Many businesses have passive Web sites that simply sit on the internet and do not work for the business in terms of generating enquiries or sales or acting as an effective promotional tool. With very little effort, often these inactive Web Sites can be turned into valuable and effective marketing channels. At InSynch, we offer businesses a Web Site Health Check service that will not only provide you with a run down of why your site is not working as well as it could, but outlines proactive steps that you can take to improve your Web site performance.

 

We are pleased to announce two new PRINCE2 course dates for Mid Wales. They are Aberystwyth 29th to 3rd October 2008 (inc.) and Welshpool 20th to 24th October 2008 (inc.)

 

PRINCE2 (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment) is a nationally recognized management process that is used widely by public and private sector organisations. It is considered internationally as the best practice framework for project management. These are the only publicly available PRINCE2 courses currently being offered in Mid Wales.

 

PRINCE2 Practioner (5 days) is offered at a cost of £1,450 + vat.  This price includes pre-course preparation materials, the PRINCE2 manual, 5-days tuition, full examination fees, lunches and refreshments.

 

Are you thinking of getting a Web site but don't want to spend too much until you know that it works for your business? Do you want to try out the Internet as a marketing channel for your business? Have you limited funds and IT skills but want to promote your business on-line? We at InSynch understand that taking that first step to having an internet presence can be daunting. Many businesses have approached us for a cost-effective solution to testing out the merits of having a business Web site. As a result, we are launching two new entry- level Web site packages that will enable you to have a basic but effective Web site, which can be your first step to effectively marketing and promoting your business on-line.

Choosing the right domain name is an important decision for your business. We are often asked for advice about what domain name to buy and which domain variations to purchase (.co.uk, .com, .org.etc), so we have included some of our tips here.

Domain endings
We always recommend that businesses buy the .co.uk and .com versions of a domain name. These are the most common and memorable variations that businesses use and Web site visitors expect. Buying both the .co.uk and the .com addresses will prevent competitors or unscrupulous companies buying one of them and stealing your Web site traffic or trying to sell the domain name to you for an inflated price. You can put simple Web forwarding in place to capture anyone entering in the .com to the .co.uk address. We recommend that anyone who is mainly targeting UK Web site visitors should host the Web site on the .co.uk address, as people will instantly identify it as a UK Web site. It may also help with certain UK search engines.

Question: I can't get my chosen name in .co.uk or .com but I can get it in .biz and .net. Should I buy them?
Answer: No. You should continue to search for a domain name that is available in both .co.uk and .com versions. Firstly, there is evidence that .biz and .net do not perform as well in UK search engines. Secondly, people will usually guess your domain ending as .co.uk or .com and if they did this, they wouldn't reach your site.

 

Domain names should be easy to remember
You domain names must be simple and memorable. You don't want potential visitors to have trouble typing in your address from your literature, or constantly having to search on a search engine to find your Web site. Domain names should be short and clear enough to be recalled easily, passed on to others (word of mouth) and not so long or complicated that they are prone to typing errors.

To hyphenate or not to hyphenate?
People started putting hyphens in domain names for two reasons. 1) The domain name they wanted was unavailable so adding hyphens gave a new variation that was available. 2) People recognised the importance of having good keywords in a domain name and thought that search engines would only recognise them if they were separated by hyphens.

We don't recommend the use of hyphens as they make domain names even harder to remember and harder to tell people verbally what your Web address is. In addition, whilst having a relevant keyword in your domain names is good for the search engines, hyphens are not required for the search engines to pick these words up.

Keywords in a domain name
When you do a search on Google for a keyphrase or keyword, you will invariably see that the domain name of many results contain at least one of the words you searched for. If you can find a domain name that includes a relevant keyword that relates to what you do, then this will help you with the search engines. Additionally, your domain name will give people an indication of what you do before they even visit your site, meaning that they may be more likely to pick you from Web site listings on search engines or directories.

 

Misspellings
If you think that people may mistype your domain name or you are worried that competitors may buy slight misspellings, then you can very cheaply buy a couple of other variations and put Web forwarding in place to your site.

Don't buy dozens of domain names thinking they will attract lots of visitors
Some businesses have understood that domain names can make a difference and so proceed to purchase countless domain names containing relevant keywords. Unfortunately, these domain names will not bring any traffic to a Web site unless they are typed in by people on the Internet (which is unlikely). As there is no content at any of these domain names, search engines are unable to index them and include them in their listings. They are therefore of very little benefit.

Having additional domain names can work for your business if you purchase a cheap hosting package with them and include some content in the form of a Web page or pages, with a prominent link to your main Web site. These are called doorway sites and can act as keyword focused pages that may attract search traffic. In addition, they can be counted as a separate Web site that links to your main Web site, thus increasing its page rank (link score), which can have a positive effect on search engine rankings. See our Doorway Page packages.