The season continues its rolling pace here in the Islands. We went to the ‘Honolulu City Lights’ event on Saturday. This includes the lighting of the City tree along with the Electrical Parade.
Although we enjoyed it, as we always do, we both thought that the Waikiki parade is as good, maybe even better.
It’s surprising to see how many mainland HS marching bands are in that one. Is that typical for Christmas parades elsewhere?
The most unusual was a high school from Pennsylvania who were led by a bagpipe ensemble – all of whom were students themselves.
The rest of the rather large band was outfitted in the British army uniforms you see on the Buckingham Palace guards, complete with the big furry hat. I never thought of a HS offering a bagpipe program. Interesting.
Now onto the world of search engines and internet marketing. Do you have a hard to remember business name? Or is you domain name involve a lot of dashes and deliberately misspelled words to give it that ‘hip’ cache?
That might’ve seemed cool around 1999, but now you’re trying to get your business moving and the URL might be hurting you.
So – what do you do? Start all over, losing every bit of linking you built over the years? Luckily, the answer is No.
However, it might be time for you to acquire some new domains that are easier to remember or have a ‘hook’ that people will remember. These domains will merely redirect to your already established site.
What kind of domains are we talking about? Say you sell tools. Go to GoDaddy and see if WeveGotYourTools.com is available. Keep in mind some general rules, though, because the truth is this – You actually don’t want to get WeveGotYourTools.com. Why is that?
Because that phrase, usually, has an apostrophe in ‘We’ve’. That can make people stop and think or even enter it by mistake when typing out your URL. You want to be sure that there is no ambiguity whatsoever.
The person who is looking for you should be able to remember that domain and type it in without any problem. Someone who gets an error message is likely a lost visitor.
What do you do with these domains? Put them on your business card and use them in any publicity efforts. You can still do your SEO efforts on your original domain and reap those benefits.
Plus you get the Quick Recall advantages as well. One more thing – research has shown that people see ‘.com’ urls as more substantial/trustworthy than ‘.net’ urls. Keep that in mind.