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The internet industry is one that cannot be taught or learned in a short amount of time. The fact is that most of the people that set out to make money online will fail, unless they already have a product that is popular in the offline market. Those that do succeed from scratch, usually follow a strict game plan and adhere to guidelines set forth by professionals. However, in the world of eCommerce unpredictability is king, and there are few factors that remain constant throughout the course of an internet business.

Factors such as traffic, search engine ranking, page rank, and even returns on investments can vary. Yet there is one part of an online business that will not change, and must be selected carefully upon registering the domain – the extension of the business site itself.

The Significance of a Commercial Domain

Commercial domains (.com sites) are by far the most common kind of websites online, and nearly everyone strives to obtain a .com site before resorting to other alternatives. When a site has the .com extension it immediately is recognized as a professional web presence based on social stigma alone, so it is not surprising to see that the most successful domain names are those that have the .com extension. However, very few people know that the term – .com actually refers to a commercial website, meaning that the site conducts business on a regular basis and was established and developed for commercial reasons. However a .com domain is no the only ideal option when shopping for eCommerce domain names, as there are two other domain extensions that hold authority on the web as well.

.Net Domains for eCommerce

The .net domain extension saw it’s highest point of popularity in the late 90’s and early 2000’s when Netscape was still a commonly used browser. However as people began referring to the internet as the web, and the .com craze began, the .net domains quickly faded in popularity and are now rarely seen. The .net extension is used to represent a network, and is commonly used in eCommerce sites that are parent companies to several corporations, such as software companies.

.Org

The .org domains have stayed consistent in their popularity levels and are still commonly used around the world today to represent organizations. The .org domain can be used to represent regular organizations and non-profit organizations. When used to represent profitable organizations these domains often perform at a lower standard than .com and .net domains, however they can still be used to open online shops that represent certain organizations.

.Biz?

Although the .biz domain extension was originally created to represent businesses, there are few people that actually use them for this purpose, as most people view such domains as unprofessional. The .biz domains do not rank well in the search engine and therefore are not he best decision for an online business owner. When searching for a domain name for your online business, ironically it may be best to steer clear of the .biz extension.

When it comes to search engine optimization backlinks are the name of the game. Backlinks are basically any links on the internet that point back to your website. The more links that point to your website, the more popular your site appears to be. The search engines can effectively index the amount of links that point to your website (backlinks) and use this statistic to calculate an accurate page rank for your site.

What is Page Rank?

Contrary to popular belief, a page rank is not the position in which a site ranks for a particular keyword in a search engine result page. Instead a page rank is a ranking from 0 to 10 assigned to each website by Google. Page rank is abbreviated as PR, and is a very important factor when considering the power of a site and it’s ability to rank highly for any keyword.

A site with a page rank of 0 is either new, or has been penalized and has the worst rank, while a site with a page rank of 10 is considered the most powerful website online. Virtually anything posted on a PR 10 website has a chance to rank number one in Google for the targeted keyword. The secret to getting a high page rank is to get backlinks from sites that have a high PR themselves.

Establishing High PR Pages

The best way to control your backlinks is to own the sites that they are published on. So of course, it would be ideal to own pages that have a high PR. However, it is not easy to build a website from scratch and push it to a high PR without making some sort of investment.  Luckily there are plenty of sites online that have high PR and that will let you set up your own pages on them for free. Social networks such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Reddit are primary examples. In many cases you may only have the privilege of setting up a profile page, and in other cases you may be able to create an entire blog. Since PR is a site-wide statistic, your profile page or blog would instantly assume the credibility and page rank of the site it is hosted on. Best of all, 99% of the time these blogs and profile pages are completely free.

Link Exchanges

Another way to get free backlinks from high PR sites is to engage in link exchanges. Link exchanges are simple yet effective, in that it is simply an agreement between two webmasters to post backlinks on each other’s sites. There are forums in which link exchanges are common practice, and it can also be done independently as well. For example, you could contact a site owner within your niche that has a high PR, and request that he post a link to your site on his site, in exchange for you doing the same for him. If you use the aforementioned method to gain control of several high PR blogs then you will have a decent incentive to offer the webmaster. This kind of win-win situation keeps the internet operating smoothly and is ultimately responsible for the success of many site owners.

Have you ever changed content on your website and looked back a few days later with the old information still being displayed? This is a common question when dealing with search engines that many new web owners ask. With search algorithms changing and different criteria for relevant content constantly changing, it can be difficult to understand the answer.

In short there are a few reasons why search engines will initially ignore a newly submitted website. These include:

• Time
• Lack of backlinks
• Search engine updates

Time

Time is the enemy of all businesses. In the case of websites this is no different. In most instances, it takes time (sometimes days) for the search engine of choice to index the site. Indexing the site is simply adding the website to the results of a search on a search engine.

Search engines like Google have crawlers that are essentially searching the internet for new websites and web pages. Due to the size of the internet, it often takes awhile for the crawler to find the site and add it to the results.

Lack of Backlinks

Another reason the website might not be indexed immediately is due to a lack of backlinks which are inbound links to a website. The higher the page rank (above six) and the quality of the related links, the better the position on a search engine. Those sites that do not have many or related links may not even be indexed by a search engine as the crawler will see it as an irrelevant website.

Search Engine Updates

The final reason can be attributed to search engine updates. In many instances the search engine is performing scheduled maintenance or upgrading their software which would result in a longer time to index. Often, sites are updated at off-peak hours so be cognizant to the timing of the submission of a site.

Solutions

There are a few ways to speed up the indexing process. For instance, by placing homepage links on social media sites like Twitter, this improves the page rank and quality of backlinks. Also, submitting to link exchanges will provide the same result. Additionally, its good practice to check the homepage’s cache to verify when it was last crawled. Finally, utilizing meta-tags in the website will help the crawler identify the website more quickly.

In most cases, time is the primary cause of slow indexing followed by a lack of backlinks, and then scheduled maintenance. Simply be patient and if the site doesn’t show up in the results after a week, contact the search engine and they should be able to provide adequate reasons.

Your site’s page ranking is how Google judges and displays your websites overall popularity. The better your page rank, the more search traffic you’ll receive, as your site will gain more exposure towards the top of Google. Your site’s page rank is displayed on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Every effort you put towards search engine optimization is primarily focusing on increasing your site’s position in the SERPs. One of the primary ways to get  a higher page rank in the SERPs is by building backlinks. Backlinks are like the backbones of any popular website. Backlinks are links on the internet that contain your site’s URL. The more links there are in existence, the more popular your site appears to be to Google.

Quick and Easy Vs Long and Hard

There are many ways to build backlinks for your site. A lot of people try to take the easy way out and use tools that will let them spam other sites in hopes of establishing backlinks. While it is possible to build many backlinks doing this, the backlinks will be relatively pointless, as not many real people are going to want to link to your site since you are spamming. Spamming is also bad for your website because Google and other search engines frown upon it severely. In fact it is possible to get indexed by spamming to advertise and build links to your website.  If you want to create a long lasting website that is going to bring you profit year in and year out, then you may want to consider building your link empire legitimately.

Networking and Content

Perhaps the most legitimate and fundamental methods of building backlinks is by simply providing your visitors with interesting content that they would want to share. If the content is interesting enough, then they will automatically link to it on their blog. People will also link to your site on social bookmarking sites, ad posting sites and anywhere else where links can be posted. You can even place social bookmarking utilities on your site that will make it easier for your visitors to recommend your site to their friends on various networks including Myspace and Facebook

Advertising

Yet another obvious way to get more links to your site is through basic advertising. You can use a plethora of ads such as PPC campaigns and other basic advertising methods to drive traffic to your site initially. Once you’ve found an effective keyword to bid on, you can scale up your efforts and begin creating multiple websites. The beauty of owning multiple websites is that you can link to your own websites, creating even more backlink opportunities and an overall better SERP ranking.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that the quality of backlinks is every bit as important as the quantity. Having only 10 backlinks that originate from authoritative sites within your niche, can mean a lot more than having 100 irrelevant backlinks from unrelated websites.

Search engine optimization can be a very complex process that requires a lot of skill and determination, especially if you’re trying to dominate a very competitive niche. Most search engine optimization experts use a variety of tools to bring their sites to the top of the search engines as quickly as possible. Most people do not have access to these tools however, and have to use other more manual methods to accomplish the same tasks.

For this reason, it can be very difficult to compete with the SEO pros in a competitive niche, and often times the only way to do so is to hire one of them to do it for you. Unfortunately, this is not going to put you at the top of the search engines, in fact you’re likely to have your idea stolen by someone who is more capable of monetizing the niche than you are. There are ways you can get good search engine rankings the old fashioned way though, however you’ll need to be sure are doing it the right way.

Building Backlinks Organically

Building backlinks has long been known as the best way to enhance the popularity and overall search engine optimization of your website. If your site has a lot of backlinks online, then more people will be exposed to your website. As more people are exposed to your site, more people will indefinitely link back to your site if the content is good. This creates a type of cascade effect and before you know it you’ll have hundreds, maybe even thousands of backlinks online within several months.

These backlinks are indexed by the search engines, and ultimately will raise your page rank. Building backlinks manually is a very easy, yet time consuming process that requires a lot of attention. You can choose to post backlinks to web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and Hub pages, and you can also have your backlink put on other websites based on the owner’s permission.

Building a Link Network the Right Way

One way to get guaranteed backlinks to your site, while also building a traffic network that is to your benefit, is by making a link network. A link network is network of sites that link to each other and are all owned by the same person. You can buy .info domains and you could even use free domains as mentioned. However, it is very important that you make sure all of the sites you are using are on different IP addresses. If Google finds out your sites are all on the same IP address, then you run the risk of having all of your sites completely de-indexed from Google. If you are de-indexed from Google, then you will experience a huge decline in the amount of traffic your site receives. So how do you get each of your sites on a different IP address to create a safe link network?

Using SEO Hosting To Get IP Addresses

One way you can have all of your sites on different IP addresses is by purchasing a new IP address from your hosting company. If your hosting company does not offer them, then you can use SEO Hosting, which is a division of Host Gator.