As “dot coms” are quickly being eaten up, fewer choices are available.  Although you may not wish to have other websites right now, you should think about purchasing urls for future use.

Having multiple domain names helps to:

• Build your business
• Keep your competition from registering a domain that draws customers
• Drive more traffic to your website
• Create opportunities for targeted advertising campaigns
• Provide more opportunities for people to find you
• Protect your name / programs / identity from people that may want to use the name in a not-so-flattering way.

For example, you could reserve domains to use as:

Your Name — especially if you are a speaker and your business is YOU. If your name is already taken, try adding your middle initial or a “-”.

• www.jenniferledet.com
• www.lisamontanaro.com

The Name of Programs / Workshops / Products and Services you offer.  Do you have trademarked programs you developed?  Maybe you have a catchy name for presentations you give.

• www.theultimatelifeorganizer.com

Your company “tag line.”  You’ve spent time developing your company’s name and tagline.  Don’t miss this additional marketing opportunity.

• www.justdoit.com

Your moniker.   Are you a Pro, Expert, Maven or Coach?  Secure your moniker domain before someone else does.

• www.thevirtualsolutionspro.com (couldn’t resist)
• www.yoursoftwarecoach.com

You may be thinking, “but I don’t have time to create websites for all of these names.”  You don’t have to!  It takes less than 5 minutes to purchase a domain and point or forward it to your current website, or a page on your website (i.e. if you purchased your name because you are a speaker, point it to the page on your site that talks about the programs you offer).  When you are ready to build a website, or stand-alone page, the domain can be re-pointed.

My favorite place to purchase domains is GoDaddy. They make it easy to purchase and manage your domain where ever it is being hosted.  You can purchase a .com for less than $10/year and even add .biz, .org, .net, .info, etc… at additional savings.

Take a little time to look at your business, products and opportunities so you can determine if you need to purchase multiple urls. Don’t wait!

Simply put, with an account set up in Google (free), you have access to create a Google Alert. Alerts can be any word or phrase. Once set up, Google will send you emails based on your desired deliverability (daily, weekly, etc..) every time the Google indexing comes across your search terms.

For example, you could set up a Google Alert for your:

• Name
• Business name
• Website url
• Names of your programs or services
• Titles of articles you have put on the web

You could even set up an alert if you are following a news story, or to keep up with what your “competitor(s)” are doing.

Why would you want to set up these alerts?

Think of how cool it is to see when someone else mentions you or your business? I set up Google Alerts regularly for some clients when one of their articles are posted in sites like www.ezinearticles.com. That way when their article is picked up and reprinted by someone else, they can see when and where.

Important TIP: When you add an alert with more than one word (and most are) put quotation marks around the whole phrase. Example: “A Virtual Click Away”. This way the alerts are more targeted and not just a webpage that contains the words: a, virtual, click, and away within the page. The quotations make sure the alert will look for that string of words together.

To create a Google Alert

• First go to www.google.com and sign in to your account (or create one if you don’t have an existing account).
• Click the My Account link in the upper right of the Google home page
• Chose the Alerts link
• Follow the prompts to create your Alert

You can always go back to Manage my alerts if you want to delete or modify existing topics that you are monitoring.

This is a FREE tool – don’t miss out on the fabulous functionality it offers!

I am thrilled to now be able to showcase for my clients (and potential clients) some great features and functionality of WordPress. I get goose bumps thinking of all the cool things this platform can do and how I can help my clients take their business to the next level!