When entering into the domain industry with great hopes, wishes, and dreams of striking it rich as a domain investor, most domain investors would ever imagine having to mortgage their house in order for their dream to be realized.

Well, that very thought as well as few others was considered by Drew Wash — a long-time domain investor, and entrepreneur of MovingSites.com, a host of website communities designed to bring experts together.

From week to week, I receive various wide-ranging questions and inquiries pertaining to WordPress websites.

I recently received an inquiry in regards to how easy or difficult it is to password-protect an entire WordPress website from the general public.

Of course, there are a number of ways to achieve a fully protected and private WordPress website.

Have you ever wondered how to track online ad or link traffic from external websites to your website using Google Analytics?

Tracking online traffic, web traffic in general, is often a topic causing many persons to glaze over, literally and figuratively.

Truth is tracking web traffic is quite simple. In fact, you encounter trackable links daily as you use the web to perform a variety of tasks, yet you may not have realized it upon first glance.

Nevertheless, there’s no excuse today for website owners and operators to be in the dark on the origin of website traffic.

There are a growing number of non-paid and paid web analytics services available, varying in level of complexity, to help uncover where from and who is sending traffic to your website.

And although I won’t cover all the the tools, there is a FREE and easy-to-use tool that allows you to track web traffic to your website.

I received an email yesterday afternoon from GoDaddy that reminded me I have two websites that I’ve not transitioned to HTTPS.

In the last few years, there has been an uptick in the number of websites that have transitioned from HTTP to strictly HTTPS.

Of course, many website owners transitioned their websites to HTTPS from HTTP upon hearing Google would consider and likely bump website search rankings for those in full HTTPS compliance.

Nevertheless, the interesting thing about the GoDaddy email is that it is stoked with a bit of subliminal fear using a number of terms throughout the email multiple times.

Amidst big brands such as Amazon, Walmart, and the list goes on, small businesses account for quite a bit of market share.

Google estimates that there are approximately 115 million small businesses in the world while the United States of Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy estimates that there are 28.8 million businesses in the US alone.

Of course, there’s much discussion to be had pertaining to what specific attributes must be realized to qualify as a small business. But I’m not writing to debate those finer points.

With both numbers on the rise annually, one has to wonder how small businesses are able to affordably differentiate themselves, especially when considering small businesses with a strict local or hyper-local presence.

How many oil change, dog grooming, nail salon and other local-centric business services do you pass daily going to and fro?

If you’re like me, then you’re likely surrounded by a growing number of small businesses, varying in name, peddling similar services in hopes that a potential customer remembers their business when the need arises.

Hoping that customers remember your business in a sea of competitive small businesses offerings is not a sound plan for existing or growing local market share.

But here’s something to ponder. Would you be interested in uniquely differentiating your business from the competition using an emoji domain?

Over the last few years, negative SEO attacks have caught more than a few companies off guard, and that number is growing daily based on the nearly 15 million search results for negative SEO (and growing).

Even a famous digital marketing agency was caught off guard and experienced a first hand negative SEO attack on their website and brand.

If you’re not familiar with negative SEO, then you might want to read up on it and establish a plan to manage against it.

In short, negative SEO attacks can get a company penalized and booted from Google rankings, and in some cases entirely de-indexed and banned.

So, how do negative SEO attacks occur?

Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to catch up on a few articles pertaining to SEO.

One of the articles isn’t an article as much as a tutorial video. I’m not certain it’s a tutorial video either, as much as it is a knowledge share.

Nevertheless, the knowledge share is by Rand Fishkin. If you’re unfamiliar with Rand, his background, and his expertise as owner and founder of Moz.com, then you’re missing out on value-add content applicable to growing your business.

Rand randomly chooses a topic to share and expound upon each Friday for the search marketing and business world to gain greater insight. He shares by way of a video called Whiteboard Friday.

If you don’t subscribe, then you ought to go forward. You’re missing out on a lot by not subscribing.

In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, Rand talks about one of the most imperative a decision a business makes about its digital presence: selecting a domain name.

Whether good, bad, or plain Jane ugly results, you’ll live with the consequences of the selected domain name for your business.