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PR What? May 22, 2007

Posted by Evil Green in : Domain Names, Forums , add a comment

I had been working on adding a blog to one of my sites - the forums.  My goal with the blog is two fold, it will give me a spot to post how to articles and I believe I am more likely to get links to the blog as I think web masters are hesitant to link to forums (not sure why, but I really feel that way). 

It has backfired a little so far as there is a little less action in the forums as the user is not ending up in the forum off the bat.  However I think Google will index the forum home page and things will level out.

At the same time I switched my domain from “.net” to “.com” as I snapped up the “.com” when its previous owner had let it expire.

I placed a 301 on http://www.xxxxxx.net/ and xxxxxxx.net and xxxxxxx.com to http://www.xxxxxx.com/ and immediatly my homepage PR went from PR2 to PR4.   The .com had sat parked at godaddy for at least 6 months and had no PR rating so I was surprised and thrilled to see it jump (even though it doesn’t really matter).

As far as a stats goes:

Monthly Stats

Are Two Sites Better Than One? February 26, 2007

Posted by Stray Dog in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google, Search Engine Marketing, Adwords, Domain Names , add a comment

A “Filthy Jack” reader writes:

i’m looking for some advice…in terms of a client that has a business that operates out of two separate cities…they will have a home page that allows the user to select their city of choice for services…but what i’m wondering is for seo purposes do you think it’s in their best interest to have two separate websites?  i’m thinking that one massive website should do the trick as long as all pertinent seo features for both cities is incorporated into the development…but my seo knowledge isn’t advanced–and i don’t have the answer to this one and i’m looking for advice

Evil Green and I discussed it and here is what we think:

One of Google’s key factors in search relevance is how many other sites link to a site. Further, this relevance is increased by both the quality of the site that shows up in the search results and the quality of the sites linking to it. So the question here is whether or not having two sites for the one company would be advantageous in this manner. From this standpoint I do not feel it would be.

We could also look at the domain name and how that may help. Assume we have XYZ Deck and Fence and they have a Kansas City operation and a St. Louis operation. It may be beneficial to have two domains with two sites:

xyzdeckandfencekansas.com / xyzdeckandfencestlouis.com

This would help show up in searches for deck, fence and kansas

OR

deck, fence, st. louis

This same goal could be accomplished with two sections in the site:

xyzdeckandfence.com/kansas / xyzdeckandfence.com/stlouis

However, this information in the title and meta description tag plus within the actual page content may derive the same benefit.

I really do not see a clear advantage in you doing two sites in this case. You may though want to consider if there is a benefit to the client in appearing like they are only in one city. There may be an advantage in appearing more ‘local’ and not ‘too big’. Or it could be the other way around. Some things to consider:

1. Is there a major delineation in services offered between the two cities?
2. is there a difference in pricing between the two cities?

If it is indeed pretty much the same site then I’d go with one.

If they are in a competitive field then they may want to look at a Google adwords campaign so they can precisely market to those within their trading area.

That’s my best advice given what you have provided. I may have more to offer if you want to go deeper.

 

I have some info for you February 19, 2007

Posted by Evil Green in : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing, Ranting and Raving, Domain Names , 2comments

You want some .info, I’ve got some .info for you.  Stay away from those junky domain names.  I typically only register dot-coms and maybe the odd dot-net and I think in the future I will try to buy existing sites rather than starting from scratch but I have decided that I will only buy the main TLDs (top level domains) from now on.

Here is why, so my forums are experiencing more traffic, more posts, more members, and more SPAM.  I normally receive 2-5 spam posts a day and that’s with CAPTCHA Image Verification on my registration form.  At least 70% of this spam comes from members who have registered with .info domain names such as xxxx@payday-loans-for-free.info or xxxx@save-on-v-iagra.info. There is no way all these spammers are not frustrating the search engines which leads me to believe they will take action by weighting them lower.  I think I will avoid hyphens (“-“) as well as that seems to be common theme as well.I know I am going to try and avoid looking and smelling like spammer so I don’t get painted as one – I’d suggest you do the same. 

Domain Acquired January 4, 2007

Posted by Evil Green in : Domain Names , add a comment

A few weeks ago I talked about purchasing a domain safely - the domain has been acquired - woohoo. 

A quick note on the transfer process, the existing registrar has up to 5 days to release or deny the transfer, so when using escrow make sure you allot enough time.

Well, I am going to get back to work on our project.

Purchasing a Domain Name Safely December 20, 2006

Posted by Evil Green in : Domain Names , add a comment

So Stray Dog, myself, and a few good friends who are not nerdy enough to blog about their daily SEO tactics are working on a project together.  It’s a project we felt worthy of a good dot-com domain name and we therefore had to buy one. 

We found one we could agree on in $1,XXX.XX range.   Kind of hurts to drop that on something that would have cost $8.95 if it wasn’t already registered.

Anyway, I just thought I would mention the steps we took to protect ourselves from a potentially fraudulent transaction.  First of all, the seller wanted to switch the name of the registered owner but leave the domain name under his account, of course this means that he could switch it back at anytime, so we said no.  He was fine with that, his reasoning was that if we were to let expire he would get it back.

We agreed to use an escrow service (note there are thousands of fraudulent escrow sites that look like reputable companies, stick with escrow.com and never use an escrow service recommended by the seller). 

Their service is pretty straight forward:

Should something happen along the way that causes the deal to fall through the buyer simply refuses to release the funds and gets his/her cash back.

So those are the steps we took, the transfer is in process now.