Now that you have checked out your competition you need to set up your site, but before you set it up you need to buy the domain, there are plenty of options available to buy domains, I like to use Namecheap (affiliate link), it’s cheap and I have never had any problems with it, also if you google “namecheap voucher” you can generally get a code that will save you a little bit of money. They also run quite a few offers where if they get a certain number of new followers on facebook they give a special offer, I got a .com domain for $0.99 a few weeks ago with one of these offers, so keep an eye out for those offers.
When you’re searching for a domain, type in the exact keywords that you want to target and if the .com, .net or .org are available snap it up quickly. If none of these top level domains are available for your exact keyword (when your domain matches your keyword exactly this is known as an EDM or exact domain match), google loves EDM’s and gives them a boost in rankings, so if possible grab one. If you can’t get one then I would just go back to the drawing board and find a keyword worth targeting that has an EDM.
If you have the choice, buy a .com for every single domain, this is rarely available though so a lot of the time you only get one of the three, however sometimes both the .net and .org is available and people always ask which one to get, the answer is that in the eyes of google it doesn’t really matter, they treat all 3 top levels the same and you will get the same boost. One thing to think about is how searchers will think about your site, which would they rather click on?
It completely depends on the domain and what industry your keywords are in, for example, if I am starting a site that sound like it could be an organization like bigassmarketing I would pick .org simply because it sounds better to me. I’m not entirely convinced that it has too much difference because I have never bought both and tested them, this is just my personal feelings towards it.
Once you have a domain then you need to set up some hosting, for this I always use HostGator (affiliate link), simply because it was the first one I used, I bought cheaper hosting one time and had absolute murder with them, the servers they ran did not support wordpress so they then charged me a fortune to use wordpress compatible servers, in the end I just ditched them and switched my hosting to HostGator (affiliate link), I will never use anything else as I have had no problems and for $7 a month I don’t think I will really need anything cheaper.
Now a very successful Internet Marketer who you guys have probably read made me aware that a lot of people make this next mistake (because he was making it at the time), that is that no matter how many sites you have you do not need to pay for extra hosting, you can have all of your sites on one hosting package (assuming it is a shared hosting package, which most HostGator (affiliate link), ones are). Simply go to your cpanel (by going to the address yoursiteaddress/cpanel) and clicking the add on domain option. Fill out the options, which are pretty straightforward and voila, you are almost done.
Next you need to head over to Namecheap (affiliate link) and click on manage domains in your account section, you will then need to point your DNS to your hosting account simply copy and paste the number from here:
To here:
Your site is then ready to go.
Next up we will install wordpress and get some content on there.
