Just when you think you have the perfect name for your business or you think of the most perfect domain name, you find out that the domain is registered.

Start over, surely not? Don’t let a domain name being registered get you down, especially if a website has not been developed on the domain.

You may or may not know it, but there are many ways to go about landing the perfect domain name to build your business on. One of the most common ways to land the domain name of your dreams is by buying it via an expired domain auction.

As luck would have it, sometimes domain owners forget to renew their domain names or purposely don’t renew their domain names for a multitude of reasons.

Nevertheless, one domain owner’s misfortune in losing a domain name can be your luck in finding and buying an expired domain name.

Today, I’ll discuss a few things you’ll want to consider when finding and buying expired domains. The entire process of finding and buying expired domains can be a rollercoaster experience, to say the least.

Nevertheless, with persistence and patience, you can end up with the domain of your dreams finding and buying it as an expired domain. Let’s get started.

Every so often, I either receive an email, or phone call, or have a conversation with a potential customer or customer about the pitfalls of moving web pages from sub-directories to the top directory of the website.

Unbeknownst to some, your web architecture is a vital part of your search engine optimization (SEO) effort and content, in addition to creating unique, value-add content that focuses on customers first and search engines second.

When designing or redesigning your website, it is imperative to understand how web architecture, including URL structure, can positively and negatively impact your website’s potential to rank in search engines highly.

Today’s post will try to shed light on SEO advantages and disadvantages of not planning your web architecture to be SEO-friendly or changing your web architecture without considering the SEO impact.

Another productive SEO week has shot by much like that of a shooting star, seeming to last only a moment.

All in all, I’ve helped a few companies progress their SEO efforts forward in a sound and positive manner.

I truly love what I do to the point that it’s not considered to work to me.

I find joy and am reinvigorated by every audit, optimization, coaching and consulting session, blog post and response.

I love the challenges as well as the handsome rewards in driving sound SEO that generates more customers and revenues for those I serve on a daily basis.

But enough about me, and onto today’s post about the discovering the true cost of SEO services in its entirety.

How fast can you get my website ranked and how much will it cost me?

I can’t tell you the number of times those two questions start a SEO relationship with a potential customer.

It’s quite a common occurrence in my line business as one would expect.

However, what’s more interesting is path the relationship takes as we converse about their SEO needs, asking and answering questions volleyed back and forth.

In most cases, I tend to find small business owners with previous SEO experience, whether a SEO do-it-yourselfer, in-house or outsourced SEO, are the ones to quickly derail my questioning with their own agenda.

Much talk can be had regarding buying domain names with hyphens or dashes.

The don’t ever buy a domain with a hyphen camp…

There is the camp that is totally against it, as if buying domains with hyphens is an unforgivable sin.

If a hyphenated or dashed domain were the last domain name on earth to use, they wouldn’t dare think of buying and surely not using such a domain name.

The use of hyphens is like breathing camp…

Then some fall into the camp of not blinking an eye at buying and using domain names with hyphens.

This camp of folk buy and use hyphenated domain names even when non-hyphenated domains are available.

The hit-or-miss hyphen camp…

Then you have those in the middle that, depending on the day and hour you catch them, are a hit or miss on buying and using domain names with hyphens.

This crowd tends to base their decision to buy and use domain names with hyphens much like flipping a coin.

They don’t necessarily have a method to their madness for buying or not buying and using dashed domain names.

Which camp do you best relate to, and, more importantly, which camp will stand the test of time?

But no matter the camp you find yourself in, I think it is safe to say that buying and using domains with hyphens is nothing new under the sun in the Internet world.

There will always be a market for selling and buying domain names with hyphens.

But before you scurry off into the deep abyss of buying hyphenated domain names, I’d like to share some thoughts on why and when to consider buying and using domains with hyphens.

Is it best to have multiple keywords on an optimized page or create multiple optimized pages with different keywords?

I received this question in an email last week from a customer trying to determine the best SEO strategy for optimizing their website content. I thought it was an interesting question, rather questions, for a number of reasons.

I can see through this questioning and quite clear. The customer is grasping at every straw possible to drive do-it-yourself SEO results in the shortest amount of time possible.

They are viewing SEO as a science based on a magical SEO formula to rank well rather than both art and science.

It’s much like a man showering a woman with gifts, dinner, and no conversation of any sort and expecting the woman to fall in love with him for who he is and not what he gives. You get the point, but I digress.

SEO is both an art and science when it comes to refining and finessing your optimized content marketing efforts.

Is it worth spending thousands of dollars on pay-per-click (ppc) campaigns if my website is not ranking well? Can you provide me with any PPC campaign tips?

What a loaded question with a variety of stances to answer from.

Initially when I received this question from a potential customer, I was tempted to answer with a simple answer of yes and why.

However, I decided to delve a little deeper and volley a response back to the potential customer by way of another question.

We exchange emails a few times before arriving at the potential customer’s pain: a website that once ranked well is no longer ranking.

The idea of using PPC advertising and needed PPC campaign tips came about when the potential customer had been in contact with a competitor and industry colleague.

This colleague had indicated with proof that they were spending a good bit on PPC campaigns after their website had been penalized to no existence by the latest Google update.

Not ever having an experience with PPC, the potential customer was gung-ho about moving forward with their PPC effort in hopes of boosting their web rank.

But where should they start?