Danska Designs » Frequently Asked Questions

What is a domain, what is web hosting? – What is the difference and why do you need both?

admin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:05:39 +0000

Your domain is like your telephone number and your web host is like your telephone service provider, very simply put.

When you register a domain, you buy the rights to that domain for a time period and the ability to control what people see in their web browser, then they type in this domain.

Register your domain right away
Remember to register your domain, before you do anything else. Make sure you get your name before someone else does. The price for a .com domain for one year is less than $10. So just go and register the domain. We can change the detailed settings later.

Click here to see if your domain is available.

Domain registration is prepaid on a yearly basis. If you can pay several years up front, you don’t have to remember to renew the registration each year, plus you usually get a bulk-discount.

Part of your domain registration service is the ability to connect your domain to your website’s server. This is called DNS: Domain Name Service. This means that when people write your domain into their web browser, they will instantly see the website stored on your web server.

What is a domain?
Domains are made up of two parts. The domain name and the “top-level-domain”. The Top-level-domain (TLD) is the country-code after the dot in the domain: “com”, “net”, “cn”, “org”, etc.

The domain name is before the dot: “Google”, “Yahoo” or “voxmediagroup”. Domain names are not case-sensitive, meaning “GoOgLe.com” is the same as “google.com” and “GOOGLE.COM”. This part is usually limited to the 25 letters of the English language, numbers and dash (”-”) and underscore (”_”).

International domain names
It is also possible to register a domain using international characters, like ä, ö, ü, ø, å, ñ and so on. You can even use Chinese characters in your domain name. It is not always a good idea to move beyond the English keyboard, because some users are not able to type in these characters. However, the option of international domain names can be a good supplement for your online marketing. Contact us to find out more about international domain names.

Web hosting
Once you have registered your domain, you will need a web hosting service, to get your website up and running. The web host provides a server where the files of your website are located.

How does a newsletter mailing-list work?

admin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:47:11 +0000

In the good old days it was easy to send out a ton of emails to people on a list. Back then you could send email to anyone if you had their email address.

Today mass-emailing is not that simple. The reason: Unsolicited Bulk E-mails also known as SPAM-mails. We all get tons of them all the time and nobody likes them.

Because of the growing SPAM-mail problem more and more people are using anti-spam software, and respectable web hosting companies (the ones who handle your website as well as your emails) are setting up sending limits for outgoing emails.

The web servers that do not help fight against SPAM will be blacklisted by other web servers and none of the emails they send out will reach their destination – SPAM or no SPAM.

The idea of a newletter mailing-list is to only send to people who agree to receive your emails. A newsletter mailing-list function has 3 parts:

The front-end interface, where user will sign up and unsubscribe,
A secure database where all the email addresses are stored,
The back-end interface where you manage the addresses on the list and send out mails

With a good mailing-list interface you are able to send out emails with images and text-formatting. You will also have the option to schedule the sending of your emails, so that you can write the email on Wednesday afternoon (when you have time) and have it automatically sent out on Monday morning when your phone is ringing off the hook.

Unsubscribe option
Giving your receivers the option to unsubscribe is essential when sending out a serious newsletter. If someone doesn’t want to receive your newsletter it should be as easy as 1-2-3 to stop them coming. Remember, just because someone doesn’t want your newsletter doesn’t mean that they wont buy your product. So it is important to stay professional and service-minded, even in your automated internet marketing efforts. Your business will benefit in the long run.

If the receiver can not unsubscribe they will simply delete it. Anti-spam software will then pick it up and put your email address in their anti-spam list, and before you know it your website domain name is blacklisted by central anti-spam databases. And that, of course, is very bad. Besides, what is the point of having 500 subscribers in your list when you have no idea how many of those send your email straight to the trash-bin?

An effective means of delivering your message
When your newsletter receivers have chosen to be on the list, the chance that they will actually read what you send out is far greater. You will be writing to readers already interested in reading what you have to say, and that means that you will have a much better chance at successfully getting your message across.

What are keywords? And why are they important?

admin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:52:29 +0000

Keywords are the words that can stand alone and describe your company to someone who has never heard about you before; these are the words your target audience type into the search-field on Yahoo! and Google when searching for companies doing what your company does.

When creating web content the main focus is writing engaging text which delivers your message to the visitors. However, in order to even read your text the visitors first have to find your website. They do that either through your costly advertisements (online or offline) or by finding your website on their own in search engines at no cost to you.

One of your most important, most effective and cheapest means of online advertising is to simply be findable to those who are looking for what you offer. How do you do that? The trick is to have the search engines associate your website with the keywords your potential customers are searching for.

There are essentially two ways to keyword-optimize your website

One is called on-site search engine optimization (abbreviated SEO), and means to optimize the text on your website by making sure your keywords appear through-out the text in key location like the website title, headlines and link
The other is called off-site search engine optimization – or search engine marketing (abbreviated SEM). This means to have other websites link to your website using your selected keywords as the link-text. So when a website has a link like this: web design, search engines view it as a vote for the target website in the category “web design”. The more votes, the higher position in the search results when someone searches for “web design”.

This way keyword-optimizing your web content increases your websites findability greatly.

How do I choose the right keywords?
The main thing to remember when determining your company’s keywords is to keep the focus on your target group. Your keywords should be your target group’s keywords. This means that whatever words your target audience type into a search engine to find your products, these are the most important words to have on your website.

You can do keyword research yourself. Ask members of your target group. Search Google yourself to find out what keywords your competitors are using? Maybe all your competitors are focusing on the same keywords. Maybe there are synonyms for those keywords with lower competition. This could be an easy way to get a good position in the search engine result pages. An important tool when keyword-optimizing text is measuring the “keyword density”. Keyword density means the frequency of specific keywords in a text. For example: the word “keywords” appears 14 times on this page. That means a keyword density of around 2%. In other words, 2% of the words on this web page is “keywords”. A high keyword density means that search engines will deem your website relevant for that keyword.

The more competition there is in your market, the more you will benefit from thorough keyword research. Contact us to learn more about how your web findability can benefit from keyword competition research and keyword-optimization.

What is Corporate Storytelling?

admin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:30:23 +0000

Corporate Storytelling is basically a way to sell your products. No matter what the products are there are certain keywords and associations connected to it in the mind of your customer. So what we do is analyse your company, your product, your market and your target group. Who are you? What do you have? Who is it for? What do they want?
We create a positive story connected to you, your company or the products that your target group can relate to, based on careful analysis. By doing so, we create the right brand association so that people relate to exactly your product instead of your competitors.

The Dream market
What you are really selling is a dream. Having a dream connected to your product or company means that people associate it with something else. People feel that when they buy your product they in fact buy the dream that is created around the product. By giving people what they want and dream of, we are optimising the prospect of happy and content customers.