Whether by accident or purposely not renewing domain names, owners will neglect to renew them if they are careless. 

Have you ever forgotten to renew a domain or lost ownership of domain names?

I can’t say that I have personally had the experience of losing ownership of a domain name due to inaccurate contact information or credit card information on file for the domain or outright theft.

However, I’ve read many stories where owners have committed the following errors:

• forgotten to update their contact information
• forgotten to update their credit card information for an expired credit card
• did not enable or set their domains to auto-renew
• turned off their renewal notification emails

You name it, and I’ve read or know someone who has experienced it at one point in the many years of owning and developing domain names into viable businesses.

I often receive an email inquiring about a lost domain name that an inquirer states they were the previous owner.

Let me start by making one thing clear: brandable or keyword .com domains can rank well in search engines.

There will always be pros and cons to using each type of .com domain name.

This week I received an email inquiring about whether or not it is “better” to build or develop a business website on a brandable domain or a keyword .com domain.

How the question was worded was more a focus on search engine optimization (SEO) than an overall focus on how their domain name should align with their business goal and objectives.

I could sense there was a strong desire to make money taking the “by any means necessary” approach.

There was more weight given to SEO to the point that they were ready to make a heavy investment to create thousands of optimized keyword domain websites around a certain niche.

What they were really asking me was, “Which, brandable domain or multiple keyword domains, can bring me the most traffic and, most importantly, money with the least amount of time, money, and effort invested?”

First, it was 1And1.com and their new domain name extensions commercials, and now GoDaddy has hopped into the mix promoting new domain name extensions.

I received an email notifying me that new domain name extensions are coming. It’ll be interesting to see how many small business owners and the general public understand Godaddy’s email in its most basic form.  

You will now have a chance to create a new domain name since the .com domain name you’ve always wanted is owned by someone asking an arm and leg for it or has it parked with funny colors and links on pages.  

So, for example, you will have the opportunity to own WomensClothing.shop, WomensClothing.online, WomensClothing.luxury, WomensClothing.blog, and WomensClothing.web since you can’t own WomensClothing.com.

As expressed in Godaddy’s email, the new domain name extensions will open a door of greater opportunity that never existed before. I think GoDaddy did a reasonably good job trying to simplify the tsunami of new gTLDs, or, as called by everyday people, new domain name extensions set to hit the domain market by the end of this year.

Exact match domains (EMD) is a difficult conversation to have for many website owners, developers and SEO professionals.

Each has their own isolated experiences of success and failure when using exact match domains, both pre and post Google EMD update.

If you don’t know about the Google EMD update, then I suggest you do a little reading on how Google released an exact match domains update.

In short, Google created a filter to remove low/poor quality websites using exact match domains from ranking in search engine results.

Because websites using exact match domains contained the keywords in the domains that users used when searching, they were easily ranked as authoritative websites in search results.

With the intro of the Google EMD update, many website owners and developers were hit hard in loss of rankings, traffic and revenue.

Others were penalized to the point of de-indexed in some cases for their websites using exact match domains, also known as keyword domains.

From sea to shining sea, you’ll read and hear mixed reviews when attempting to find a final resolve for whether you should or should not use exact match domains.

However, my hope is to help you thoroughly understand why and how exact match domains can be used effectively and ineffectively.

I had an interesting exchange the other day in regards to whether a client should invest in a website redesign or a domain name upgrade to increase website traffic.

We’ll focus on website redesigns for now with more on domain name upgrades to come. We’ll also address what both have to do with increasing website traffic.

Typically, most business owners that have been in business more than five minutes will tell you to invest your money in a new website redesign in an effort to increase website traffic and drive sales.

And for the right business owner and situation, I do believe this could be very sound advice.

Afterall, a website redesign with a focus on providing intuitive, sound user interface and experience can work wonders in resurrecting and increasing website traffic and search engine ranking when implemented and executed properly.

(Credit: Jason Cipriani/CNET)

I recently read an article, Apple drops .com button in iOS7, written by Andrew Alleman over at Domain Name Wire. 

A short read, Andrew talks about how his daughter was using the iPad with iOS7 and went to press the .com button, and it was nowhere to be found.

Puzzling if you ask me as I

In response to my latest post about the new release of generic top-level domains (gtlds) or domain extensions, there is a looming question of whether or not a company should defensively register new domain extensions.

After all, one does not want their competition to get a step ahead of them should the release of the new domain extensions prove to be a success.

From .web to .shop to .news to .cars and the list of new generic top-level domain extensions goes on counting up to approximately 1900 gtlds, there is sure to be a wide range of opportunities for companies to capitalize on.

But let me state that this post is in no way telling you to go out and defensively register the upcoming 1900 or so new domain extensions.

The short answer, in my humble opinion, is no one should defensively register new domain extensions today. Then again,