SEO INFO

If you own a small business and don’t have your own domain name, you are probably still using the email address provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or one of the free email services on the net.

This means that your email address could be something like: yourname@yahoo.com, yourname123@aol.com, or yourbusiness@freemail.com.  This kind of email address looks unprofessional and will make your business lose credibility, especially if you print it in your business card.

It is much better (and it looks much more professional) to use an email address that is branded with your own domain name, like this: yourname@yourbusiness.com. Unfortunately, most small business owners believe that they must first have a website before being able to get their own company branded email.

The good news is that you don’t need a website to have a branded email address.   You can have your very own, branded email address using a little known feature offered by most domain registrars, called email forwarding. This option is offered to you when you register your domain name. While some domain registrars will charge you a fee for email forwarding, some trully excellent domain registrars like Godaddy.com offer this option for free when you register your domain.

With this option, you can forward several email addresses to your ISP email address.   For example, if your ISP email address is: yourname123@aol.com, email forwarding will allow you to set up different email addresses, like: sales@yourdomain.com, service@yourdomain.com, yourname@yourdomain.com, etc., and forward all mail sent to those addresses to yourname123@aol.com.  By creating different email addresses for different functional areas of your business (even if your company is a one-man-show and all those email addresses point to you) you will give your customers the impression of running a larger, well organized company.

If you want to send email, you will still have to do it from your ISP email address, but this is only a minor inconvenience if you consider the fact that email forwarding will allow you to immediately start using your branded email addresses in your business cards and company stationary, projecting an image of professionalism for your business.

Mario Sanchez is a Miami based freelance writer who focuses on Internet marketing and web design topics.  He publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a growing collection of web design and Internet marketing articles, tips and resources.  You can freely reprint his weekly articles in your website, ezine, or ebook.