As you might already know, a domain name functions as a site address. But it does more than that – a good domain name might gain your brand more trust and more traffic.

So, how can you achieve this? This article will show you the best ways to use domain names for marketing purposes.

1. Choose a Brandable Domain Name

If you’re looking for an easy way to market your brand, simply try using your brand’s name as the domain.

The main goal of a brandable domain name is to showcase your brand, and often your niche (like what Pizza Hut does). As such, it tends to be short and straightforward.

The most prominent benefit you can get from a brandable domain name is raising awareness. Since your visitors must type your brand name in the address bar to access your website.

What’s more, it’ll also give a professional look to your address. Let’s say you’re looking to buy a sofa, would you rather click on a keyword-stuffed domain name (such as buyasofahere.com), or an address with an established brand name?

Well, you know the answer.

Even big brands use brandable domain names, such as Samsung and Burger King. That says a lot about this method’s popularity.

Before choosing the perfect domain for your brand, make sure it’s available. For this task, you need a domain checker, such as the one provided by Hostinger. If it’s available, purchase it as fast as possible – before your competitor does.

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2. Use a Custom Email Address

Just like you can make your site address look professional, you can do the same with your email address. Free email services like gmail.com or yahoo.com are great personal tools, but they don’t quite look professional when used for business.

The difference between a regular email address with a custom email address is in the domain. With a custom email address, you’ll have your site address at the end of your email.

Here’s how it would look: yourname@domainname.com.

Using a custom email address helps prevent your emails from entering the spam folder. This is important, especially if you’re going to be utilizing email marketing. Otherwise, here’s what might happen:

It’ll also help you gain brand trust and a sense of credibility. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes: would you be more likely to open and read an email from a business with a custom address or from one with a free address?

Another good thing is, your recipients will notice your domain name! It’s an excellent way to increase your brand awareness and gain more traffic.

If you want to know how to create a custom email address, just contact your hosting provider, or find a tutorial on how to create a custom domain name with your provider.

3. Register Multiple Domain Names

Registering more than one domain name might sound costly. After all, why add more domains when one domain can do the job? The truth is, it has its benefits.

If your brand name is hard to spell or hard to pronounce – there’s a chance that your visitors might mistype your address. To avoid this scenario, you can purchase the “mistyped” domain names, and use it to redirect visitors to the main website.

For example, if you enter gogle.com, you’ll be redirected to google.com. This is a way Google won’t lose any traffic if their visitors mistakenly type “gogle”.

You can also try to register the shorter versions of the address, to make it more simple and memorable. For instance, Barnes and Noble visitors can access bn.com to visit the main website barnesandnobles.com.

This method will also come in handy if you want to rebrand your site. In that situation, you won’t lose visitors by moving to another domain.

A great example of this is smartblogger.com. Formerly, it was known as boostblogtraffic.com, but after rebranding, its site address changed. Now, every visitor of the former site is redirected to SmartBlogger instead.

In short, the main benefit of registering multiple domain names is to retain site visitors (which can be your potential customers) and avoid losing traffic.

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4. Launch Microsites

If you’re planning to launch a new product or promote an event, you can try creating new domains for microsites.

A microsite tends to focus on one topic. The main purpose is to target and reach particular audiences and get the right exposure for your campaign. It can highlight a single product, a one-day event, or a newly-made app. Keep in mind that the site’s objective should be as clear as possible.

If you want to see excellent examples of microsites, you can check out The Coca-Cola Company’s product websites – they have microsites for all of their products, such as coca-cola, Minute Maid, Fanta, and Sprite.

To top it off, microsites will help you track your product or event objectives. Monitor your site’s traffic and conversion metrics using free tools like Google Analytics.

5. Seize Different TLDs

While .com is one of the best choices for your website – as it’s the most popular domain extension out there, you can also try using ccTLDs (Country Code Top-level Domains). They’re extensions that are assigned to specific countries, like .uk (United Kingdom), .de (Germany), or .br (Brazil).

Another good thing about ccTLD is it’s one of Google’s ranking factors. A higher rank means your site will get more exposure and traffic on Google.

In addition, you can also use sTLD (Sponsered Top-Level Domains). However, these are reserved for specific types of domains. For example, .gov is used for the US government and .edu is used for education.

The gTLD (Generic Top-Level Domains) are a bit harder to purchase if your domain name is more common than most. If .com is taken, you can try .org, .net, .xyz, .info or more.

You can also seize different TLDs to reduce the likelihood of competitors imitating your domain name (such as using yourdomain.net to get visitors from yourdomain.com)

Remember to think twice before purchasing different TLDs. Make sure they’re relevant to your business. Don’t buy TLDs that don’t benefit your site in any way.

Final Thoughts

A domain name is more than just a site address, you can also use it for marketing purposes. There are many benefits you can get: from gaining brand trust and improving search result rank, to getting more traffic.

You can get those benefits by applying the methods you’ve learned in this article. So, what are you waiting for? Good luck with your marketing campaign!

The post How to Use Domain Names for Marketing Purposes appeared first on Relevance.

In this post, I will show you what makes them popular among SEO enthusiasts and why you should use them on your website.

What are Emojis and Why You Should Pay Attention to them?

Basically, emojis are digital icons that represent ideas, emotions, objects, etc. They can be easily found on smartphones, PCs, and websites that use them to complement their texts on messaging platforms.

Recent studies show that 36% of millennials (ages 18 – 34) prefer emojis over text to express what they are feeling and it has been reported that 92% of the online population use emojis.

This trend may be the main reason why search engines and business owners start considering them as a relevant piece of information.

In fact, emojis are considered as metadata in a webpage. It means they act similarly to title tags or rich snippets that will help search engines determine if the page contains the most relevant information.

There’s a lot of proof to back that claim, of course. For example, if you search for ?? on Google, do you know what comes out? The famous Baby Shark song.

The same thing applies when you need to find a nearby restaurant, just enter something like “? near me” and you can almost always find the intended results. And guess what: the top websites are using emojis in their content.

But that doesn’t mean you can insert an excessive amount of emojis anywhere in your content. Search engines don’t like overstuffed websites and readers might also find it unprofessional.

If you’re not sure where and when to place emojis, you can contact companies like PRable, that will help you make and optimize the perfect content for your site based on your criteria.

Having said that, you can see how much potential emojis can bring to your SEO, right? I’ll show more reasons why you have to start putting it in your content.

Emoji Support From Google

Despite its sudden decision to disregard emojis in 2015, Google is now aware of their potential and decided to revive its support for these icons on their search engine algorithm.

For those who haven’t used emojis, this news will encourage them to try something new with their SEO campaigns and see if it can bring better results than text-only content.

Increasing Click-Through Rate

One of the indicators of successful SEO campaigns is the Click-Through Rate, which shows how many people have clicked the provided link to your website.

To attract as many visitors as possible, site owners usually incorporate something that can turn people’s heads, such as facts, a big button, or discount info. But guess what, emojis can also make your link pop.

They will help you stand out by showing an image-based icon in all-text results. Viewers are more likely to be drawn to it, thus increasing the chance of clicking.

In fact, there are dozens of experts who have experimented with emojis on their keywords and got a better click-through rate in the end. So, if the trends prove to be useful, why don’t you try it for yourself?

Helping Smaller Brands to Shine

When you search for a cool t-shirt on Google, you’ll see that it gives you back millions of results, which reflects a lot of competition from the online stores that are involved. Consequently, it’s most likely that you can only find famous brands among them.

But when you use an ? emoji to replace t-shirt, Google will display fewer results. Between them, you can see there are some smaller business who were smart enough to use emojis to promote what they are selling.

If you’re a business owner who has just started, participating in a less competitive environment might be a great way to go. You just have to make use of the appropriate emojis to your advantage.

Appealing to a Younger Audience

We know that most people who use emojis are between 18 and 34 years of age. Therefore, incorporating emojis to target this demographic can hopefully make your brand relatable and bring it closer to them.

This approach is also one of the best and easiest ways to build trust with your audience.

The great news is, attracting younger age groups can really benefit your business because according to statistics, they account for 30% of online shoppers in the US.

Improve Your Local SEO

While emojis might not help you that much in an online store, they can be far more useful when you have a physical store.

For instance, Google wants to give the most relevant results to users, and one way to do it is to present them location-based information.

Therefore, having an emoji on your website that represents your business, like for a cafe or ? for a bar, will help you rank better when someone wants to look for that kind of place in Google.

Conclusion

You should never underestimate the power of emojis in SEO. They prove to be powerful and versatile tools to rank your site higher in search engines.

And to the people who haven’t incorporated emojis, here’s a quick overview of why you should use them in your SEO strategy.

• Emojis are now supported by Google.
• They increase the Click-Through Rate.
• Emojis help smaller brands shine.
• It appeals to younger audiences.
• It’s a chance to improve local SEO.

What are you waiting for? Grow your website with these cute little icons!

The post Emoji Phenomenon: a New Wave in SEO Ocean appeared first on Relevance.

In either case, you have a big chance of creating a viable content marketing business. The only problem is the competition – the market is pretty crowded already. Luckily, that doesn’t mean you should give up on your dreams. And if you follow the below tips, you stand a big chance of succeeding.

Find a Niche to Limit the Competition

What’s one of the easiest ways of avoiding the said competition? Finding a niche. Instead of going where everyone is and trying to sell your services to business owners who have already heard similar sales pitch tens of times, it’s better to create a unique value proposition that will be different from what others have to offer.

For example, you could focus on a specific topic – such as law or medical content. You could even dig deeper and focus just on civil law. Or you could go for sales content and charge for results. And if you don’t want to limit yourself to just one industry, think of offering a particular type of content – be it blog posts, sales pages, infographics or sales video scripts. Even though this might sound like you reduce the number of potential customers, it also means much lower competition – which makes getting started a lot easier.

Build a Website for Your Business

Once you have an idea for what you want to offer, it’s time to make your offer public. Since you will be creating online content, the best thing you can do here is building your own website, on which you will pitch your offer, present your portfolio, and even collect orders and payments.

The best is that you don’t need any coding skills or a huge budget to get started. All that’s required is a reliable shared hosting from a reputable company such as Hostinger which you can grab for just a few bucks, and WordPress (free – you can install it in the hosting control panel), which you will use as your content management system.

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Write a Blog – But Don’t Just Rehash Content

A significant benefit of having a website is the fact that you can write a blog. As a content marketer you most likely understand its importance, but it’s worth mentioning that B2B marketers who have a blog receive 67% more leads.

Considering that you will be offering your services to other businesses, not having a blog could lead to missing out on many business opportunities. One thing you should keep in mind though – instead of blatantly copying what others have written, add your own spin to it. You could enhance the content with your opinions, comments or show how particular ideas can be used in action.

Look for Long-Tail Keywords

What’s more, having a blog is a must if you’re thinking about SEO traffic. It is estimated that websites with a blog have 434% more index pages compared to those that don’t have one. Sounds pretty obvious – in the end, blogs usually have lots of posts.

The good news is, contrary to what many people believe, SEO is neither dead nor hard. But if you want to attract organic visitors soon, you should start with long tail, low competition keywords. Naturally, don’t forget about quality content.

Smart keyword research can help you do more than just write posts that rank quickly. If you are still stuck at finding a niche, even simple Google keyword planner can help you uncover what your potential customers are looking for. Once you find it, all you need to do is offer them exactly that.

Reach Out to Fellow Content Marketers

Of course, SEO doesn’t bring results overnight. It might take weeks or even months before you start attracting organic traffic. Luckily, there are other great ways of bringing new visitors. One of them is reaching out to your… competitors.

But we won’t be reaching just to any of the companies that are competing with you. Instead, you want to get in touch with those who offer complimentary services, or work in different niches. Ask them to exchange leads with you, should they get any work in your niche. You can even offer them to split the profits with them. In fact, you might need to do that if you don’t have any traffic – but such a mutual cooperation can be extremely beneficial for both parties.

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Look for a Mentor

Another reason why it’s worth reaching out to other content marketers is that one of them might become your mentor. Keep in mind that, no matter what you think right now, it’s very hard to build a sustainable company all on your own. Don’t worry – that doesn’t mean you should split ownership and invite others to run it with you.

Usually it’s enough to get in touch with someone who will share his personal experiences with you, help you overcome many obstacles, motivate you, and stop you from giving up or becoming complacent. In the end, a good mentor already been there and knows a lot about the things that are ahead of you.

Get Your Posts Published on Popular Industry Blogs

Coming back to your blog, unfortunately, the content that you publish on it is not enough – even if you start with low competition keywords, you might soon find it too hard to rank for any new phrases. But you most likely already know that – in the end, you are a content marketer ?.

Because of that, if you’re serious about attracting potential customers to your new business, you will need both quality backlinks, as well as referral traffic from other websites. The easiest way of achieving that is reaching out and publishing insightful posts on high-quality, respected industry blogs. The good news is, if you follow other points in this article, you shouldn’t have too many problems with convincing them to publish your work.

Build an Email List and Social Media Following

Google and Bing are not the only sources of potential customers. The truth is, you should never keep all your eggs in one basket. Instead, always diversify and look for multiple sources of traffic to your website. And when it comes to social media and email marketing, this diversification has multiple other benefits.

For example, if you start building your social media profiles and become active on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you will be able to network with people who are more experienced than you. This will give you a great opportunity to find a mentor. In fact, you don’t even need a fan page to do that. Instead, you could just look for one inside any of the many popular Facebook marketing groups.

And why is email marketing another recommended source of traffic? Remember that most people won’t contact you the first time they are on your website. But if you build a relationship with them, soon they might be more than happy to hand you their hard-earned dollars in exchange for your services.

A good relationship with your audience can be very rewarding – it’s no surprise that email marketing has an ROI (Return on Investment) of an astounding 3800%! This means that for every $1 invested in email marketing you can earn back as much as $38.

Moreover, if you play your cards right, you can become an authority for your own followers. They will respect and trust you and they might even recommend your company to their friends and colleagues, bringing you additional customers at no cost.

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Create a Brand and Position Yourself as an Expert

If you do all the things mentioned in this article, you stand a great chance of building a strong brand in the business and positioning yourself as an expert in the field. And, as you probably know, branding plays a huge role in the growth and sustainability of every business.

By having a brand your customers trust, instead of fighting for every penny you can focus on doing a good work. Businesses that have a following and a good reputation can charge higher fees. Which means that you will have more time to deliver top-quality products. Of course, don’t try to charge sky-high fees for mediocre results – otherwise, your word-of-mouth can become so bad none of the mentioned ideas will help you.

Never Stop Learning

Whatever you do, always keep improving your work and learning new stuff. No matter if you are doing all the work manually or you’re just managing people – there is always room for improvement. Keep in mind that no matter how small a niche you chose, there is always someone who will try to compete with you. But that’s a good thing – this means that there is a demand for your services. So, keep learning, networking and growing!

The post Step-By-Step Guide to Starting a Content Marketing Business appeared first on Relevance.