From the Editor

I hope that you are finding the new edition of Dream Seed’s ebooklet, Website Planning and Design: 21 Proven Money-Saving Tips, Tricks, and Tools to Create or Improve Your Small Business or Nonprofit Website, useful and informative. I felt that it was time for an expanded and updated edition. It’s important to keep your websites humming like new! (If you didn’t receive the new copy, just email me.)

It’s also been great to hear from you! Some readers have contacted me to let me know that they enjoy the new newsletter. It seems that the new design and shorter content is a real hit! Well, here we are, already at the second issue of InSites. I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy putting it together.

Thanks for getting in touch, and let me know how else I can help you!

All the best,

Adam J. Barkafski

Website MarketingHow to improve your website’s performance through inbound links

With so many websites out there competing for customers and top spots in search engines, it seems like there’s a new magic bullet each day that’s supposed to propel your site to the very top. And some of that is because search engines continually change what they’re looking for in order to rank websites. But there aren’t many things you can do to bring more visitors to your website more effectively than the tried-and-true method of creating inbound links to your website.

Find out how to get more inbound links to your website!

Insightful TipKeep your domain name safe

Your domain name is the foundation to your web presence. Without it, you don’t have a website. You probably spent a bit of time, too, trying to choose just the right name. So you certainly want to protect it and keep it safe.

That’s just what some opportunists out there know about you. They know that you want to keep your domain name safe, and they’ll try to trick you into renewing your domain name with them—an unknown and possibly disreputable company who may charge you two to three times what you’d normally pay. They do this because the whole website process can seem confusing to some people.

Quite simply, these opportunists look for domain names and their contact information, which is all public record. Next, they send solicitations that look like invoices. People receive these solicitations and think that they’re invoices and pay them. Then, the domain name is switched from a current registrar to the new company, and the domain name could end up in jeopardy.

It’s simple to protect yourself and your domain. Never respond to a “renewal” for your domain, particularly those that come in the mail, without checking it out first. You should keep records of who your current domain registrar is. That way, you’ll know if the renewal is truly a renewal…or just a solicitation. Always check with the company or firm where you registered your domain name before renewing your domain anywhere.