Web / Internet

5 Tips How to Choose Your Web Name

Choosing the right domain name for a website or blog is an essential step to success.  Your domain name is the identifier of your blog or site.  Be careful on choosing it. You want readers to find you among millions of other writers, and you want your web site to be on Google’s first page.
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Art of Choosing a Domain Name

Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.
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Use Your Author Name
Finding a domain name that’s easy to type, is critical to your online success.  For ambitious writers it is almost a “no-brain-er” to use their first and last name or pen name as a domain.  Exceptions: the fact that there is already an author with the same name or if the name is very common, and there might be another writer, who has already registered it.
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Don’t use .net or .org
It makes no sense to use .net or .org when .com is already taken. Most people automatically type in .com and would land at someone else’s website.  Having your website confused with a popular site already owned by someone else is nasty for your readers and looks unprofessional.
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Put Yourself into the Shoes of Your Readers.
The next best possibility would be the genre in which you are writing. Which search terms would you use to find a certain book? For example:  CrimeWriter or RomanceWriter, followed by your name / pen name.
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Keywords and Phrases.
Have five terms or phrases in mind that best describe the domain you are seeking.  Once you made this list, you can start to add prefixes & suffixes to create domain ideas.  For example, if you are launching your author domain, you might start with words like “author, writer, the genre etc.” then play around until you can find a good match.
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Plurals, “The”, and “My” Forms of the Domain Name:
If you can’t get the domain name you want, you could use forms like:
  • thewebsite.com
  • mywebsite.com
  • websites.com
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More Tips:
  • Make it Easy to Remember
  • Keep the Name as Short as Possible
  • Avoid Hyphens and Numbers
  • Avoid fancy names that do not reflect you or your books

In the modern Internet world, where people automatically turn to the Web for information, it pays to have a domain name that reflects your author site or publishing business.
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More Resources:

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/choose-right-website-domain-name-extension-var

http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/domainname.shtml

https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/5-tips-how-to-create-mobile-friendly-blogs-and-websites/

https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/07/20/the-magic-of-keywords-for-your-success/

https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/the-key-to-a-successful-author-website/

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

 

 

 

 


 

5 Tips to Make Your Website Faster

BlueBicycle

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How often do you abandon a page when it takes too long to load?  Chances are, that your visitors and readers are doing the same.  People expect a fast user experience these days when they go online, and when they don’t get it, they often switch to another web page.  
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The way we consume media has changed dramatically.  Most online searches are done by smart phones these days, and often while doing other chores.  Which means, no one has the time or patience to wait for a slow page to load.
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Page Speed is an Important Google Ranking Factor.
Google does consider site speed as important, and takes into account how quickly a page loads. It’s part of Google’s ranking algorithm for both desktop and mobile. Having a better-optimized page will help deliver better rankings. While fast load times won’t necessarily bring your website to a #1 ranking, they can give your site an advantage. If two sites have equal authority and relevance, Page Speed may be the deciding factor that pushes one site ahead of the other in the organic rankings.

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How You Can Test Your Website’s Speed for Free?
Here are just five of many possibilities, with a test / recommendation example of #1 below:

1. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

2. http://gtmetrix.com/

3. http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

4. http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

5. http://www.webpagetest.org/

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The following shows a recommendations example for a website. After each critical item, Google and other providers show “how to fix it” for both, mobile and desktop / laptop:

60 / 100 Speed for Mobile
Should Fix:
Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
Leverage browser caching
Optimize images

Consider Fixing:
Reduce server response time
Minify JavaScript
Minify CSS
Minify HTML
Enable compression

2 Passed Rules
92 / 100 User Experience
Consider Fixing:
Size tap targets appropriately
Size content to viewport

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There are Several Reasons for Slow Web Pages, the Most Common are:

  • Slow hosting service
  • Not optimized images (I am guilty of this : )
  • Plug-in overload (especially FB like-buttons)
  • External media, such as videos or slide shows
  • Flash content
  • Too many ads
  • Too large files
  • Extensive code

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How to Improve Your Website’s Speed?
Yahoo!’s Performance team has identified 34 rules that affect web page performance. Click on each of their performance rule page to see the details.  A fantastic resource for every web developer (and advanced blogger), and I highly recommend to go through all the details, especially the image improvement section.

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 The many benefits of improved page speed makes it very easy to justify the changes.  Take the time to analyze your page speed scores.  The faster a web page loads, the more satisfied your visitors will be.  Show your webmaster the results of these (free) tests for your website and let him / her fix it.   Get a better Search Engine ranking and more traffic!

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

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