If you’ve been reading this column for any length of time you know that I feel very strongly about business owners acquiring Internet “real estate” such as domain names, email addresses and more. Now that this real estate has become more popular — and more valuable — plenty of folks are looking to cash in. With your cash. Here are some tips for avoiding the most egregious attempts to grab your cash and avoid hopefully problems down the road.
Own your domain. If you allow someone else to manage your Web services, you run the risk of losing control of your critical domain names and email accounts. If possible, create an account with a reputable domain registration company like GoDaddy or Network Solutions. You can then search for and register domain names and, most importantly, control important features like renewals, hosting and email. Multiple domain names can be registered under a single account so you can control all your Web services from a single location. If you already have domains registered elsewhere, investigate transferring them to your single account.
If you really don’t want to manage your own Web services, you can still protect yourself by making sure you are listed as the registrant and administrative contact for all domains you have purchased. This ensures you have the ultimate control over your Internet real estate should you have a dispute with your Webmaster or technical administrator.
Be suspicious of mailings wanting money. I get calls from clients almost every week asking about letters or emails claiming it’s time to renew or “register” their domains. These often look like invoices. If you or your Web person have purchased your domains through an online provider like GoDaddy or Network Solutions, your renewals will be charged to your credit card on file. Offers to “register” your domains with services and/or search engines are almost always ploys to separate you from your hard-earned money.
Educate yourself. You will certainly get solicitations from online directories and other sources promising to get your business listed on the front page of Google and other search engines. Be very suspicious of these offers. The science of getting your site noticed by search engines is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. If you’re building your own website, enlisting a legitimate SEO consultant can be a tremendous asset. On the other hand, you need to understand some SEO basics before you talk to these specialists.
One of my clients was promised a front-page listing on the major search engines. After a hefty deposit and entering into a yearlong contract, she waited for the traffic to start flowing to her site. After a couple of months, she still wasn’t seeing her business coming up on the front page of ANY searches. When she contacted the SEO company, she was told that if she entered her company name into the search engines it always came up in the top five, thus they were fulfilling their part of the contract.
Her expectation was that she would be able to search for what her business offered and have it come up on the front page. For most businesses, that just isn’t practical. A search for “real estate mill creek” in Google produced 1.3 million results. A search for “florist Bothell WA” returned 46,000 results. Without a better understanding of how SEO works, it becomes difficult to make sense of the claims so-called experts make regarding their services.
Another area that requires some understanding on your part is how websites are set up. You need to know what services are included with your hosting plan (primarily how much disk space you are allowed, how much data can be downloaded from the site and what email services are available) and how much they cost. If you own the domain name for your business, you should have your e-mail address reflect that. There’s no reason to use a Hotmail, Gmail or other free e-mail address when you own your own domain.
There are plenty of resources on the Internet or in your local bookstore to help you get a basic understanding of these concepts. You can also post questions on the Byte Slaves Computing Facebook page. There are plenty of experts there who would be happy to answer your question.
Sven Mogelgaard is president and CEO of Byte Slaves Inc. Contact him at 425-482-9529 or 877-972-7767 or go to www.byteslaves.com.
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