Results tagged “domains” from Tyler Suchman

A friend asks: If I want to register a domain name for a non-profit idea of mine, and build a simple inexpensive website for it, what service do you recommend for registration?

Websites these days are commodities.  For a simple "brochureware" website, I'd first look at whoever you already have domain(s) registered with (your "registrar") to see if they have anything you like.  That would make it easier.

If working with your current registrar isn't a concern, I think godaddy.com, 1and1.com and register.com are good choices, based on their prices and templates offered.  Following is a box for GoDaddy, where you can search for a domain, and select an appropriate hosting service.

.com .org

And here's a link to 1and1.com, which a number of clients have been happy with, particularly considering their low prices. They have a really nice admin area for managing domains and emails.
 

A client has two domains pointed at the same website.  My company recently did a couple months of link building on Domain2, which should continue to add backlinks (incoming links from other sites) over the next few months.  A little comparison:

Domain1
0 backlinks - Google
11 backlinks - Yahoo (try Yahoo Site Explorer)
27 backlinks - Altavista
Pages indexed in Google: 2
Google page rank: 1
Time online: 8 years, 8 months, 27 days

Domain2
1 backlink - Google
33 backlinks - Yahoo (try Yahoo Site Explorer)
59 backlinks - Altavista
Pages indexed in Google: 2
Google page rank: 1
Time online: 8 years, 8 months, 27 days

The second domain (remember, same site, same content) is stronger in terms of its ability to rank for targeted keyword phrases.  But Google doesn't look kindly on duplicate content, and so it appears both domains are being penalized to a large degree.  A site that has been around 8 years and has a nice handful of incoming links should be (1) fully indexed and (2) competitive for some key terms if the site has even a modest bit of optimization working (which it does).

So what's the solution?  If the client were to "permanently redirect" (aka 301 redirect) Domain1 to Domain2, then all of those incoming links would be combined into one domain, and Google wouldn't see duplicate content, which should lead to a fully indexed site fairly quickly.  From there, a greater effort can be made to create new content for the site and to do some search engine optimization.

Also of note is that Google distinguishes between www.domain.com and domain.com.  Applying a 301 redirect to one of those (i.e. directing domain.com to www.domain.com) would also help consolidate incoming links and "Google juice."

Some more reading on the subject:
Using multiple domains can screw up your search engine rankings
Ethical SEO
Merging Sites (Search Engine Watch Forums)
Duplicate content in the search engines

A client called me today to get some thoughts on starting a new website using one of two existing domains that both point to the same site.  The existing site will be remodeled into a direct-to-client ecommerce site that does not need any search engine presence, and the new one will be the marketing site.  The domain that has more longevity, authority, incoming links and other attributes that will reinforce the search engine optimization process is the one we want to use for the marketing site.

Matt at SEObook.com (the kick-ass SEO guide) hosts a nice little domain information tool called Xinu.  You can use it to analyze your site or your competitor's sites.  It provides you information on backlinks, social bookmarks, pagerank and some other nice metrics for comparison, along with links to see where the data is coming from.  Using Xinu, we were able to identify which domain was stronger, and proceed accordingly.