Your domain name, whether you like it or not, is your online identity. A lot of effort is ordinarily put into choosing an effective domain, whether it is keyword-heavy, or the same as your storefront name. Less attention is paid to the possibility of utilizing different top-level domains, simply because ‘dot-com’s are traditionally the most popular. But it can pay to try to take advantage of a different top level domain, depending on your business type.

Top level domains (TLDs) are the part of a web address that comes after the domain name. You can find a full list of available domains at IANA.org, whee they have a country code list and a generic tld list. Some of the more famous ones are listed below.

.com

Commercial: Open to any registrant.

.biz

Business: Must be commercial.

.info

Information: Open to any registrant.

.jobs

Companies: Open only to advertise jobs for own company.

.net

Network: Open to any registrant.

.org

Organization: Open to any registrant.

.pro

Profession: Open for doctors, attorneys, and cpas only.

.fm

Federated States of Micronesia: Common radio broadcaster tld.

.la

Laos: Common Los Angeles tld.

.tv

Tuvalu: Common television broadcaster tld.

.us

United States: Open to any USA-centered registrant.

The most important of these is the .com tld. Even if you decide to go with a different tld for marketing purposes, you must keep the .com tld as a 301 redirect to your main site; otherwise, you run the risk of a competitor claiming the .com version of your business name and profiting off your marketing.

That said, using a different top level domain can sometimes reap large dividends. One popular news blog uses a .tk tld, and advertises their site with "tk" phrases to push the unusual domain on blog readers. Having an unusual top level domain can boost your brand by making it stand out; and the drawback of it becoming less memorizable due it not being a .com is negated so long as you also register the .com version and have it 301 redirect to your actual tld.

If your business caters to a local market, having a local tld can be very useful. If you’re expanding into a new market and want to register the appropriate domain, make sure to do research first. Although .gb is the official tld for Great Britain, most companies there use .co.uk addresses. Also, former Soviet Union countries do not regularly use their own country codes; .su tlds are still very popular there.

Be careful not to put duplicate content on each of your domains. Always use 301 redrects to your main page and keep all your content there; otherwise, search engines may penalize you for serving duplicate content. But remember that there are no penalties for using less popular domains by itself, and it pays to be creative with anything that you market.

That said, you do have to be careful about a few items. Though it is rare, occasionally overzealous corporate spam blockers will deny email that gives links to a .biz name. This never occurs on spam blockers that you can purchase online, since blocking all .biz content is going overboard, but every once in a while a system admin will think it is a good idea and block all such e-mails from getting through their server. Also, sometimes the less often used tlds carry a connotation of nonprofessionalism; .my may look interesting due to it sporting a two-letter word (e.g., http://oh.my), but if your business has such a tld and it isn’t obvious why you chose it, then it could hurt your image.

If you do decide to leave the comfort of the .com arena and try out an alternate tld, make sure to market the name aggressively. Take advantage of your unusual domain name, because it is something that your company will sport that others won’t. Emphasize it, perhaps by using wordplay, or making it a different color in the logo. The point is to make the alternate tld work for you. After all, if choosing an alternate tld doesn’t help your brand, then you shouldn’t use it in the first place.

Posted by Eric Herboso.

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I just finished reading Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, and believe me when I say that I couldn’t wait to write up a review of it. It’s the kind of thing you just want to share with everyone you meet.

Here at Omnistar, we take SEO seriously. That’s why after hearing so many good things about Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, I was excited to finally get a chance to read it. Now that I’ve finished all 331 pages of it, I’m even more excited than I was before.

Wall’s SEO Book does an excellent job of covering everything that you could possibly want to know about optimizing your site for search engines. From domain name decisions to logo designs, css tips to meta tags, Wall covers it all. And he doesn’t hold anything back. Reading Wall’s SEO Book is just like hiring him at his $500/hr rate, except you have to actually think, and he gets paid less.

Still, some people might balk at the $79 price tag on his downloadable ebook. But believe me: it’s well worth it. Wall writes in a readable style, and never advises you to go out and buy $900 worth of software on some other site; he gets straight to the point and tells you how to do what the professionals do. When I say that you will make back your $79 investment simply by implementing a couple of his ideas, I mean it.

I should mention here that Wall’s book is for long-term optimization only. He doesn’t distinguish between black and white-hat SEO, he simply talks about what works while avoiding what doesn’t. But although he experiments with some SEO practices that might increase search engine rankings temporarily, his SEO Book is geared only toward those practices that will help your site to build and maintain optimization in the long term.

Please notice that my recommendation of Wall’s SEO Book is not to give an affiliate link so I can make money. I’m recommending it because I really believe it works. Whether you’re a beginner at SEO or an expert who’d like to have a fully organized, readable list of everything there is to know about search engine optimization, you should buy Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. It really is search engine optimization at its finest.

Posted by Eric Herboso.

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Are you looking to create a lot of traffic to your site by submitting your site to business directories? Here’s your best bet.

Get listed on quality sites and a lot of IP blocks.

Don’t ever rely on a single directory or submitting to a large number of directories. That’s because most search inquiries are done on general search engines than specialist sites or b2b/b2c directories. Getting listed on general search engines and quality sites can be advantageous if you want to bring in a great number of sales leads. Your site ranking will be higher and so will your listing on the search results.

Click here to view the 100 Best Internet Directories.

Posted by Robert Kilonzo.

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One thing all bloggers love is comments. Increasing comments on your blog is essential to creating that sense of community that all blogs need to survive. Plus it just feels good when something you compose is publicly commented upon.

There are more than a few good ways of getting more people to comment on your blog entries. The different methods usually fall into three separate categories:

• Ease of Use
• Requests for Comment
• Incentives

Ease of Use

Before you do anything else, the first thing you need to do is make it easy for readers to leave comments.

Use hidden fields instead of a captcha

If you need to prevent bots from leaving spam, use the hidden field method rather than a captcha. To do this, create a hidden field that bots will fill but users will not, and deny access to requests with that field filled.

Don’t use popup windows for comments

Popups are almost universally despised by websurfers. Do yourself a favor and limit whatever popups you employ to advertising schemes; putting them up for people who are trying to comment may make them decide not to say anything at all. Especially since most popup-blocking software will not be able to tell that it is a legitimate popup, and it may also be blocked.

Don’t force readers to log in

Logins are great; but always make them optional. If you force users to log in, you are creating a barrier to getting more comments.

Write open-ended posts

Don’t say everything there is to say about whatever topic you’re discussing. By thinking of yourself as directing a conversation on the subject rather than covering every aspect of the issue, you are leaving material open for others to comment upon.

Use threaded comments

Allow readers to comment not just on your blog, but on what others have commented about. For WordPress users, you might try Brian’s Threaded Comments. For most other blogging platforms, threaded comments are set as default.

Allow comment subscription

Let readers subscribe to the comments that follow the one they just made. This makes it easy for them to come back again to participate in the dscussion. Subscribe to Comments is the best WordPress plugin for this.

Requests for Comment

Ask questions!

It’s hard to imagine that such an obvious technique will actually produce results, but it’s true. Ask questions in your post, preferably right at the end, and many readers may respond.

Be controversial

Controversial posts are a great way to build up comments. Being controversial in what you have to say is like begging people to give their input if they disagree with you.

Take notes

Look back over your past posts. Which blog entries have the most comments? Whatever those entries are about, revisit them. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when you already know what works.

Incentives

Don’t moderate comments

Commenters like seeing their comments go up on your blog. If there is a delay between their comment submission and when the comment goes live, then they may not have the drive to comment again. The more your blog seems like an open forum, the better people will feel about adding to the discussion.

Reply to commenters

Nothing is more gut-wrenching than when I see a blog with good comments, yet the blog author never bothered to reply. Well, I guess a few things are more gut-wrenching than that, but it’s still pretty bad. If you do get comments, reply to them! Believe me, your readers will feel like you appreciate them if you do.

Visit commentators’ blogs

If someone writes a particularly good comment, visit their blog and comment back. It’ll make them more likely to make additional good comments on future entries.

E-mail first time commenters

This is a great way to get random commenters who may otherwise have never visited your blog again to come back. Comment Relish is a good WordPress plugin for this to be done automatically.

Turn off nofollow

The nofollow attribute causes spiders to not count any links in your comments. This is done to discourage spammers. But although it is good for the blog community as a whole to enforce this provision, as it does discourage a number of spammers from even bothering to comment, if your individual blog turns off nofollow and advertises this fact, then you will be giving a large incentive to others to comment on your blog. By restricting the nofollow removal to only hit those who comment regularly on your blog, you get the best of both worlds. Link Love is the perfect WordPress plugin for this; and most other blogging platforms have a simple method to change this attribute. In blogger, simply go to the raw html, search for ‘nofollow’, and remove that attribute from the meta spider list.

Show top commentators

Display the names of your top commenters, as well as links to their sites. Show Top Commentators is the best WordPress plugin for this. Unfortunately, most other blogging platforms do not have adequate tools for this function, and you may just have to post the names and links manually in your sidebar.

Exchange comments with other bloggers

If you don’t have any comments on some of your entries, then you may want to find a way to get that first couple of comments to break the ice. A good way to do this is to find another blogger in a similar position, and offer to comment on their empty entries if they will comment on yours. There’s nothing wrong with a little quid pro quo every once in a while.

As a last resort, use micropayments

If you don’t have the time or the energy to exchange comments with another blogger, you might try using micropayments to incentivize people to read and comment on your blog entries. I realize it may seem sleazy, but getting that first comment on a post can sometimes be very difficult, and often breaking the ice early on will mean you’ll get many quite legitimate comments immediately after. Mechanical Turk is a good micropayment site you may consider using.

Each of these methods can do its part to help increase the number of comments you get on your blog. Unfortunately, I think I may have violated one of my own tenets by covering everything I could think of about this issue. But maybe not. Does anyone know if I missed anything?

Posted by Eric Herboso.
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