Lets start by giving the Traffic Snowball a name.

The starting point with every website is the domain name and now there is a wider choice than ever with the introduction of NEW domains (.info & .biz)

So what is the difference and which do you choose?

Basically, for the moment .com still rules. If you are not using “.com” address, then you are losing your hard earned visitors. Everyone remembers “.com” before “.net “, it’s that simple. Even most web browsers, if the extension is not entered, will default to “.com”.

A credible and serious business must have its own domain name that is relevant and appropriate to the nature of the business. For example let say the business is “Johns Widget Store” A first and natural choice choice would be johnswidgets.com.

However, you do not need to register ONLY one domain name. You can register as many as you want and point them to the same web content (we’ll come back to this point later)

For example, you can LOAD the domain name with “keywords” which are relevant to the nature of the website.

By registering “KEYWORD RICH” domain names you are going to help skyrocket your search engine rankings! (That’s right just by using keyword saturated domain names you can drastically improve your search engine rankings… really it’s that easy!)

“Keyword Phrases” are now a HOT opportunity… a catch phrase alone can generate a giant source of traffic to your website.

Why? - Because it is catchy!

Not only are these phrases catchy but they can also boost your search engine rankings. Search engines love url’s that are saturated with keywords!

So, think of all the keywords and keyphrases for your product/service/website and put them in your URL.

Load the domain name with your best keywords to get ranked higher in the search engines. Then have it redirect to your main site or use it as a “doorway” page (as we talk about later in the article) to get a much higher ranking in the search engines to forward traffic to you.

Here are example URL’s that will pull great in the search engines ……

www.computer-discount-software-store.com, www.computerdiscountsoftwarestore.com

Notice that I gave the above example with hyphens and without hyphens… it is a little known fact that search engines prefer URL’s with hyphens and visitor prefer them without so make sure you register both!

Also there are the country code domains. For example a url ending in .co.uk would be a first choice for businesses operating in the UK.

As general rule of thumb it would be wise to buy both the .com and the country domain to start. There are only a few companies that are registering the 67 character domain names, and even fewer that are reliable companies. When you come to register your domains (s), you should consider using a domain registration service with at least the following facilities:

- Real-time modification of web forwarding
- Real time modification of url masking

Its important that if you are going to register a few domains for the purpose of creating doorways to your main site that you have the ability to forward the domain using an interface and you are able to modify this at any time in real time.

Some companies provide the forwarding free of charge and may also include a masking service which would be useful for keeping the new domain name visible in the browser whilst serving content from the redirected domain name. URL masking could be used for a variety of purposes but its important that there is a facility to add META tags to the masked domain name.

A domain service that provides URL masking with meta tags would be preferable than using one that provides only standard redirection as the masked domain will be more sensitive to search engines.