Hosts and registrar’s have different responsibilities. They both have supreme control your visibility online, and one should not use the same company for both - ever.

A host’s duties are to make sure your website is up, running, responsive, and give you support when something goes wrong.

A registrar’s duties are to keep your domain name safe, alert you when there are problems, and keep you in the loop on anything strange going on with your domain names. We’ve all heard stories about hosts who suddenly turn off a site and put the domain name on hold. If you host with the same company as is your registrar, you can lose both in a single moment.

If you keep your host and registrar separate, then if the website goes away, you can easily setup your site somewhere else (assuming you make regular backups) and change the DNS at your registrar. If you have many websites, use multiple hosts and keeping your website backed up at another host (behind a login so it can’t be spidered). If the site goes down at one host, change your DNS at your registrar and your site should be back up in a matter of hours (these days it takes a max of 24 hours for a DNS to re-propagate, and sometimes you can see it in a matter of a couple hours).

If your registrar freezes your domain, you’re in big trouble. Always keep another TLD or two of your site (and it’s good practice to own the .net, .com, etc of your websites) so that you can use another version why you work out the problems.

Use more than one registrar for those alternate TLDs. If you keep the .com name with your favorite registrar, the .net with a second registrar, and the .org with yet a third - you can usually recover while the resolution process is ongoing.

Own the alternate versions of your domain (at a different registrar) name pointing to your website. Make sure that those domain names 301 to your site and do not get indexed (you don’t want example.com and example.net both indexed with the same content as that will cause many SEO issues).

If your main domain is going to be down for a while (such as weeks or months during a lawsuit or a shady registrar); remove the 301 and let your site be re-indexed at the new domain. Unfortunately, you will lose most of your traffic as this will be considered a new domain and you can’t setup a 301 from a domain you don’t control (i.e. you can’t 301 your old domain to your new one as you no longer control that domain). When (or if) you regain control of your domain name, put the 301s back in place and return to your original DNS configuration.

If you have PPC or other media campaigns, change them to the new domain immediately. Don’t pay for traffic going to nowhere.

For information about 301 vs 302 see Matt’s post, you should be familiar with the difference depending on the circumstances of your site or domain being unavailable.

I’d also recommend trying to own the .com of your domain (which isn’t always possible).

My favorite registrar is Moniker.com. Register.com has one of the best APIs for bulk managing domain names and DNS entries. Both Google and Yahoo use MarkMonitor.com these days, which is good for large domains where you want to monitor a variety of domain uses (if this is your goal, also check out CSC Corporate Domains, INC which manages live.com). Google has a close relationship with enom.com, which has been a fairly reliable system. (Note: I have relationships with some of the above companies, but as with all my posts, this info is solely my opinions and I don’t receive funds from the above companies).

Worthwhile read (warning PDF file), http://www.cscprotectsbrands.com/pdf/029-031-TW-March_08-Searche.pdf, about domain tasting and searching for domain names.

Hosts can be cheap, and some cheap hosts are just fine depending on your goals and traffic. As with most things, you get a level of support based upon how much you’re paying. Pay for a cheap registrar, and you usually get zero support. When comparing hosts vs registrars, some people can get away with a cheap host. If you site goes down, it’s not that bid of a deal to move websites. Losing or having a domain name suspended can be devastating. Pay for a good registrar. Know your registrar’s policies. It’s easy to recover from a bad host, a bad registrar can ruin a business.

The war between SEO and PPC traffic continues to wage every day. Why would you pay for traffic when you can get it for free? Why would you invest in SEO when there are no guarantees? My blog got Dugg but I didn’t get any conversions, social traffic is a waste of time. Bloggers aren’t journalists, I don’t want links from a blogger, give me the New York Times instead. Local traffic is too time consuming.

I’ve created a very basic chart of how I think of traffic. It’s a basic outline, not a detailed look at every advertising medium.

However, before I list out the chart, I must once again share two thoughts.

SEO is not free traffic. I got my start in SEO (almost 10 years ago) and I’m still a fan of SEO. However, if you are a DIYer (do it yourselfer) the monthly cost of SEO is:

• ((what your time is worth (or how much you would make if you were doing something else)) x (number of hours)+
• (cost of paid links) +
• (programmer time in redoing your CMS) +
• (copywriters) +
• (other misc items which can range from server configs to paying for diggers)

All this for non-guaranteed results that can go away in a single update. Anyone who lived through the Florida update understands how fast traffic can go away. This doesn’t mean SEO isn’t worth it (I’m a fan of SEO); it just means that it’s a source of traffic that should be integrated with other marketing ideas.

In the below chart, conversions is how good the conversion rate is. Traffic is a measure of how much is possible (on average, some niches and methods will be much more successful than others and there are always exceptions), and Awareness is essentially Branding.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of advertising types. There are also exceptions to every single rule; so this is only a guideline and anyone can easily argue that any one of these can be better than another depending on the circumstances.

This is a quick list I wrote on a Sunday morning. It’s not perfect, one can debate every statement. It’s a starting point to illustrate some differences.

It’s also worth nothing there’s a difference between advertising and marketing.

…advertising is the paid promotion of goods and services. Advertising is an outlet for your creative message. Advertising is about reaching consumers. While reaching consumers is important, the message that’s delivered to those consumers is what makes them wish to do business with you instead of your competition.

Advertising is reaching consumers. Marketing is communicating with consumers. We shouldn’t be having conversations about just how to reach searchers and serve ads to them. Instead, we should be having conversations about how to connect with searchers once they have seen the advertisements.

Source: Turn Your PPC Advertising Campaign Into An Effective Search Marketing Machine

If you’d like to see some stats of social vs SEO vs PPC vs Press releases, I think this is a good article: http://www.ewhisper.net/blog/traffic-does-not-convert-the-same-seo-vs-ppc-vs-press-releases-vs-social-bookmarking/.

As you can see, when you balance the Pros, Cons, Conversions, Traffic, and Awareness for each of these advertising mediums - there is no one perfect type. It’s through an integration of different advertising mediums that one can sustain and grow a business model regardless of marketing rule changes.

In the next debate when someone asks you to compare PPC vs SEO vs Social; the conversation shouldn’t be should you do this and not do that. The conversation is how to use them together to create greater results.

Though synergistic advertising methodologies the benefits of each adverting type are enhanced to create marketing campaigns that are far better than any one medium could every produce.

My newest article at Search Engine Land was published Monday which is a look into a legal case about an advertiser suing another advertiser directly without going through the typical Google exception process. It then goes on to look at ways the industry needs to think about copyright usage. Read it here.

There’s also an interesting interesting discussion going on at Sphinn over SemCompare.com a ratings and review site for SEM agencies that’s run by Search Marketing Standard. Definitely a topic that’s worthy of some attention.

It’s been almost two months since I’ve posted, and possibly longer since I’ve managed to go through and answer all of my email. Instead of trying to answer everyone individually, I’m taking the lazy way out and doing a quick update via a blog post.

I spent a few weeks in Europe on vacation (no email at all); and rented Glin Castle for a week for my wedding which was a fantastic time.

RHDi or RHD Interactive (a combination of LocalLaunch; Business.com, DexKnows.com, and RHD interactive) is a fascinating place right now; which has kept me incredibly busy and away from forums and postings sine I returned to the states.

I think I make a resolution every year to blog more, and somewhere along the way that’s one (among many) resolutions I don’t end up keeping; but we’ll see how it goes in the new year.

Some quick industry updates:

Xobni.com is a fascinating beta for getting more out of Oulook. It doesn’t fully take advantage of Office 07; but does well with earlier versions.

Zoho is on a rampage launching new web-based apps. I’m excited to see what their new mail system churns out (I don’t have an invite yet - and I’m open to testing); but their feature set is starting to blow past incumbents that have focused on niches such basecamp, or Google docs.

AdWords editor 4.0 has a bug in it’s update feature. If you want Editor 5.0; uninstall 4.0 and then do a clean install.

If you haven’t played with it yet, the adCenter plug-in for excel is pretty interesting. If you don’t have an invite, then experiment with adLabs. Microsoft also has some fun stuff in the pipeline which should come out in the next few months. Excpect a much nicer toolset in 08; now if they could only double their traffic.

Microsoft Spaces needs a way to recover lost URLs. One of my hotmail accounts expired, and now I can’t get back ewhisper.spaces.live.com. However, now one can link passport accounts together, so that should help others in the future.

Worldmate, my favorite mobile travel app, now has a free version. Unforunatly, the newest version has a couple of display bugs compared to the older one; however, if you are a frequent traveler this app is for you.

Microsoft’s Live Search Mobile is an amazing mobile app for location based services. Now if they could only upgrade the way hotmail works on a mobile phone (or allow a Plaxo integraiton with Hotmail).

Yahoo’s mobile app has some nice additional content functionality; however it’s slow even on my Verizon network. If they speed up that app, add some formatting, and increase the on-demand data fields, it would be one of my favorite places to get additional news and scores (I’m in the LocalLaunch fantasy football championship this week - not bad for a first time fantasy football player).

Search Marketing Standard has been doing some smart marketing through bloggers and industry experts. If you’re looking for a print version of search news to get off the computer for a while, it’s worth picking up a copy and see how you like it. It’s one of my regular reads on a flight.

I’m still working on determining my speaking engagements next year. After this year, where I spent well over 100 hours (and it might be more like 120-140) on stage; I feel a change (and a few less airline miles) is coming this year.

I will try to get through all my emails; but if you’re in Chicago - then leave me a note and we can (maybe) do lunch.

enjoy.

• Analytics KPI Gadget for iGoogle

  (tags: google+analytics)

• Google Analytics Widget

  Basic analytics info for iGoogle

  (tags: google+analytics)

• Eleven Tips For Optimizing PDFs For Search Engines

  (tags: pdf+optimization pdf)

• MediaPost Publications - Revenue Science Finds BT Ads 22% More Effective - 09/12/2007

  Behavioral targeted vs contextual ads.

  (tags: contextual+advertising)

• TV Ads Demo - AdWords - Google

  Demo for setting up Google TV ads.

  (tags: adwords tv+ads)

• The Anatomy Of Compelling Search Ad Copy

  My latest article on SEL.

  (tags: copywriting)

• 2007 Web Analytics Shootout - Final Report

  Very nice comparision of IndexTools, Google Analytics, Omniture, and Click Tracks.

  (tags: web+analytics)

• ROI -These bidders know their profit by keyword (or ad group) and only bid to make a profit. They would rather a keyword not show, then show in an unprofitable position.

• Brand Protection - These bidders want their brand in the top spot whenever a consumer searches for their brand. In fact, it’s common for these bidding to use position preference so their ad doesn’t show if it won’t be in the number one position.

• Ego Bidders - The CEO wants the company to be number one. It’s pretty easy to manage these accounts - just keep raising your bid until your in the top spot. When you run out of money - ask the CEO for more.

• Real Estate Buyers - These advertisers want to ‘lock up’ search results so their competition isn’t there. While this is a variation of ego bidders, there is at least a reason for being number one.

• Traffic Moguls - I want more traffic, and then some more, and then…. These advertisers are often publishers. AdWords budget optimizer often works well. It’s not the keyword that matters, its the searcher they want.

• Product Awareness Creators - these advertisers are in a difficult position. Product launches are difficult on the web for search as there’s not search volume yet. Success is often measured by an increase in search volume.

• My business exists - These advertisers have a business, want consumers to know about it, and often have a hard time measuring results for a large variety of reasons. However, search advertising works because someone is looking for your keywords, therefore, even without being sophisticated, these businesses can see a nice lift from PPC advertising.

• I want to be an ROI advertiser, but I can’t measure results. This is a very common advertiser. A business who is trying to correlate phone calls, coupons, or an increase in revenue due to online advertising. Often B2B companies with long sales cycles, or sales cycles that are driven by awareness, phone calls, in-store visits, etc. They often fall between ROI and awareness advertisers.

Which one of these are you?

My latest article: Combat Click Fraud By Blocking Low Quality Traffic was published at Search Engine Land today.

Learn:

• How to block your ads from showing in certain countries
• How to block competitors from clicking on your ads
• See which content network sites are sending you traffic
• How to keep yourself from showing for keyword searches
• How to block content network sites
• Determine how many clicks you did not pay for
• Next steps…

It’s a bit of a follow-up to Content Network Optimization; but instead of focusing on how to optimize for the content network - it’s more about how to block low quality traffic (search and contextual) from the search engines.

enjoy.

The Google Local Business Referral program has been commented about heavily in the last 24 hours.

I’ve known about this program for a while, and being heavily involved in local search, I think it’s being severely misunderstood. It’s not about a sales force - it’s about local business content and customer awareness.

One of the challenges about local search is up-to-date accurate content.

I was asked at Search Engine Strategies San Jose last year: “What do you think the tipping point is for local search?”. Some of the answers were around having 1 million listings, others were about how many advertisers Google had, my answer was, and remains the same:

The tipping point of local search is all about the quantity and integrity of data. The day I can go to a local search engine and receive information that’s as accurate, as fast, and more useful than opening the Yellow Pages, is the day local search will have truly arrived.

Google is targeting college students with this initiative, not sales reps.

The second challenge in online advertising is customer awareness.

If you ask the companies why they are not advertising on the web, the most common answer is ‘We don’t trust it’. However, trust is usually a cover for some other issue. If you follow-up that question with ‘Why don’t you trust it?’. The most common answer is:

We don’t understand it.

It’s not about trust, it’s not about awareness and understanding.

If you look at the typical buying cycle - the very first stage is awareness.

In fact, I believe so much in the fact that awareness plays a critical role in online advertising, that I’m speaking at an RHD Seminar, ‘Introduction to the Web‘ seminar this Thursday (which Yahoo is attending and giving a fun Swag Quiz Presentation afterwards); and then following it with another Awareness Seminar in Vegas later this year.

Collect the Content - Raise the Awareness - Local Search will Arrive

Consumers still have challenges with local search. Often numbers are outdated, the listings are inaccurate, or the listings don’t exist for a business.

To layer on top of that the difficulty for a business to actually give their information to every local search engine. Business’s don’t know, and don’t have the time to submit a Google, Yahoo, Superpages, Yelp, Truelocal, Local.com, Switchboard, etc, etc listing.

There is a reason why programs such as Register Local exist. Register Local is a single point of data distribution for local businesses. Submit it once - view it everywhere.

Local search will arrive someday. However, it will take feet-on-the-street sales reps, content collection programs, and awareness raising for both businesses and consumers for that day to arrive.

These third-party websites use the Google Maps API, which allows them to embed customizable Google Maps within their site. Google technology will only display your clients’ ads when they’re related to the surrounding content of the webpage. As with all content targeted ads, your clients pay only when someone clicks through to the website.

From a Google newsletter.

It’s not clear if you have Local Business Ads if you will choose to syndicate these ads to Google mashups, or if they will be syndicated if that campaign has the ‘content network’ turned on.

It is clear that Google is pushing LBAs and trying to find more inventory for them (which I applaud), such as showing LBAs on Google Earth.

I hope that you can have the option to syndicate LBAs to maps mashup API sites without showing them on the general content network. That would give the advertisers more control, while receiving primarily local based inventory.

I’m very excited about this acquisition, however, I’ll just link to the most appropriate news for right now:

• RHD Press Release
  
• Greg Sterling’s writeup