ll select about 50-80 of the 99 sites and the winners will get their choice from that pool). You have to be registered on the email list to win.

P.S.S.

As another incentive I might be giving away some bonus swag to chosen commenters, Google+ connections, Twitter followers, Linkedin connections, and FaceBook Friends. So get social with me now… Who knows, I might even have some additional surprises in store during the event!

Best post EVARRRRR!!!

For those of you who really know me you’ll agree that I rarely ever become a fanboy or rave about product x or person y, but I just read the best blog post ever – in so many different aspects – from engagement to stickiness to SEO to call to action…  go read it NOW, seriously.  Let me know what you think.  I subscribed even though I’ve sworn off new subscriptions – now who to bump?  Hmmm.

How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise, and Get Paid to Change the World

How many hands does Google have?

There is an old saying that sometimes a company or entity is so big that its left hand doesn’t even know what the right hand is doing…

Google Places a spam farm? Nah.

Evidently the Googleplex has a couple of extra appendages since they classified their own places results as spam according to an article on TechCrunch.
Personally, I think they are just blowing it out of proportion, but when a company gets the size and power of Google, there are always power struggles. Matt Cutts seems like he is pretty straight forward – don’t know him, but his blog and videos are generally blunt and honest.

Either way, if you run a content farm you will get punished and this was just a side effect of the spammer purge that is going on with useless content.

7 Website Copywriting Rules,7 Copywriting Mistakes and a Template for free

If you are writing your own content for a website, online store or even a blog you need to be aware of the basics of copywriting.  This goes equally well if you are outsourcing your content as you’ll need to make sure they follow these tips so you will get the most content bang for your money!

The following is the list of copywriting tips and mistakes(rips) I use.  If you like them and want the template I use, I’ll give it to you free and you can use them to ensure you or your staff follow the rules for online copywriting.

Copywriting Tip/Rip #1:

Start your content with (Tip) a great headline or (Rip)just some random irrelevant title.

You do want people to read your content after you spent time writing it, correct?  What most people don’t realize is that if you have a boring headline 80% of people will NEVER read any further.  It shouldn’t, but the title matters… a lot!

My template has some great sample titles you can use.

Copywriting Tip/Rip #2:

(Tip)Provide good, quality content, but (Rip)don’t waste people’s time or bore them.

Write your content with a goal and get to the point.  You don’t need a 1000 word article to get good results when 200 or 300 would do and cover the topic well.  Let’s face it – people get bored and distracted very easily in the age of IM, Twitter, FB, Texting so don’t give them a reason to be distracted.  Less is more most of the time.  You will probably find it difficult to write fewer words at first.  I know I do.  All the time.  :)

Copywriting Tip/Rip #3:

(Tip)Use keywords in the right places or (Rip) use some cute title or saying or quote you love.

This is all about letting the search engines find you and then letting them help you out by indexing you for the keywords you really want indexed.  In your first sentence, preferably the first words, need to be the keywords and phrases you want to rank with in search engines.  Don’t use some cute quote, saying or random intro sentence.  If you can, also use the keyword in your headline, meta titles, meta descriptions, anchor text for links and in any of your images alt tags.

Copywriting Tip/Rip #4:

(Tip)Use keywords in the body of your text and (Rip) use keywords all over your text and repeat them excessively.

You’ve all seen the proverbial web page with keywords reeking out of it and thought, that is stupid, and immediately left.  It may work for a short time because the engines won’t pick up on it initially unless you are truly blatant.  But, in the long run, readers will leave immediately and your ranking will drop.  What you really want is people to come AND STAY on your site so write your content for PEOPLE, not search engines.

Copywriting Tip/Rip #5:

(Tip)Use varying titles, meta titles and meta descriptions or (Rip) use the default or same one for everything.

Always use a keyword or phrase in your titles and meta information, but make sure to change them up some and try to make it relevant to the content as well.  By default many CMS’s like WordPress use a fairly poor SEO default title.  You can vary it yourself or you can set up the post structure where it shows the post title.  Better yet, use a free plugin that will do even more for you by default and help propel your content to the next level of search!

Copywriting Tip/Rip #6:

(Tip)Mention benefits of your site, service or product or (Rip) mention just features, facts and figures.

Features, facts and figures have their place in content, but people really only want to know WIIFM, what’s in it for me.  Do you want to have 58% less plaque on your teeth or do you want to have a dazzling smile that all the hottest people will notice and love?  Thought so!

Copywriting Tip/Rip #7:

(Tip)Tell people what you want them to do or (Rip) let them guess based on your site content or jedi mind tricks.

This is a call to action and you must have one or people will wander aimlessly and probably leave your site.  Tell them to order this now, or contact me now, or sign up for the free newsletter, or even read this other article. 

P.S.  Bonus Tip… Buttons, links and graphics help – especially ugly red flashy ones.  So please

to sign up for my domain name and website RSS feed :)

Almost forgot, if you want my free content template just contact me and I’ll give you the link.

Information diet

I have several projects going on with domains and domain development right now so I’ve decided to go on an information diet.  This is a concept I’ve seen in several places and you can find a lot more about it with a simple search so I won’t bore you with the details. 

What I will say is that if you are like me, you waste a lot of time reading emails, blogs, newsletters, etc and most of that time is poorly spent.  Just like with a weight diet, you don’t need to be consuming anything that will only make you fat…  I’ll keep you updated, but take 5 minutes and don’t read that SEO, marketing, etc post and do this instead – you will thank me later!