ChaseSagum.com » Domain Names http://chasesagum.com An Open Source Way of Life! Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:13:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=8664 6 Reasons to Use NameCheap Instead of GoDaddy http://chasesagum.com/6-reasons-to-use-name-cheap-instead-of-go-daddy http://chasesagum.com/6-reasons-to-use-name-cheap-instead-of-go-daddy#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:14:16 +0000 Chase http://chasesagum.com/?p=1620

I’ve used Go Daddy as my domain registrar for years. This was mostly due to the fact that I knew of nothing else. It wasn’t until I learned about other Domain Registrars and the benefits of each did I start to realize how much I was missing out by sticking with Go Daddy.

After searching out many Domain Registrars, I have come to the conclusion that Name Cheap is the best choice for me and I have chosen to do my entire domain purchasing through them. My reason behind choosing Name Cheap really came down to 6 specific things that I want to bring to your attention here.

1. The Price – $9.69 per domain

Other than some small special discount from Go Daddy, you’ll usually spend about $10.81 per year for each of your .com, .net, and .org purchases. I chose to go with Name Cheap because I was planning on purchasing dozens of domains. This savings has made a huge difference for me and my domain budget.

2. Free Privacy Whois on all Domains

This honestly had the biggest influence on me choosing Name Cheap over Go Daddy. With Go Daddy you are spending an additional $8 or so per year to have Whois Privacy per domain. That’s roughly the cost of another domain. Name Cheap gives you privacy for free on every single domain you purchase. That’s a huge money saver!

3. Simpler User Interface

I’m not sure about you, but navigating my way through my Go Daddy account is a freakin’ nightmare. I hate it! It’s slow. Takes to many clicks to get to things I need. And it’s way too busy with advertisements and up sells. In contrast Name Cheap has a very simple interface. Search domains, buy domains, manage your domains. It really all comes down to those 3 things in the Name Cheap interface which makes it super easy and efficient to use.

4. No Go Daddy Annoying Up sells

Okay so this is probably the most frustrating aspect of being a Go Daddy customer. Wouldn’t you agree? Whenever you try to purchase a domain you are immediately flooded with up sells. “Buy this domain!” “Get this hosting package with your domain.” And it’s not just that they up sell you! Oh no. They try to trick you into making additional purchases that you have no interest in making. It’s ridiculous to say the least.

5. Better Customer Service Response

Not sure what to really expound upon here. When I need help with something specific within my account it takes forever to get help from someone at Go Daddy. The Name Cheap team has been super helpful. This is probably due to the fact that Go Daddy is a giant behemoth and Name Cheap is a little smaller and can thus pay more attention to its customers

6. .CM TLD’s Available for Purchase

I’ve always wanted to purchase .CM domains but never could through Go Daddy. Name Cheap is an approved registrar for this TLD and as a result you can search for and purchase .CM domains of your choice. They are a little more expensive, roughly $100 per domain. But these can be a big part of your domain strategy on the web.

A Few More Notes on Managing Domains

I like to keep my Domain Registrar (place where I purchase and manage my domain portfolio) and my web hosting separate. Call me finicky. But I have found it best through experience that those two things stay separate as much as possible. That way if something goes wrong with a web hosting provider, I still have all my domains intact and in good shape with my Registrar.

Also, I wrote a while back a post titled “How to Best Find New Available Domain Names” to help you research out and purchase high quality new domain names. I hope that helps. Quit wasting time with Go Daddy! Get your Name Cheap account here.

]]> http://chasesagum.com/6-reasons-to-use-name-cheap-instead-of-go-daddy/feed 19 2 Free Tools for Batch HTTP Header Checks http://chasesagum.com/2-free-tools-for-batch-http-header-checks http://chasesagum.com/2-free-tools-for-batch-http-header-checks#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:52:49 +0000 Chase http://chasesagum.com/?p=1431

There are two free tools I like to use for checking HTTP headers on multiple domains. Ironically enough it took me nearly 3 months before I could finally find these tools. When it came down to it, I was searching for the wrong information with the wrong search query in Google. I kept searching for “301 redirect checker multiple domains” and variations of it and couldn’t find what I was looking for.

Then with one of those “ahhaaa” moments I decided to use the word “batch” in my search query and boom. I found the tools I was looking for. Here are the two free tools for checking HTTP headers on websites/domains, and for doing it with multiple domains at the same time.

1. SEO Book Server Header Checker

URL = http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker

2. SEOConsultants.com Check Server Headers Tool

URL = http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers-batch

Why Would You Need A Free Server Header Checker?

There are many reasons behind why you would need a tool like this. The basic idea with these tools is for you to be able to verify HTTP status codes for certain domains. The biggest reason you would use these tools is for checking the Redirect Type and ensuring the redirect is working properly. This is a huge SEO thing that SEO professionals check to ensure that 301 redirects, 302 redirects, and many others are not only working properly, but are registering properly in the HTTP headers.

You may find many other purposes for these 2 tools. Both essentially do the same. But I thought I would point you to both resources in case you prefer one above the other. Enjoy!

Also: if any of you know of a windows/mac/linux desktop application that can do this on a bulk/batch level I would be interested to know about it.

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]]> http://chasesagum.com/2-free-tools-for-batch-http-header-checks/feed 1 Does Google See Your Domain’s Private Registration Data? http://chasesagum.com/does-google-see-your-domain%e2%80%99s-private-registration-data http://chasesagum.com/does-google-see-your-domain%e2%80%99s-private-registration-data#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:37:51 +0000 Chase http://chasesagum.com/?p=1322

An interesting SEO related question here. Can Google actually see your data hidden behind a private registration? In other words, if you purchased a domain and paid for “Privacy” services to protect your personal information, does Google have the ability to still see that information? After quite a few hours of research, I’ve gathered together some helpful information to shed some light on the subject.

First let’s look at why you would want your WHOIS data Private. Typically it’s because you don’t want your Name, Address, Email, and Phone number to be visible to the public. But from an SEO perspective, SEO experts don’t want Google to know that all of their domain names are owned by the same person. Is this a Black Hat SEO tactic? Not really. Especially considering the fact that many people run legitimate content heavy websites (more than 1) and deserve the SEO strength that they get by linking the domains to each other. So let’s look at the information that we do know.

Google Has Become its Own Domain Registrar

In this blog post from TechCrunch we learn that Google has become its own licensed Domain Registrar. TechCrunch also brings up that Google is in some level of partnership with registrar powerhouses GoDaddy and eNom. This partnership is most likely via a reseller program with GoDaddy and eNom. This all took place back in 2006.

Google as a Registrar Has Access to the WHOIS API

Ross Rader who is the Director of Innovation and Research for Tucows webhosting, which is actually a domain name powerhouse in the industry, said that “Registrars only have access to the data they collect. There is no master list.” This is why Google eventually decided to become an Accredited Icann Domain Registrar so that they could access this information using the WHOIS API that is given to Registrars. This API allows for unlimited queries to public WHOIS information. An obvious move for someone like Google who needs that data for hundreds of millions of domains.

ICANN Says Whois Data Must Be Used for Resolving Issues Only

According to Icann policy, the rules and purpose of WHOIS data for a registered domain name is as follows. “The purpose of the gTLD Whois service is to provide information sufficient to contact a responsible party for a particular gTLD domain name who can resolve, or reliably pass on data to a party who can resolve, issues related to the configuration of the records associated with the domain name within a DNS nameserver.”

Basically put, this WHOIS information can only legally be used to help troubleshoot a problem that is associated with that domain name. Using this data to give certain ranking within search results would be way outside of the boundaries of this policy.

Matt Cutts Says Domain Name Age Is Not That Important

Another interesting article regarding Domain Registration and Google. This one is from Searchengineland.com and talks about the issue of Domain Name Age and Google’s Algorithm. Surprisingly Matt Cutts says that domain age is really not that important with what they do at Google, and it’s of course more about quality of content on your site. In this post you learn about a “Historical Data” patent that Google has in order to look at historical data for a domain. So even though Google can see this data in a WHOIS record, apparently they don’t find it all that important!

Google Cannot See What’s Behind a Private WHOIS Record

As mentioned earlier, Registrars only have access to the data they themselves collect. Unless of course that data is made public. Like a public WHOIS record. Here’s an article written on SearchEngineOptimizationJournal.com that brings up an interesting problem. The fact that Google could actually devalue a website’s ranking if its Whois data is made private. Basically implying that Google cannot see this data, and devalues the site because of a lack of openness or reputation.

Conclusion

To protect yourself from Google or anyone else from seeing your private registration information on your domain name, all you would have to do is Privacy Protect your domain name, as it shields Google as well as everyone else from this data. If you do this, all Google can see is…

  • Name of the Registrar (eg. GoDaddy)
  • Creation Date
  • Expiry Date
  • Nameservers

As mentioned earlier, it is possible that Google could see a Private WHOIS as a red flag and dock it some points so to speak. This is theory of course and has not been confirmed or highly tested. Even if it did hurt you, it’s still worth hiding your private information from the public.

Is There A Master List of Private WHOIS Information?

It makes sense then why Google became its own licensed Registrar in order to collect this public whois data on their end. Based on my research it’s highly unlikely that there is a “Master List” of private whois information that is being shared amongst Registrars. If there were, Google could have just built a private relationship with a big Registrar such as GoDaddy or eNom (who they already have a partnership with) and gather this private data from them, rather than going through all the trouble of becoming a Registrar.

All this information combined together, and you do have the possibility of Google gathering private whois data and applying it to their search algorithm. But this would have to take place as an official domain registrar (which they currently are) and the domain would have to be either purchased or transferred under them.

Therefore, the best way to prevent your whois data from having any effect on your SERP’s with Google is to purchase Privacy WHOIS services for your domains. This will keep Google away from your data, and the ranking of your site will be solely on the quality of your site.

A Few More Tips

Focus on good quality content on all your domains. Don’t be a spammer! Start spamming through your domains and it will be only a matter of time before Google, even through Private WHOIS information, catches on to what you are doing. But if you create good quality content that actually helps people, and you don’t link all of your domains together in a pattern, you can begin to create a nice little Multiple Domain Strategy on the web.

Another great article on this subject is here.

]]> http://chasesagum.com/does-google-see-your-domain%e2%80%99s-private-registration-data/feed 1 How to Best Find New Available Domain Names http://chasesagum.com/how-to-best-find-new-available-domain-names http://chasesagum.com/how-to-best-find-new-available-domain-names#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:04:00 +0000 Chase http://chasesagum.com/?p=1316

If you are an Internet Marketer of any kind, chances are you are purchasing new domain names from time to time. In this article I am going to quickly show you the process I use to find new domain names to purchase. While there are many benefits to purchasing expiring or auctioned domains, I have always preferred purchasing brand new domains because of their price. The price is always consistent. You know you are going to spend $10 or so through GoDaddy or your preferred registrar.

So here is the process I use to locate the best possible domain names that are available in any industry/niche that I am working with. I hope this process helps you as it has me.

Step 1 – Using the Google Keyword External Tool, do a query using a competitive term in your niche. Hopefully you have already done quite a bit of keyword research in your niche before getting this far.

Step 2 – Using the “Exact Match” metric, we now have a list of key phrases related to your keyword or phrase, with exact keyword data from Google. Remember, you want to make sure to change the drop-down under Match Type from “Broad” to “Exact”. This will give you real traffic estimates to work with.

Step 3 – Take these key phrases one by one and run a search on Instantdomainsearch.com to check it’s availability with .com, .net, and .org in that order. I prefer using Instantdomainsearch.com because it uses some Ajax to display the availability in real-time as I am typing. Pretty cool free tool I must say!

Step 4 – Continue this process with all the competitive key phrases in order to get a full list from Google. After doing this you now have an optimized list of brand new domains to purchase that are directly related to key phrases in Google that show traffic data. Make sense?

Step 5 – These domains now are entered into a Domain Strategy Calculator to prioritize the order in which you would purchase these domains and to calculate the profitability of each of these domains. What is your Domain Strategy Calculator? It’s basically a way for you to rank domains to know which ones to purchase first. More on this in  next post.

The Benefits of this New Domain Strategy

  • Cost-Efficient. Because these are brand new, never been registered domains, you are able to purchase them directly from the Domain Registrar (eg. GoDaddy). This means that each domain is between $8 and $10. Sometimes even cheaper depending on your relationship with a Registrar.
  • Casting a wider net. Because of the price of these domains, you are able to cast a much wider net of domains across the web. Covering various different market types and keyword strategies.
  • Long-tail Domains. This strategy promotes the finding of domains that attract long-tail traffic more than any other domain strategy. This is due to the fact that these domains contain longer key phrases, typically 3-4 words as opposed to 1-2.

The Downfalls of the New Domain Strategy

  • Research is more time consuming. Because of the competition in the Domain Purchasing industry, it can be difficult to find domains that match with key phrase traffic in Google. It’s a sifting process through thousands of different key phrases and concepts.
  • No proven traffic. As opposed to older domains that have a proven track record with analytics data, new domains have no data and no shown traffic. They also have no SEO value existing on the web. Not to mention the fact that Google has tended to give higher value to older domains.

Conclusion

Rather than purchasing 1 effective domain in your niche for say $1,000, you can instead purchase by a hundred domains for the same price that all individually can have the same effect in your online marketing efforts. This is the strategy that I have chosen and it has worked well for me. I hope it works well for you as well.

]]> http://chasesagum.com/how-to-best-find-new-available-domain-names/feed 2 Top 7 Free Tools For Finding Domain Names http://chasesagum.com/top-7-free-tools-for-finding-domain-names http://chasesagum.com/top-7-free-tools-for-finding-domain-names#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:34:35 +0000 Chase http://chasesagum.com/?p=1303

1.InstantDomainSearch.com

This tool can only check one domain name at a time but it checks .com, .net, and .org simultaneously using an Ajax type interface. This makes the searching real-time as you are typing. You can also encrypt your searches through their SSL so that you know nobody is spying on your searches.

http://instantdomainsearch.com/

2.BustaName.com

This free tool generates available domain names based off a list of words that you provide. The more words you add the more results are given. You can hyphens, suffix, prefix, and a variety of different TLD’s. This is probably the best free tool I have seen that can generate domain names for you on the web. I highly recommend this tool for all looking to purchase new domain names.

http://www.bustaname.com/

3.Domai.nr

This free web tool allows you to find creative domains using a variety of different TLD options. The tool is much like Instantdomainsearch.com in that it loads the domain availabilities as you are typing. Use this tool if you are trying to find more clever domain names that don’t usually involve the typical .com, .net, or .org.

http://domai.nr/

4.Dotomator.com

If you are in desperate need of getting creative and finding an available .com domain, this tool is right for you. It’s easy to use interface helps you combine words and think of words for you to combine. Combining a tool like this with another tool like Bustaname.com, you can very creative with your domain possibilities and find the right domain for you.

http://www.dotomator.com/

5.Domize.com

Another tool much like InstantDomainSearch.com, only you can add results for other TLD’s including .biz, .info, .us, and .mobi. Searches are done through an SSL so that your searches are private. Domize also has an iPhone app so you can search for your domains while you are away from your computer. Very nice!

http://domize.com/

6.Domainsbot.com

This tool has advanced search options that allow you to find extra ideas for domains. In the advanced options you can include hyphens, numbers, as well as a few others. What’s really cool is that you can specify the amount of keywords in the domain as well as the max domain length to prevent from seeing too long of domains. Very cool!

http://www.domainsbot.com/

7.DomainTools.com

This site has several useful tools for finding and registering new domain names. First there is a Typo Generator that is pretty self-explanatory; it generates new domain name ideas based off typos of keywords you enter. There is also a generic domain search tool that gives you a list of available domain names related to your original query. All in all, Domaintools.com is a good place to locate some new domains.

http://www.domaintools.com/

]]> http://chasesagum.com/top-7-free-tools-for-finding-domain-names/feed 0 Special Dreamhost Promo Code for my Readers! http://chasesagum.com/special-dreamhost-promo-code-for-my-readers http://chasesagum.com/special-dreamhost-promo-code-for-my-readers#comments Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:20:41 +0000 Chase http://chasesagum.com/?p=866

I have a special promo code for all my readers for Dreamhost webhosting! Basically if you sign up for a Dreamhost account and use the code CHASESAGUMDREAM you end up getting 2 free domain names with your account! Not a bad deal!

Dreamhost is a solid reputable shared webhosting provider with thousands of trusted customers. If you want to learn more about what they provide click on the links above to learn more.

]]> http://chasesagum.com/special-dreamhost-promo-code-for-my-readers/feed 0 Domains are only $1.99 with Yahoo right now! http://chasesagum.com/domains-are-only-199-with-yahoo-right-now http://chasesagum.com/domains-are-only-199-with-yahoo-right-now#comments Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:17:32 +0000 Chase http://chasesagum.com/domains-are-only-199-with-yahoo-right-now

Yahoo Small Business is currently selling domain names for only $1.99 right now. I’m not sure how long this is going to last, and it is also for new customers only! Of course the way around that is you could create a new account if you needed to. The $1.99 price counts for only the first year, and it’s $12.95/year after that. I’m using this as an opportunity to purchase any domain names that I want to test out, and if they don’t work out for me i’ll just bag them after the first year!

The way I located this discount was by first doing a Google search for ‘Yahoo Domains’. Then you click on the PPC ad on the top of the listing, not the organic listing. The PPC listing redirects you to a special landing page where you can get the $1.99 discount! As i’m writing this i’m realizing that this only will work for your first domain name! But anyhow, it will save you some cash for a .com and you can get a domain name for something you want to try out. In my case, i’m creating a new affiliate website that I wanted to test out the market on first. So if it doesn’t work out for me, i’ll just bag it when my 1 year is up.

]]> http://chasesagum.com/domains-are-only-199-with-yahoo-right-now/feed 0 Find a Domain Really Fast http://chasesagum.com/find-a-domain-really-fast http://chasesagum.com/find-a-domain-really-fast#comments Sun, 11 Nov 2007 00:41:18 +0000 Chase http://chasesagum.com/find-a-domain-really-fast

DomainScourWant to find an available domain name really fast? Every time I uses Godaddy it takes me forever to search their database for an available domain name. DomainScour is a new tool that quickly helps you find what domain names are available. I have found this to be a very helpful tool for me. Call me impatient, but I don’t have time to wait 20 seconds every time I request to see if a name is available. DomainScour will save you and me much time when looking for a new domain.

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