Who has the keys to your domain...and your web hosting account...and your PayPal account...and all the other online accounts that make your business tick?

As a business, personal, or non-profit website owner, if you didn't answer this question with a resounding "I DO!," you are putting your website and possibly even your entire enterprise at risk.

Many companies such as domain registrars, website hosts, PayPal, banks, and others that are required to keep your sensitive online information safe WILL NOT COMMUNICATE with anyone other than the person who is listed as the main contact in their records. And they certainly will not release user name, password, and other account information to anyone other than the officially designated contact.

Knowing this to be true, consider what might happen in the following scenarios if you are not listed as the primary contact and you do not have a copy of your login information:

• Your employee leaves the company.
• You decide to switch web designers, or your designer retires or closes the business.
• Your spouse divorces you.
• Your relative turns untrustworthy.
• You and your friend or business partner have a falling out.

Now further imagine that one of these common situations arises and you need to:

• Change your account password or contact information.
• Change your web hosting service.
• Change your domain registrar.
• Change your website designer or search engine optimization (SEO) company.
• Access your PayPal account in order to add new payment buttons.

Ouch! You could be in a world of hurt, as one of our new customers discovered recently.

The bottom line is that YOUR contact information should be on ALL these accounts, and YOU should have a copy of all the login information for these accounts: that means URL addresses (e.g., paypal.com, namecheap.com, gmail.com, etc.), user names, and passwords. PLEASE do not rely on others to keep this essential information safe for you!

Tip: Here is one way to find out who is listed as the primary contact for your website's domain and to learn the nameservers for your website hosting account:

1. Go to http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx
2. Type in your domain name (e.g., pcartsonline.com). Omit the www.
3. Check the domain whois record box.
4. Click GO. (Note: If you have changed the information recently, it may take about 24 hours to see the most recent changes.)

Oh, in case you are wondering, when Precision Computing Arts / Fastwebdev sets up an account for you, we never list our company as the registration, administrative, technical, or billing contact. We always list you — the company owner (or your designee) — and we always provide you with the complete login information for every account that we set up on your behalf. PLEASE STORE THIS INFORMATION IN A SAFE PLACE!

Questions? Please contact us.

Do you want some help figuring out the best keywords to use in your Pay Per Click system (e.g., Google Adwords or Yahoo Overture)? Do you want to find out what the competition is doing? If so, check out Google's FREE Search-Based Keyword Tool. Use this free tool from Google to generate a list of keywords found on any site, including your own and your competition's.

To use the tool:

1. Click here to start the SK tool (www.google.com/sktool/).
2. In the Website box, enter the website address that you want to analyze.
3. Click Find Keywords.

You can sort by any column (click on the column name), analyze the results in a variety of ways, and even export the keywords found. The tool is optimized for use with Google's Adwords system, but it's great all by itself. (Note that it shows a limited list of keyword ideas, not every possible keyword associated with the site you selected.)

To learn about more tools for selecting Pay Per Click keywords, visit the Pay Per Click Insider Tips article titled "Five Techniques to Dominate the Long-Tail".

If you are using one of our "Sitebuilder" build your own website or e-commerce systems, we have good news for you! Our system includes some excellent Flash tutorials to help you learn how to update your website or webstore more easily.

To access the tutorials, follow these steps (steps 3-5 are shown in the example above):

1. Start at http://pcartsonline.com/fastwebdev/customer_login
2. Log in to your website, just as you usually would for editing.
3. Click the Help tab near the top of the page.
4. Click the Tutorials link or icon (a book).
5. On the left side of the page, click whatever topic you would like to learn about.

Way cool!

P.S. If you have any friends, colleagues, or family members who want to set up their own websites, please tell them about our free 10-day trial sites. They can sign up right from our home page at http://pcartsonline.com. If build-it-yourself isn't your cup of tea, we're always happy to offer consulting services to help you do all or part of the job.