Some examples could include:

• Registering a domain name (i.e. acmecompany.com) for your website or blog through a domain registrar like GoDaddy or Network Solutions.
• Setting up website hosting at companies like SiteGround, Amazon Web Services, Bluehost, etc.
• Managing your social media accounts (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and/or using social media management tools (Hootsuite, SproutSocial, etc.).
• Accessing Google services such as Adwords, Analytics, Search Console, Gmail, Tag Manager, Docs, etc.
• Managing your local business listings/reviews at Google My Business or Bing Places for Business or using a reviews aggregator like ReviewPush.
• Managing and/or updating your website/blog through a content management system like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. 
• Accessing your digital assets through a file-sharing platform such as Dropbox or Google Drive). 
• Using other online services such as stock photography, link shortening, Constant Contact, etc. 

So what’s the problem you might ask?

Hopefully, there’s not one but there could be without some proper planning and management. Your vendors/contractors could go out of business, get hit by a bus or flat out refuse to give you access to something he/she set up for you. Employees can become disgruntled and leave unexpectedly. No matter how good of a relationship you have now, things can go south for any variety of reasons and you could be left in a bad situation. I’ve seen it all (except the one about getting hit by a bus). 

If you’ve ever tried to gain access to a GoDaddy account or domain names set up by someone else without the appropriate login credentials, you know that it takes an act of Congress to get access. It’s not a quick and easy thing. I’ve also seen situations where a vendor refused to give up Google Analytics and Google Adwords accounts.

You could certainly go create new accounts but you would lose all of that historical data and work. 

8 Tips for Protecting Your Digital Marketing & Social Media Assets

1. Set expectations upfront. Understand what you’re getting into and make sure that you own everything (including assets and accounts) set up on your company’s behalf. Some companies that manage Adwords (PPC) campaigns will want ownership of the Google Adwords accounts and campaigns that they set up on your behalf. This is usually because they don’t charge for set up and they’ve used their expertise to optimize your campaigns. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this. It’s just important that you understand upfront how things are going to work.  
2. Never assume that anyone else has your best interests at heart. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t trust the people you work with. You just need to do what you can to protect your company and interests.  
3. Register domain names yourself in your own account. In most cases, you can grant others access to your account if you want them to be able to make changes (i.e. changing nameservers). If you’re overwhelmed with the process, I wrote a post here with step-by-step instructions about registering a domain name at GoDaddy. 
4. Set up your own website hosting. Again, you can set up the hosting yourself and give others access. Once the hosting is set up, you can add accounts for other users.
5. Make sure you have top-level administrative access on all of your accounts. You should always have the ability to add and remove other users from your accounts. Others shouldn’t be able to remove you or change your level of access.   
6. For all Google accounts, I recommend setting up a Gmail account and rolling all services up under that. Make sure you use a strong password. In recent years, Google has made it much easier to add and remove users from accounts and assign various permissions levels. 
7. All services and accounts should be set up using your contact information. For any services that require regular payments, I would suggest using your company credit card so you can easily reconcile all charges. This makes it easier later on if there are any disputes. 
8. Use a password manager like LastPass Teams to manage account credentials for your team and any external vendors/contractors. This is a great way to manage passwords for all accounts. You can remove someone’s access if you want or change the passwords for accounts. 

With a little upfront communication and planning, nothing above should be a big deal. Hopefully, you won’t run into any issues but if you do, you’ll be prepared.

The post 8 Tips For Protecting Your Digital Marketing Assets appeared first on Jay Lane.

If someone clicks on an ad you’re running on Facebook, he/she might not pay attention to your website’s URL, but what about situations where you want a potential website visitor to see a more personalized and memorable URL? Maybe you’re running radio advertising and you want listeners to remember your website URL or you want to list a more user-friendly URL on your social media profile pages. 

Consider the following vanity URL examples for fictional ACME Company: 

• acmewidgetsblog.com instead of acmecompany.com/blog/ 
• acmecompany.com/awesome instead of acmecompany.com/products/awesome-widgets.html 
• acmecompany.com/abc instead of acmecompany.com/locations/midwest/location-abc/  
• acmecompany.com/widgets instead of acmecompany.com/?p=1234  

I’m going to show you three different ways to create user-friendly and memorable URLs for your website or blog. Let’s get to it.

Option #1 – Set up a Top-Level Vanity URL at Your Domain Registrar

For this exercise, I’m going to create a vanity URL (diydigitalmarketingblog.com) that redirects to my blog at jaylane.com/blog because my vanity URL gets to the point about the content my blog covers. 

The first step is to register a domain name through a domain registrar. I registered diydigitalmarketingblog.com at GoDaddy. If you’re unsure how to register a domain name, check out this post/video I created showing all the steps.

Next, you need to point your new vanity URL to a page to your website. It can point to your home page, product page or wherever you want.

I’m going to point mine to my blog at jaylane.com/blog. 

Here are the steps for forwarding your vanity URL to a page on your website (and how to track inbound visitors):

1) Log into your GoDaddy account. Click on your name in the top right corner of the navigation and then click on “Manage Domains.”

2) Click on the domain name you want to make changes to.

3) Scroll down the page and click on “Manage DNS” below the “Additional Settings” section.

4) Scroll down on the page and click “Add” under the “Forwarding” section.

5) Enter the page URL where you are going to forward this vanity domain name. Again, this can be any page you want. I’m going to forward to my blog and I’m also going to add some campaign tracking parameters to the end of my URL so I can track inbound traffic into my blog. I’m going to forward mine to www.jaylane.com/blog?utm_campaign=diymtkgblog&utm_medium=direct&utm_source=diymktgblog.com. If you’d like to learn more about how to use campaign tracking parameters, check out my blog post, How to Track Clicks Into Your Website or Blog. 

You can also click the “Preview” link to make sure that the forwarder is going to work. Click “Save.” 

You’ll get a confirmation message letting you know that the forwarder is now in place. It typically takes a few minutes to go live. 

Once the forwarder is working, you can begin listing your vanity URL on your social media profiles, in your email signature, in traditional marketing campaigns or wherever else you can think of.

Option #2 – Set Up a Vanity URL using WordPress Permalinks

When you first install WordPress, you might want to edit the way that the URLs are displayed. In the screenshot below, you’ll see all the different formats for your website URLs. The very first thing you’ll want to do is edit your permalink (URL) structure. 

1) Log into your WordPress dashboard by going to yourdomainhere.com/wp-admin. Then click on “Settings” and then “Permalinks.” 

2) Choose the “Post name” option. This URL structure really impacts the way that your pages and blog posts’ URLs will appear. Click the “Save Changes” button. 

3) As you create new pages and blog posts, WordPress will automatically create permalinks for you based on the name of your page/post. In the example below, you can see that I created a page called “About Jay’s Widgets” and that WordPress created a permalink for me (http://jayswidgets.com/about-jays-widgets). I’d like to make this a little more simple. 

Click the “Edit” button to the right of the permalink. 

You can edit anything that appears after the “/.” In this case, I want the permalink to be jayswidgets.com/about. After making my changes, I click on “OK.” To save the page, I have to click the “Update” button on the right side of the page. 

Option #3 – Set up a Vanity URL using the WordPress Redirection Plugin

There are going to be times that you want to set up vanity URLs for your pages that are different than the permalink. Let’s say that I have a product page on my website that lives at jayswidgets.com/products/awesome-widget but I want to create a simple vanity URL at jayswidgets.com/awesome.

1) Install and activate the WordPress Redirection plugin. 

Click on “Tools” in your WordPress Dashboard and then click on “Redirection.”

2) Under “Add new redirection,” you will add the vanity URL as the “Source URL” and where you want it to redirect to in the “Target URL” field. 

Pro tip – Add Google Analytics tracking parameters after your “Target URL” so you can track inbound traffic from your vanity URL. The Redirection plugin will also keep track of how many times someone uses the redirect but that’s the extent of the data you’ll get. 

Here’s a little video showing how the redirection works in a browser’s address bar. 

Conclusion

There are certainly other ways to create vanity URLs but these are some simple ways. If you work with a web developer, he/she can also create these for you. Hopefully, you found these tips helpful. Please feel free to add to the conversation by commenting below.

The post How to Create Memorable Vanity URLs for Your Website appeared first on Jay Lane.

There are three fundamental components to having a website. First is the content. If you don’t have content, there’s no point having a website. The second consideration is the domain name (i.e. acmecompany.com). Last week, I shared the steps for registering a domain name at GoDaddy. The final component is hosting. If you’re not familiar, all websites have to hosted somewhere, meaning that the files live on a publicly accessible server on the Internet.

There are literally thousands of web hosting companies out there so how do you choose what company to go with? In my experience having dealt with hosting for hundreds of websites, I personally think it comes down to pricing, customer service and performance. 

I recently moved all of my websites to a new hosting company, SiteGround, because of their pricing, hosting features (SSL encryption is included), and customer service. The website hosting company that I used for the previous 13 years raised their monthly fees by 40% and their customer service was becoming more unresponsive. It was time for a change.

Below is a video I created showing all the steps involved in setting up a new hosting account and WordPress website at SiteGround. 

If you would like to learn more about SiteGround and their hosting services, you can visit their website here. 

The post How to Set Up WordPress Website Hosting at SiteGround appeared first on Jay Lane.

There are countless domain registrars out there. These are websites where you can go and buy your domain. Some popular ones are GoDaddy, Network Solutions, and Name Cheap. I’ve always used GoDaddy but you can use whatever company you like. 

Registering a domain is a pretty easy and straightforward process but there are some important things to keep in mind:

1. The standard is still domains ending in .com. When people think of a website, they usually assume the domain ends in .com. I am starting to see more variations though. GoDaddy, for example, registers domains ending in .tv, .life, , shop, .tips, .xyz and more. Other registrars have additional options too. It’s okay to be creative but it’s important to remember your customers’ experience. 
2. Consider the competition. Be careful to not register a domain name that could cause confusion between you and another company (especially a competitor). For example, let’s say you want acmestore.com but there’s a very similar company at acmestores.com. You wouldn’t want a potential customer accidentally buying from your competitor instead of you. 
3. Pick something short and memorable.  Make it easy on your customers to remember your website address. There’s a good chance they’re going to guess and you don’t want them ending up on the wrong website.
4. Avoid abbreviations if possible, especially ones that aren’t easily understood. For example, I could see someone abbreviating Kentucky as “KY” in a domain name but one time I saw a commercial truck with something like companynamekyana.com on the side of it. I live in Kentucky close to Indiana and they refer to this area as “Kentuckiana.” “Kyana” is not a standard abbreviation. I guess I figured out what it was supposed to be but I’m not sure that the average person would recall that domain later (unless you’re me writing a blog post about it).
5. If a domain is owned by someone else, you might still be able to buy it. Sometimes, that domain will be listed on the domain registrar’s site as being for sale at a higher price with information on how to buy it. GoDaddy offers a service where you can pay $70 and 20% of the final price if they’re able to acquire the domain for you. 
6. Buy variations of your domain if needed. Let’s say that you have a company name that’s commonly misspelled. It’s a good idea to buy that version of your domain too and have it redirect to your website. You could also buy the .net, .org and other variations too if you wanted. 
7. You own the domain as long as you pay to renew it. If you’re buying a domain name for your business, you might want to register it for 2-5 years to make sure it’s locked up. You can also set the domain to auto renew so that your domain registrar will automatically renew the domain and charge your credit card. When a domain expires, your registrar will most likely send you a gazillion reminder emails. Once you let it expire, you risk losing it or having to pay more money to get it back. 
8. Don’t let someone else register your domains through their account. This includes family, friends or a website developer that you’re working with. You want to maintain ownership of your domains and not count on someone else that you may or may not work with in the future. I’ve seen things go south before where companies had to take legal action to get their domains back. You don’t want to do deal with that. 
9. Watch for fake renewal invoices that come through the mail. Having owned domain names for many years, I’ve seen these “invoices” come in the mail asking me to renew a one of  domain names. These come from other companies that are trying to get me to switch over to their services. They are pretty deceptive and usually a lot more expensive. 

Here’s a quick video I made explaining how to register a domain name at GoDaddy.com. This experience is pretty similar across all domain registrars. It’s just important to pay attention to what you’re buying. Many registrars will try to upsell various services to you like privacy protection (protects your name and contact information in a WHOIS search) or a website builder tool. Make sure none of these options are selected unless you really want them.

If you have questions about anything, please send them to me through my contact form. 

The post How to Register a Website Domain Name at GoDaddy.com appeared first on Jay Lane.

Today, I was reading a friend’s blog post on LinkedIn and noticed that he included a link at the bottom of his post inviting readers to read more about the topic on his website. It was something like www.billybobconsulting.com/best-post-ever (link changed to protect the innocent).

My first thought was “Holy crap. He’s a huge metrics guy but yet he’s not tracking traffic to into his website from that link.” Sure, he can look in his Google Analytics account and see that traffic came to his website from LinkedIn but he won’t be able to attribute that traffic back to the specific LinkedIn blog post I mentioned above.

When you’re a small business with limited time and funds, you want to know where your traffic is coming from so you know where to invest your time and energy in the future.

I immediately emailed my friend and told him that he should be using tracking links so he can see where he’s getting his website traffic from. He emailed back and said he didn’t know how to do it.

I figured that instead of trying to explain everything to him via email, why not write my firstever LinkedIn blog post AND help my friend (and maybe even you) at the same time.

The Types of Links You’ll Want to Track

It’s a pretty simple process to create tracking links. All you need is Google Analytics (software that tracks activity on your website) installed on your website and some basic organizational skills.

Let me share some quick examples of the types of links that you might want to track.

• Blog posts that you share within your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.).
• Links from one of your websites to another. For example, you might want to track traffic from your blog to your website or vice versa.
• Online marketing campaigns (online advertising, PPC/paid search, etc.) – You can also track which paid search terms or even which banner ads are working best.
• Email marketing campaigns (website/blog links within your marketing emails/newsletters)
• Links that you share with prospects/customers – An example might be including a link to your website from within your email signature.
• Traditional/off-line marketing campaigns – My friend might want to use HireBillyBobConsulting.com on his printed marketing materials and then when prospects type that URL into their Internet browsers, it would redirect to BillyBobConsulting.com (with the tracking URL included). He would then know how many visitors came from his marketing materials (especially if that’s the only place he used that URL).

Remember, you can only create tracking URLs for your own website/blog if it already has Google Analytics installed on it. If you’re NOT using Google Analytics, you need to go get it right now. Actually, read this post first and then go get it. It’s free and easy to set up.

How to Create Google Analytics Tracking Links

In this example, I’m going to use a real-life example from a recent post on my blog, VideoGamingDad.com.

Here are the steps to follow:

1) Go to the Google Analytics URL (link) builder. I always end up Googling “Google Analytics URL builder” because I never remember to bookmark it.

Here’s what the page will look like. Google does a pretty good job of explaining each of the fields but I’ve provided my explanation of how I use each field below.

Website URL – This is the actual website/blog/post that we want to drive traffic to. In my case, I wanted to drive traffic to http://www.videogamingdad.com/2015/01/where-did-the-creativity-go/.

Campaign Source – This is where the traffic will be coming from. So if you’re sharing the link on Facebook, you’ll want to put “Facebook.” I tend to try and keep the URL as short as possible so I used “FB.”

Campaign Medium – You can put in what medium the traffic is coming from. If it’s a link in an email, you might want to use “email” or if it’s a banner ad, you could use “banner.” I typically just use “link.” It’s not super important what you use as long as you’re consistent.

Campaign Term – This is typically for CPC campaigns to track how individual keywords are doing.

Campaign Content – This is a way to identify between different banner ads you might be running. You could name the ads or put in the different sizes to differentiate them.

Campaign Name – Give your campaign a name. This will make it easier to track activity inside your Google Analytics account. For my blog, I like to use the date the post was published. For this example, I used “1/25/15.”

2) Fill in all the required fields. “Campaign Term” and “Campaign Content” are only applicable for paid search or advertising campaigns. It is important that you are consistent when you create your tracking links so you can differentiate between them when viewing your Google Analytics data.

Here’s how my form looked:

3) Click the “Submit” button.

After clicking the “Submit” button, the following appears in a gray box right below it:

http://www.videogamingdad.com/2015/01/where-did-the-creativity-go/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=1/25/14

Everything from the “?” on is what tells Google Analytics to log the link as a campaign/tracking link. It’s important to note that the tracking link won’t actually show up in Google Analytics unless someone clicks on the link first.

4) Test your tracking link before sharing it just to make sure it works and that it takes you to the correct page/post.

5) Copy and paste your tracking link into a Facebook post or wherever you want to share it.

I recommend logging the different tracking links into a spreadsheet so you can remember which tracking links you created and shared.

You don’t even have to use Google’s URL (link) builder every time. You could just copy and paste a tracking link you previously created (ex. from your spreadsheet) and edit it. It could be as simple as changing the “Campaign Name” or “Campaign Source.”

BONUS: How to Shorten Your Tracking Link (and Make it a Little Less Obvious That You’re Tracking Clicks)

If someone were to click on the link above, the full tracking link will show up in their browser window. I don’t think it’s a huge deal though because most people probably don’t notice the full link.

Where you run into problems is when you want to share a tracking link on Twitter when your message is limited to 140 characters. The example tracking link above is 117 characters. That would leave only 23 characters in the tweet and you wouldn’t have room to say anything meaningful.

Here’s what you can do about it.

1) Go to Bit.ly and create a free account.

2) Copy and paste your tracking link into the “Paste a long URL here to shorten…” box at the top of the page.

3) The following box (or something similar) should appear on the right side of your browser window.

In this example, http://bit.ly/1yhPIsv has become my tracking link. I can share it wherever I want. When someone clicks the bit.ly link, they will be redirected to http://www.videogamingdad.com/2015/01/where-did-the-creativity-go/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=1/25/14 and Google Analytics will attribute the activity to the campaign I named “1/25/14.” Also, my 117 character link has been shrunk down to only 21 characters.

How to Find Your Tracking Link Activity in Your Google Analytics Account

Below are the steps for finding out how many people clicked your tracking links.

1) Log into your Google Analytics account.

2) Click on the appropriate website profile. I clicked on my VideoGamingDad.com profile within my Google Analytics account.

3) Click “All Web Site Data.” You will be taken to your analytics dashboard showing you an overview of your website activity.

4) On the left side of the page, click “Acquisition.” The menu will expand to show more options. Click “Campaigns” and then “All Campaigns.”

You should see the report dashboard below.

In the left-column (highlighted in yellow), are the different campaign names I gave these five posts. You’ll see 1/25/2015 in the top spot. The numbers that I highlighted are pretty self-explanatory except for “Sessions” and “Bounce Rate.” Sessions are visits to your site. This is not a unique number. The bounce rate is the percentage of people that came into your site and then left without viewing any additional pages.

5) Click on the name of the campaign (remember this is what you put in as the “Campaign Name” on the Google URL builder tool) you want to see in more detail.Continuing with the example above, I’ll click on “1/25/2015.”

I was taken to the page below showing each of the five tracking URLs I created for the 1/25 blog post. You can see that I shared the shortened tracking links on FB, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Additionally, I shared the link on Humana’s internal social network, Buzz. I created five different bit.ly links for each of the five properties.

You can see how each link performed below.

One final note is that tracking data will typically show up within Google Analytics almost as soon as people start clicking on the tracking links.

That’s pretty much it. Pretty simple, right?

You should have just about everything you need to know about creating your own tracking links.

How do you use tracking links? Please feel free to share any additional tips/advice/feedback below.

The post How to Track Clicks Into Your Website or Blog appeared first on Jay Lane.

Back in 2015, I wrote about how to turn off LinkedIn profile notifications so that your LinkedIn network wouldn’t be notified every time you made a change to your profile. This used to include making changes to your profile photo, work experience, and some other things. Now, according to LinkedIn, your network will get notified when you make edits to an existing job, add a new job and when it’s your work anniversary.

Since my old post is out of date and the instructions no longer work, I thought I’d put together some new instructions. These steps are pretty similar on both the desktop (in your Internet browser) and mobile app.

Let’s get started.

1) Click on the “Me” (profile) option in the navigation and then choose “Settings & Privacy.”

2) Click on “Privacy.”

3) Scroll down on the page and look for “Sharing profile edits.” You’ll see that by default notifications are turned on (unless you changed them before). Click the “Change” button.

4) Under “Sharing profile edits, click on the toggle button next to “Yes.”

It should now say “No.” You’ll see a “Saved” message off to the right letting you know that the change has been made.

That’s it. You can now make changes to your profile and your connections won’t get notified.

In the future, if you want your network to know that you’ve switched jobs, go in and turn the notification back on. Good luck!

The post How to Stop Notifying Your LinkedIn Connections When You Update Your Profile appeared first on Jay Lane.

Almost every day I come across something in my Facebook newsfeed that I want to save or come back to later. I used to email those links to myself so I could find them later because it’s nearly impossible to go back to my newsfeed and find something that I saw previously.

Then one day, I realized that Facebook allows me to save content from my newsfeed and puts it in one convenient place that I can access later on both Facebook.com and the mobile app.

Here are the steps for saving content from your Facebook newsfeed and then accessing it later:

1) Click the downward pointing arrow in the top right corner of the post. 

Note: These instructions work in a similar way in the Facebook mobile app.

2) Click “Save post.”

Facebook will display an “Added to Saved” confirmation message.

3) Click the “Saved” link on the left side of your Facebook newsfeed. The instructions for accessing via the mobile app are included at the bottom of this blog post.

You’ll see the post that you saved at the top of the page. You can click on it to access the post or link. I have noticed that the content I saved doesn’t always show up immediately. It can sometimes take a few minutes to appear on the “Saved” page.

Accessing Saved Content in the Facebook Mobile App

1) Tap the “More” icon in the bottom corner of the screen.

2) Tap the “Saved” button.

3) Tap on the previously saved post to access it.

The post How to Save Content From Your Facebook Newsfeed appeared first on Jay Lane.

If you’re like me, your Facebook newsfeed is precious real estate. There are certain people (and brands) that you want to hear from and certain ones you don’t.

There’s an easy solution. Unfollow them. This way you’re still Facebook friends but the other people have no idea that you’re no longer seeing their posts in your Facebook feed. If you unfriend them, it’s highly possible they’ll figure it out someday. Don’t put yourself in an awkward position having to re-send someone a friend request (or they send you one).

Below are instructions for unfollowing someone on Facebook.com or through the Facebook mobile app. As a bonus, I’ve included instructions on how to follow someone again (in case you accidentally unfollowed them or changed your mind).

Unfollow Someone on Facebook.com

1) Find the post of someone you want to unfollow. Click the downward pointing arrow at the top right of the post box.

2) Click “Unfollow _________.” You can also choose to hide the post if you prefer.

3) You’ll get a confirmation message from Facebook letting you know you won’t see the person’s posts anymore. You can click the “Undo” link if you changed your mind.

4) Enjoy a newsfeed free of at least one person’s posts (the person you unfollowed).

Unfollow Someone Using the Facebook Mobile App

1) Tap the downward pointing arrow in the upper right-hand corner of a post from the person you’re wanting to unfollow. I’ve highlighted the area below (inside the red box).

2) You’ll see a dropdown box. Tap the second option (Unfollow ________). Facebook will display a message confirming that you’ve unfollowed the person.

I need to mention that Gloria is a dear family friend and I would never unfollow her on Facebook. I used this for demonstrative purposes only.

3) Enjoy a de-cluttered Facebook newsfeed.

What to Do if You Want to Follow Someone That You Previously Unfollowed

On Facebook.com

1) Use the search box at the top of Facebook.com to find your friend. Click on the person’s name.

2) Click the “Follow” button at the top of the page

You’ll see a check box next to “Following” confirming that you’re following your friend again. This person’s posts will begin appearing in your newsfeed again.

On Facebook Mobile App

1) Use the search box at the top of the Facebook app to find your friend. Tap on the person’s name.

2) Tap the “Follow” button near the bottom of the screen.

Facebook will show you some options for following the person. You can choose “Default” or “See First” if you want the person’s posts prioritized at the top of your newsfeed.

You should see a “Following” confirmation to letting you know that you’re now following the person again.

The post How to Unfollow Your Facebook Friends’ Posts Without “Unfriending” Them appeared first on Jay Lane.

After you’ve registered the domain name, you’ll have to set up website hosting. That’s the place where your website files will live. I personally use Site5 but there are tons of great hosting companies out there. Hosting agreements are typically paid for monthly or annually.

Once you’ve set up hosting, you’ll have to tell your domain registrar where to point your website domain so any visitors coming to your site will directed to the right place. To do this, you’ll have to edit your nameserver. After you’ve paid for hosting, your hosting company will send you a welcome email with directions on how to do this. What you will specify for nameservers will typically be something like dns1.site5.com or dns2.site5.com.

Here are the instructions for changing nameservers within your GoDaddy account.

1) Log in to your GoDaddy account

2) Click on “All Products” in GoDaddy’s navigation menu and then click on “Domain Management”

3) You’ll see a list of all the domains you have registered. If you’ve only registered one, you’ll see one in the list. Click on the domain name you want to edit.

4) You’ll see a selection of options going across the top starting with “Organize” and ending with “Delete Selected.” Click on “Nameservers” and then “Set Nameservers” in the drop-down menu that appears.

5) The “Set Nameservers” dialog box will open. Make sure “I have specific nameservers for my domains” is selected. By default, the nameservers will be something like ns19.domaincontrol.com and ns20.domaincontrol.com.

6) Enter the nameservers supplied by your hosting company. Click the “OK” button.

7) You’ll get a message confirming that your changes have been submitted. Be aware, it could take up to 24 hours for the changes to take effect. They usually happen much quicker than that.

You should now be good to go. Within 24-48 hours you should be able to access your hosting control panel and begin setting up your website. Good luck!

The post How to Change Your Domain Name’s Nameservers at GoDaddy.com appeared first on Jay Lane.

• You’re no longer using that Gmail address
• You have multiple Gmail addresses and don’t want to have to check each account all the time
• You don’t want someone to see your real email address
• You created an email address for a specific purpose like using one of Google’s many free tools

I probably have five or six Gmail addresses that I’ve created over the years. Most of them now forward to my primary email address.

Check out the how-to video below where I walk you through all the steps in creating your email forwarder.

The post How to Create a Gmail Email Forwarder (Video) appeared first on Jay Lane.