Ignoring for a second, Shakespeare’s stated belief that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, in the blogging world, selecting a good domain name for your blog can make a great difference to its future success. So take time to consider the possibilities before plumping for yours.

There are a number of different elements which you should consider when selecting a domain name for your blog. This is of course presuming that you have decided to host it yourself (certainly recommended) and not integrate it into your current website (thoughts on this here).

For me, as any regular readers will already be well aware (sorry in advance for mini rant), I’d always recommend that you host it yourself rather than hand control over to a hosted service such as blogger.com or even wordpress.com (as opposed to wordpress.org self hosted blogs). If you then decide that there is more benefit in separating your blog from your own website, then running it on a domain name which supports your content is hugely important when it comes to branding and developing both reputation and credibility, whether you are looking at a company, sector, service, product or individual niche.

Some of the elements that you should consider when making a decision are:

• Subject matter of the blog: to have a descriptive domain name for your blog will make it all the more memorable for those people reading it and also more memorable when they want to recommend it!
• Branding elements for your business: you may wish to have a branding element incorporated into it as a special attribute of some sort
• SEO elements: from a Search Engine Optimisation point of view, the domain name is an important element and so will ideally contain the primary keyword or keywords for the blog
• Length of domain name: while it is good to have a descriptive name, you should avoid one which is too long and also ideally avoid one with words separated with lots of hyphens which now has “spammy” overtones – something you want to avoid for your business
• Future requirements: make sure that it is something that you’re definitely going to feel comfortable with in a year’s time. Changing a blog’s domain name is going to lose all the benefits you have accrued so avoid this at all costs by choosing sensibly at the start
• Top Level Domain: whether it should be a .com, .co.uk, .net etc. As with a normal website, it may well be sensible to cover all bases and take the main ones that are available and so safeguard it from a branding perspective
• Be legal: just be certain that you are not infringing (or flirting with) someone else’s trademarked or copyrighted name. You may be ok, it’s true, but why run the risk and, as outlined above, lose all the benefits you have amassed if legal sentiments change.
• Avoid blog: there really is no need to include “blog” in your domain name – the point of the blog is to encourage information sharing and interaction, but there’s really no need to specify that you are achieving this in a blog. Concentrate on the other elements is my advice.
• Check the past: hopefully, this would never hot you, but you might like to check that the domain name has never been registered before and has been left with a past which might damage your future use of it ie. spamming etc.

Hopefully, you will be able to find a suitable compromise so that you manage to combine the points which are most important to you – unless of course there is a single factor which overrides all of the others. This compromise would ideally be based on the aims of your blog and also your target audience, two key elements of the planning process you should go through before setting up a business blog

Don’t forget that you also need to find a name for your blog, something which can be in line with your domain name if required. It is important because this is what your readers are most likely to see first on the site, so make sure that it conveys the right message. In addition, it is often automatically incorporated in the “Title tag” of most systems and certainly in WordPress – though of course you can modify this using the excellent SEO plugins available. You should always make sure that you use any opportunity to publicise the contents of your blog and so the tagline of the blog is also important as this appears alongside the blog title in specific search engines such as Google Blog Search.

Whatever you decide, remember that the name of your blog and the domain name that you choose for it, no matter what your decision, is an important part of the process of setting up your blog, so choose carefully!!

Tags: Business Blogging, Blog Post, Name your Blog, Blog name, Blog Domain

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Military intelligence. Jumbo shrimp. Business ethics. All classic oxymorons. For those of us in the internet marketing biz probably the most obvious one is Microsoft Search.

In light of the changes that have just occurred at Yahoo! there is renewed talked about what will happen to the Yahoo! search business. If there are rumors then there has to be mention of Microsoft. Today’s WSJ has a very in depth story that outlines the history of misses and mistakes that makes up Microsoft’s foray into the search business.

Today, we all can agree that Live Search is not exactly a market leader. They are the red-headed stepchild of the search industry (my apologies to all redheads reading this). In fact, the idea of Live Search still brings up reactions like “Microsoft does search?” to “Microsoft can’t do search.” to “Microsoft should stop trying to do search.” and all stops in between. As the article shows though, it’s not for lack of trying.

If you want the details you should check out the article. I’ll hit the high points for you. First, the opportunities that have been completely whiffed on by Microsoft to enter the search market are huge to say the least. Steve Ballmer has been at the center of all of them for the most part. In 2000 the company shut down its competitive product to the fledgling Google after only two month due to the concern that they would cannibalize other revenue streams. Huh? That one must look pretty stupid this far away in the rear view mirror. Second, there are numerous derailings, misreads and missteps that have occurred that have been well documented. While the past is not pretty the immediate future looks less than rosy as well.

Now admittedly this is a long quote but it says a lot so read on:

Mr. Ballmer is facing many challenges over the next year. A worsening economy is forcing him to consider cutting workers to an unprecedented degree in coming days. There’s no guarantee that a deal for Yahoo’s Web-search business would propel the company to the forefront of a rapidly changing industry, where competitors include “vertical search” engines for specialty areas such as health care. Many industry experts say Google’s present service may ultimately be seen as a primitive precursor to more-advanced services that better handle video or render results in three-dimensions. Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are all investing in such areas (emphasis added).

This is a pretty interesting line to toss in the middle of this history lesson on Microsoft’s search mishaps. If industry experts are right that the current Google model is indeed a primitive precursor what does that mean to internet marketers and maybe more importantly when?

Here’s your chance to be the search industry prognosticator that you know you are. Would it benefit Microsoft to buy a soon to be antiquated model with Yahoo! Search? Is there someone lurking in the shadows to be the next Google or are all efforts futile to unseat the royalty of the search world since Google will define the next generation of search anyway? So many questions and so many opinions.

Looking forward to your thoughts. Have a great weekend and try to stay warm.

By Rene LeMerle

For the best part of 2008, we heard the common tale of marketing budgets being shifted online, as companies sought affordable and measurable results. It seems the retail sector was no exception.

A report out by search management firm SearchIgnite suggests retail paid search grew 12% in Q4 2008, compared to 2007’s fourth quarter results. The growth trend was consistent across all the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN).

Of the three months in Q4, Nov 2008 was the stand out, experiencing a phenomenal increase of 43%, which suggests retailers we going on the offensive to leverage Black Friday/Cyber Monday activity. Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite said:

Retailers were more aggressive with their paid search spend in the first half of the quarter compared with the year earlier in an effort to capture more consumer dollars ahead of the holidays.

Sales reports around the start of the holiday period were mixed, preThanksgiving down 4%, and Cyber Monday only up 1%. It’s not surprising then that December’s paid search growth was only 14%, as retailers remained wary about spending.

The report also observed a consistent conversion rate YOY (year on year) with only 3% growth, but the interesting shift was in average order value (AOV)—which dropped 10%.

2009 will see more retailers turning to paid search to drive sales, but as the report highlights, changing consumer habits based on the economic climate will force them to work harder and smarter to maintain revenue levels.

Rene LeMerle is the VP of Marketing at ineedhits.com, a leading provider of results driven Search Engine Advertising and SEO services.

It’s been a year of rumors and intrigue for Verizon. Okay, maybe it’s not quite that dramatic, but there has been a little sturm-und-drang surrounding the soon-to-be-largest-in-the-US mobile carrier’s next mobile search deal. MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer is going to be announcing this tonight during his CES keynote, according to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg—Verizon has chosen Microsoft to provide its mobile search.

Over the last few months, there have been rumors that Google or Microsoft would be the pick, but not so much for Yahoo. As one analyst told Reuters:

“It’s certainly a feather in Microsoft’s cap. Tough news for Google and tougher news for Yahoo,” CCS Insight analyst John Jackson said of the agreement.

Verizon will pass AT&T to become the largest mobile network this week when their acquisition of Alltel closes. However the soon-to-be-number-one network decided not to go with either of the two most popular search engines in its mobile partnership.

In November, when the rumors about a deal with Microsoft surfaced, the reports indicated that the deal would involve revenue sharing for the two companies, with Verizon receiving a minimum payment:

Verizon would also be guaranteed payments of about $550 million to $650 million over five years—about twice what rival Google offered. In addition, Verizon could agree to use Microsoft’s mobile operating system in more of its phones, generating additional payments.

At the time, it also seemed likely that Google would make a higher and/or different bid to try to block the deal with Microsoft, as they apparently did with MSFT’s offer for Yahoo almost a year ago. (Please don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.)

However, Google proved to be ultimately unwilling to follow through with the legal hassles their Yahoo deal created and that deal failed in the end, as well. Maybe they did make a counter offer, or maybe they just wouldn’t raise their price, hoping that the superior relevance (or perceived relevance) of their results would be enough to swing a deal in their favor without the extra cash.

What do you think—is the deal better for Microsoft because they’re getting the deal, or because Google isn’t? Or perhaps none of the above?

With Google and other search engines continuing to roll out personalization updates, it is becoming increasingly difficult for SEOs to get an idea of their true ranking position. A personalized search result page can look completely different than the results a ranking tool would provide.

André Scholten wrote a guest post on Yoast explaining how Google Analytics users can get a better idea of where they rank for specific keywords. Although users will not be able to get the exact position, they will be able to figure out what page of the SERPs they rank on.

How do you do it? Google Analytics allows you to create custom filters for your analytics data. In this case, an advanced filter. I don’t want to steal André’s thunder, so head over to Yoast and read how you set it up.

Here is the screenshot he put up on Yoast that shows the effects of the filter:

The key to understanding your rankings lie in the data in the parenthesis. The result (pagina: 50) indicates that a user clicked through to your site from your listing on the sixth page of the Google SERPs. André also goes on to tell you how you can filter your keyword list to only display the keywords listed on a specific page of the SERPs.

Great post, André, and thanks for the tips!

By Carrie Hill

A recent JP Morgan poll asked readers what it would take to get those surveyed to switch search engines.  The market share numbers are decidedly in Google’s favor—they were over 72.07% in December ‘08—with the next closest being Yahoo! at 17.79%. 

The question being asked is: “What would make you leave Google for greener pastures?”

The results aren’t all that surprising. 45% said “Better Results” would make them change, while the runner up “Nothing Would Make me Change” got 38%.  TechCrunch reports that the sample size was only 776 respondents and recreated the poll to see if they could achieve better results with a larger sample. 

TechCrunch’s poll had 2,177 respondents—already far surpassing JP Morgan’s. 58% said they’d switch if the other search engine had “Results that better match my search terms,” while for the runner up response, 15% said they were “Happy with their current search engine.”

I think better results will always have a serious draw and right now Google has the corner on that market—so much so that results with the Google brand are perceived as more relevant than identical results with other search engines’ logos.

Carrie Hill is the SEO Team leader for Blizzard Internet Marketing where she specializes in optimizing travel, tourism and accommodations websites.