1. How To Safeguard Your Business Brand Name Online
www.WPBusinessGuides.com – WordPress Training
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Do you have a great idea for a new online business venture? Maybe you already have an
existing online business that you are trying to grow.
If so, then you probably already know that building a business brand online requires a whole lot
more than simply choosing a great domain name, designing a unique logo and building a
professional-looking website.
Of course, these things are important, but there’s a lot more to it!
Let me show you a couple of really effective, simple-to-implement and very inexpensive
strategies that you can put into place right now to safeguard your business presence online (you
will be really glad you did this as your business grows in the months and years to come!) …
How To Safeguard Your Business Brand Name Online
Let’s say that you have come up with a terrific name for a new business venture and you want
to take it online.
One of the first steps that a savvy entrepreneur would take, would be to check if there is a
domain name available that matches your business name.
Domain names have become so important in the way we do business today, that any new
business owner (including your future competitors) would seriously need to consider whether to
go ahead and register a business name if the domain name associated with that business name
is not available.
Think about it. Would you go through the expense of setting up a business called “Best Green
Solutions” if every domain associated with this name (e.g. bestgreensolutions.com,
bestgreensolutions.net, bestgreensolutions.com.au, best-green-solutions.com, etc.) was already
registered by someone else (e.g. your competitor)?
Probably not. What would be the point of spending money and working ward to promote a
business only to send more and more potential customers to another business?
Let me give you an example …
I work with many small business owners in Australia who have registered a .com.au domain,
but not the .com version of their domain name.
Invariably, a quick check online will often reveal that my client’s .com domain name is already
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2. registered to someone else.
This can result in online users who may be searching for products or services similar to those
offered by my clients typing in the .com business domain instead of the .com.au address and
ending up in someone else’s site.
My client’s competitor or another business gets to benefit from the traffic generated by
their efforts.
This may not seem like a big deal, but it is something that can easily be prevented and help you
avoid problems and headaches later on, especially if your business starts to grow and become
very successful, or you decide to start marketing your products internationally.
With this in mind, here are a couple of really simple and inexpensive strategies that will help you
safeguard your business brand name online and help to protect you from you competition:
Strategy #1: Secure All Related Domain Names Associated With
Your Brand
I assume you already have a domain name registered for your business. If you haven’t, go here
for a step-by-step online tutorial I’ve created that will show you how to quickly search for
available keyword-rich domain names and how to register a domain name.
Okay then … have you thought about safeguarding your business brand name online by
registering all of the variations of your domain name?
Some of the most common strategies used to do this include:
Register the .com, .net and .org versions of your domain (e.g. mygreenstore.com,
mygreenstore.net, mygreenstore.org)
Register your domain internationally (e.g. mygreenstore.com.au, mygreenstore.co.uk)
Register both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of your domain (e.g.
mygreenstore.com, my-green-store.com)
Register a number of keyword-rich domains related to your business (e.g.
someproductcategory.com, somekeywordrelatedtoyourbusiness.com, etc.) – you can
then use these to build separate sites focused on niches in your industry and drive
targeted traffic to your main web site, or develop these domains into separate business
divisions.
Registering multiple domains is a relatively inexpensive investment (most domains cost around
$12 per year to renew) and offers many benefits and advantages, such as:
It gives you a local / global monopoly over the brand.
It prevents competitors from securing those domains and diverting traffic to their sites.
It stops people registering business names offline that are similar or related to your
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3. domain.
It can significantly increase the resale value of your business.
Now … you may be wondering what to do with all of those domains after you have registered
them. The simplest thing to do is to redirect all of your similar domains to just one domain (e.g.
the main domain you want to promote online).
Here are a couple of simple ways to do this:
Domain Parking: You can park your domain on top of another domain
Domain Redirect: You can set up the domain with a simple redirect code which then
sends visitors from that domain to your main domain.
For example, I own the domain name BigGreenWeb.com. I then also went and registered a
number of related top level domains to safeguard the brand name associated with the online
business that I have built on that domain. These domains include:
BIGGREENWEB.NET
BIGGREENWEB.ORG
BIGGREENWEB.BIZ
BIGGREENWEB.INFO
BIGGREENWEB.COM.AU
BIGGREENWEB.CO.UK
BIGGREENWEB.CO.NZ
BIGGREENWEB.US
etc …
I then redirected those domains, so they all point to the main domain at biggreenweb.com. If
you type in any of the above domains into your browser, you will be taken to
www.BigGreenWeb.com (i.e. the main domain)
Parking and Redirecting domains is a fairly simple process. We provide all customers of our
WordPress Training Guides with a number of training updates and tutorials on how to park
and redirect domains.
Registering A Domain Name
We recommend using GoDaddy to register your domains. GoDaddy is not only an affordable
and highly trusted domain registrar, but they also provide an excellent domain name
management and administration system that makes the process of managing one or multiple
domain names easy.
Go here to register your domains: GoDaddy.
If you need help with domain registration, then see our online tutorial here: WordPress
Pre-installation Checklist
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4. STRATEGY #2: SECURE WEB2.0 USERNAMES
The World Wide Web has undergone many significant changes. One of these is the increasing
relevance and dominance of social media sites like FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter and dozens of
other social networks and bookmarking sites.
Establishing an online presence in these major social networks is important not only in terms of
creating a growing awareness for your business with the online community, but also in terms of
generating new sources of traffic, which you can then turn into new customers for your products
and services.
We discuss social media strategies for growing your business online in our guides and blog
posts, but for now, all you need to do FIRST is secure your brand name online with as many of
these social sites as you can before someone else takes the name.
Vanity URLs
Many social sites allow you to specify a username when creating an account that will then
become part of your account’s web address for that site.
These web addresses are typically called a vanity URL. By making your business name the
username on these sites, you can create vanity URLs that will help to strengthen your business
brand online.
Here are some examples of vanity URLs:
Facebook.com/yourbusinessname
Twitter.com/yourbusinessname
Youtube.com/yourbusinessname
etc…
You can check to see if your desired username is still available at dozens of popular Social
Networking and Social Bookmarking websites by visiting this site:
http://namechk.com/
Type in your desired username or vanity url and click the button to check its availability at
dozens of the most popular social networking and social bookmarking sites …
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5. And a list of all sites where the username is still available is instantly returned …
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6. Tips For Unique Or Trademarked Business Names
What if your business name is a unique or trademarked name?
Well, the same advice applies as was given earlier … secure all related domain names
associated with your business name and create as many accounts as you can at all the major
social networking and social bookmarking sites using your unique username.
Build Sites Pointing To Your Main Domain
There is one more strategy we recommend for securing your business brand name online and
driving more traffic to your site … register keyword-rich domains related to your main
products or services.
I mentioned this earlier in this post, but let’s just look at this in a little more detail.
Let’s say that your business name is something like Gloopster.com and one of the products you
sell is recycled seat covers. Although a name like this may be unique sounding and have a fun
ring to it, it is meaningless to most search engines and online users searching for recycled seat
covers who have never heard about your business.
What you do in this case, is see if the domain recycledseatcovers.com (or
recycled-seat-covers.com) and some of its main variations (e.g. reusableseatcovers.com) is still
available, and use a keyword tool like the Free Google keyword tool to see if there are enough
searches made on the keyword to be worth registering it as a domain name.
If you come across a good domain name that is worth registering, consider registering it and
then either redirecting the domain to the “recycled seat covers” section of your main website
(e.g. gloopster.com/recycledseatcovers), or building an entirely different site specifically related
to information about recycled seat covers and driving visitors specifically interested in
purchasing recycled seat covers to this site. Once you have a few strategies in place to capture
your visitors details (e.g. a newsletter), you can then direct visitors to all the sites that you own.
Here’s a video that shows you how to quickly find keyword-rich domain names that are still
available using GoDaddy
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7. Go Here To Register Domains At GoDaddy
Hopefully this article has helped you understand why you need to protect your business brand
name online and given you some new ideas and practical tips to help you gain a competitive
business advantage.
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