“URL Redirects”
So like I said, the third advantage to owning your own domain name is that you can use
what is called a “URL redirect”, or “domain forwarding.”
This simply means that you can instruct the company that is hosting your domain name
to “redirect” all traffic coming to your domain (A), to site (B).
This is like telling the post office to forward all of your mail to a new address because you
just moved to a new home.
Let’s go through a quick example and say that I have an affiliate product I want to
promote.
Instead of sending out this link:
http://www.shoppingcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=586781,
I would instruct my hosting company to take all traffic coming to my domain name:
www.idealtrends.com, and have them redirected to
http://www.shoppingcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=586781
This means, that instead of using
http://www.shoppingcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=586781 in my ads, in my emails,
and on the phone, all I have to do is use www.idealtrends.com.
Anyone who types in www.idealtrends.com will automatically be redirected to that long
affiliate link.
“URL Masking”
Masking is a very useful feature when setting up a re-direct.
Essentially, it will “mask” or hide, the destination web address in your browser window,
and keep your original domain in its place. It’s a little hard for me to explain, so let me
show you instead.
I’m going to set up a redirect for this address: www.live5star.com. It’s going to forward
anyone who goes to that website straight to my replicated site:
www.magnetic.magneticsponsoringonline.com
What I want you to notice is that the new replicated site address is now visible at the top
of my browser window:
Now I’ll log back into GoDaddy.com and select the “Masking” option in the Domain
Forwarding menu.
What this masking does, is “hide” the destination web address from the surfer. Instead, it
will keep the original domain address in its place. (This is easier to show you than to
describe).
When I set up my masking option in Godaddy.com I told the system to use
www.Live5Star.com as the title. This means that www.Live5Star.com will now appear in
the address bar at the top of my visitor’s browser instead of
www.magnetic.magneticsponsoringonline.com
Now that masking has been put in place, let’s try it out. I’m going to type
www.Live5Star.com into my browser.
It’s going to redirect me to www.magnetic.magneticsponsoringonline.com, but as you’ll
notice in the graphic below, my browser still says www.Live5Star.com in the address bar.
CAUTION!: DO NOT USE MASKING ON AFFILIATE LINKS.
MASKING with throw off the tracking system used by affiliate links and it will cause you
to lose up to 50% of your sales!
Use Re-directs ONLY.
Chapter 2:
Choosing a Domain Name
Ok, it’s time to get this process started, so let’s take a look at some of the considerations
you’re going to need to make as we move forward.
Personally, I use www.GoDaddy.com for registration and hosting. Their prices are some
of the best in the industry. You can pick up a “.com” name for $9.00 a year, and hosting
for less than $4.00/mo, but best of all, their 24/7 phone support is excellent.
If you’re not a very tech savvy person, then this free phone support will definitely come
in handy the first time you go through this process and set up a re-direct.
Mike’s Domain Registration Rules:
Rule #1: Keep it Simple.
You want to find a domain name that is:
1: Easy to say.
2: Easy to spell.
3: Easy to remember.
This is not optional. If you can’t find an address that fits all three of these qualifications,
keep looking.
If you’re giving your website address to someone over the phone or to a group on a
conference call, there can be no room for misinterpretation or spelling errors which
means you need to follow the next piece of advice…
Rule #2: Register Plural and Hyphenated Versions.
You want to register all plural and hyphened versions of your domain name of choice in
order to capture anyone who might misspell the name, and to protect yourself from
competition who will intentionally register any domains similar to yours.
Now this isn’t going to matter much if you’re just a tiny fish in the big internet pond and
you’re aren’t promoting yourself in a massive way, but if you ever start to brand yourself
and that domain name, then you need to follow these suggestions.
I recently started a project on creating lead generating capture pages, so the very first
thing I did was register several possible domain names for it.
Following my own advice, I registered www.mlmcapturepage.com and
www.mlmcapturepages.com. I also registered www.mlm-capture-page, and www.mlmcapture-
pages.com. (The hyphened and plural versions of each name).
Not only do you want to do this so you don’t lose any unnecessary traffic, but to protect
yourself from competition. Do not leave a door wide open for a competitor to leech
visitors and customers through a similar domain name.
You can bet that if I hadn’t registered www.Magnetic-Sponsoring.com right after
registering www.MagneticSponsoring.com – I’d have a cyber-squatter sitting on a very
valuable piece of internet real-estate… (And he’d probably have a law-suit on his hands).
Always remember that entrepreneurs are opportunistic people by nature.
Just do it right the first time and you won’t have to worry about any of these issues.
Rule #3: Use The Top “Key Words” In The Domain Itself.
(But not every time. I’ll explain why in Rule #5).
Search engines give high relevance to sites with top key words in the domain name itself,
and a higher relevance for .com names over any of the other extensions like .net .biz . org
or .info.
So how do you find the right key words to use?
Head to www.overture.com. Go to the Resources page for current advertisers, and click
on the link for Key Word Selector Tool.
Type in a common search term for your category or product or service.
Example: If I type “capture pages”, it brings back the following results:
The top result is “lead capture pages”, so I would want to try and register something with
the words “lead” and “capture”, right in the domain name itself.
… Kind of like www.MLMCapturePages.com or www.EasyCapturePages.com
NOTE: If the .com version of your preferred domain is unavailable, choose another. You
want to have the .com address, because that is what your visitors will automatically type
in when going by memory.
And if they don’t, many will type it in just out of curiosity, and if it is owned by a
competitor, you’re in trouble.
Rule #4: Pay Attention To Phonics.
Try not to use numbers unless you can purchase both the numerical and alphabetical
names.
If you were on a conference call and you told the listeners to, “head to www dot live five
star dot com”, they wouldn’t know whether or not to go to www.Live5Star.com or
www.LiveFiveStar.com!
If you’re going to buy www.EZcapturepages.com, you had better own
www.EasyCapturepages.com as well.
If you can find a domain name with both listings available, then go for it.
Rule #5: Register a “generic” domain name that can be used to promote
anything now and in the future.
The very first domain name I purchased was www.IdealTrends.com because I could use
that domain to promote any kind of business or product I would ever want to.
www.GetMLMResults.com, www.InstantMLMProfits, and www.MLMSurgery are three
more great example of domains that have a lot of built in flexibility.
Choosing a generic domain name can be very important when generating leads if you are
a network marketer. 99% of the time, you do NOT want to have the name of your
company or product in the domain name because you capture page is NOT going to be
promoting your company, but we’ll get into that in more detail in another chapter.
So if your company is Amway, then you do not want to register a name like
www.AmwayRocks.com, to use for your capture page.
You’ll notice that my two primary email addresses are mike@idealtrends.com and
mike@getmlmresults.com.
You can type both domain names into your browser (www.idealtrends.com and
www.getmlmresults.com), and you’ll notice that NEITHER of these sites contain
information about my opportunity.
Why?
Because I want to keep control of what my prospects see and when. I want to keep&l
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