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| Internet |
 Getting Online - Forwarding: An Online Sales tactic -
Part 3 of 6By Tanis Arcuri - Arvis Search Services Inc. This is the middle of the road for my six part series on Internet for you and your business. However, there is more to be said than I could ever fit into these articles. It is a little heartbreaking that I won’t be able to fully introduce you to all that is to be known about the basics of online life. Ideally, because of the last two articles (visit ‘archives’ at www.risingwomen.com), the process of getting your business online is starting to seem a little easier. The next three articles will demystify online sales and sales tactics. You know that a domain registrar supplies you with your domain name, a web host supplies you with a place to put your web site up onto the Internet, a web designer builds your web site, and you know the difference between a .ca and a .com domain name extension. If you have not decided between a .com and a .ca domain name extension, then the Internet buzzword I left you with in my last article will be of great interest to you. Why settle for only one domain name when you can register multiple domain names with multiple domain name extensions, and still only build one web site? URL forwarding redirects multiple domain name registrations back to your one primary domain name. It is a service that can only be provided by your web hosting company. There are three popular reasons for URL forwarding. The first reason why forwarding is popular is because you protect your business by registering all your applicable domain names and extensions so that another company cannot use them. Secondly, you have the added professionalism of using your own domain name if your web site is hosted on a free web host system. Thirdly, you also have more domain names to register with the search engines, allowing you greater possible traffic to your web site. By registering different domain name variations and extensions, you avoid another business coming online and potentially using one of those similar domain names. For example, don’t just register risingwomen.com, register rising-women.com, risingwoman.com, risingwomen.ca, etc. The forwarding gives you the chance to actively use these additional domains on the Internet to generate sales by redirecting back to your primary site, thus recovering some of the additional registration costs. When you have your site hosted with a free web host, it can be difficult for your customers to remember your long web site address. For example, these addresses can use a multitude of lengthy characters such as www.1234abcd.freewebhostname.com. With the forwarding, your customer would type your user-friendly domain, www.yourdomain.com, and be automatically directed back to your free web host site address, thereby making it easier for your customers to purchase from you. In addition, www.yourdomain.com looks more professional on business cards and email signatures than your free web host site address. Now, all your customers need to remember is www.yourdomain.com. URL forwarding in its simplest form is just a ‘trick to receive favourable outcomes on the Internet through multiple search engine submissions. The ‘trick’ to forwarding is that you now submit all your registered domain names with the major search engines instead of just your one primary domain name. Then you sit back and reap the benefits of the additional web site hits. Some of these search engine submission ‘tricks’ are frowned upon and are considered SPAM. Thankfully, forwarding is rather accepted in the different Internet corners. The last point to remember is that all your efforts are needed online in order to make a sale. Long gone are the days of the Internet being a place solely for information. It needs to be used as a sales tool, and you need to be able to make that sale. Therefore, in the next three articles, I will try and shed a little light on the overwhelming E-Commerce industry; what services do you need, where can you go, and how much should you expect to pay. We will discuss how you can make E-Commerce work for you. Tanis Arcuri is the marketing director of Arvic Search Services Inc., which helps individuals & small businesses get online & stay online through domain registration and e-commerce capabilities. Reach Tanis at tanis@arvic.com , or look at their services at www.arvic.com |