Archive for the ‘domain issues’ Category

The world cup 2010 England versus Germany match is nearing kick off and the anticipation is killing me! So to fill in some time I decided to browse some world cup 2010 sites so put in the search term ‘world cup 2010′. BTW, I won’t be talking about penalties – not the footballing kind anyway!

The first thing I notice is that the BBC site is ranked at the bottom of the first page. Fifa are obviously ‘number uno’  but some of the domains listed on the first page of Google are  keyword rich domains;

www.worldcup2010southafrica.com, www.world2010cup.com.

Ofcourse Wikipedia is encroaching the online landscape – do we really need telling what the world cup is about by an over grown dictionary!

Glancing further down the page I see a world cup gambling site and the second page is freighted with world cup 2010 keyword rich domain names.

So what are the Benefits of buying a domain name with your keywords included?

Well it helps a lot is the simple answer.  It can mean the difference between a couple of positions in ranking. One of our clients ranks number 1 for ‘toys and games’  above the illustrious Amazon.  Of course there are many in bound links, and it is easier to rank your home page than an inner page like Amazons, but it maintains top spot on Google and has been there for a few years now.

So what is but a domain name?

It can help greatly with rankings to buy a keyword rich domain. That’s a fact!  With good on page SEO and a few inbound links and depending on the competitiveness, you can more often than not get top rankings quicker for a wide range of related search terms.

If you are targeting a specific geographical area, then this keyword name geo-targeting can be  a very effective SEO strategy. Example: a domain called  london-web-design.co.uk or a subdomain say,  london.domain.co.uk will give you the edge over other non keyword rich domains, although the sub – domain method would still require a seperate active link building strategy but would how ever inherit some link authority from the parent domain.

The downside of this type of domain that is won’t really stand out in a competitive industry and look too similar.  If you are also trying to launch a new brand name, this won’t be the way to go.  For affiliate marketeting, these types of domains can be ideal for squeeze pages.

So if you are searching for world cup related sites or just looking forward to the televised world cup 2010, maybe curious about the world cup in 3D TV, here’s an example of another domain that  conforms to the aforementioned SEO strategy. For more info on watching the world cup in 3D, read more here  www.3dtvwatch.co.uk

Flexicover Travel Insurance company have recently merged their two websites – their .co.uk and the .com domains.

There’s always a big debate on what companies should do when merging their online websites and it is a very important decision, and if not made correctly can have some ramifications later on down the line.

What should you consider when merging sites and what domain should you choose as your default?

If you have two sites that are similar like Flexicover and pose a possible content duplication problem, and they are in the same geo targeted area, then there is certainly a neccessity to merge domains to avoid being penalised by the Search engines.

Here are Rankability’s considerations before merging sites:

1)  Does your business trade mainly in the UK or worldwide?

If you own the .co.uk and .com domains and your audience is mainly in the UK then defaulting with the .co.uk domain and redirecting (301)  the .com domain is a good solution.  If you are thinking about breaking into the US or European market then a Top Level Domain (TLD) using a dot com would be a better choice. A dot uk domain hosted in the UK will never achieve primary rankings in the US or any other countries.  Most people in the US type in the word ‘.com’ when searching for businesses and seeing a .co.uk domain will probably be just ignored.

Something else to bear in mind in relation to this is the age of the domain and the link quality.

2) Age of the domain

If you .com domain is older than your dot uk and has some valuable link equity, then this may influence your choice otherwise you may need to consider changing external linking.

3) Changing external linking

If both websites have been around for a while, and have a fair number of inbound links from other sites and online articles then you will need to do a link analysis on your two sites before deciding.

Inbound links help build pagerank (Google Juice) although they will automagically flow through when they hit the 301 redirects, but it may be a good idea  to contact the sites directly and ask them to update their links instead of relying on the 301 to pass the link reputation.

4) Link authority – how can you tell if it is being passed on?

You may want to double check if your 301′s are passing all the link reputation. There are a few techniques to determine if the link juice is being passed on but the one I recommend is using bogus anchor text.

You can add a word to your link anchor text and see if your target page ends up ranking for a phrase it already ranks for + the additional word.

For example, I could put the word ‘electronic’ in a link pointing to www.ToysGamesGifts.com and see if this site starts ranking for things like toys electronic. A worthy tool to see what the old ranking of a page is before you start the test is waybackmachine.

If you check where the site ranks before you add the link and then check a week or so after, if the position has not increased on a set phrase then you know it has little if any link value.