SEO Training

Domaining, or the practice of buying other domains for SEO purposes used to be popular.  That was because it worked.  Now though, particularly since it is difficult to get relevant domains as .com, but also because of changes in search engine algorithms domaining is not as effective as it once was.

Brian Cowen Supports Domaining for SEO.... but it's still a good idea. (he may not actually know what I'm talking about)

Does this mean we should all give up on domaining?  Not at all.

Here are 5 reasons why domaining is worth doing.

1. Domain Typos

As an example let’s say I had a site called wortley.com.  Wortley happens to be my surname.  The trouble with it is that hardly anybody on the planet can spell it properly!  In Ireland the most common mis-spelling is Worthley.  So if somebody was to try and find my site, then typing in www.worthley.com would return them precisely nothing.

So if your company name is prone to typo’s then buying similarly named domains that people may type to get to your site makes sense.  You just redirect them to the correct site.

2. Your Company Name Is Often Shortened to Initials or has the word “and” in it, or other confusing letters.

If my company name happened to be Wortley and O’Connor Ltd for some inexplicable reason, then it is not going to be readily obvious what my website is going to be.  Is it woc.com, wortleyoconner.com, wortleyandoconner.com or even wortleyoc.com?

For this reason I will never name a company in this way.  Particularly since nobody can spell Wortley in the first place and the apostrophe in O’Conner sends people into a state of utter confusion.

If I was stuck with that as a company name I would be well advised to get all versions of it though.

3. .com or .ie

If my site was wortley.ie then (assuming people have learned how to spell it) how many people would type in wortley.com first?  A lot.  People assume .com endings.  You may notice that this site does not have the .com version.  You may also be amused to note what happens if you type in http://www.seotraining.com

If you do you will notice that you are redirected to a .org domain.  (probably won’t notice that first though).

If it is possible, then getting the .com, .net, .org and .ie versions of your site makes sense.  One other good reason to do this is that nobody else can come along and set up a near duplicate site to yours.  Imagine if your business is an online shop with a .ie domain name and somebody comes along and sets up the same domain name with a .com ending.  They could make the site similar looking to yours and sell similar products.  You would lose business.

4. Keyword rich domains

If you are in Ireland and do a search for SEO training then you will find that this site comes up at the top of google.  Why is that?  Well the domain name is seotraining.ie, the subject matter is SEO training and generally you will find references to search engine optimisation creeping into nearly every post.

I am using this domain to target those keywords.  My main site http://www.webshed.ie has no reference to seo in the domain name and it would be a lot harder to make it rank for that.

I have heard a lot of “professional SEO consultants” say that it doesn’t work anymore.  Well it does for this site (and a few others I have).  Also I have not put any effort at all into link building to this site.  It is all about the content.

5. Company Rebranding

My last post was about rebranding your website.  If your company is taken over, does a merger or simply wants to rebrand what happens to your website?  You will still have visitors going to the old domains.  You need to redirect that traffic to your new domain.

Rebranding need not cost millions... but sometimes it helps!

Inspired by the very recent news that the ESB is to be rebranded as Electric Ireland I started wondering what the pros and cons of rebranding your website would be.

For starters you are unlikely to €6 to €8 million price tag that the ESB is about to incur.  But other than that is there any point?

It really depends on just how much of a rebrand you are talking about.  If it is more a restyling than a rebranding then it should not have too much effect on your SEO.  If however you have to change domains as part of that rebranding then you should be very aware of the possible implications of that.

Let’s use the ESB as an example.  Their website is http://www.esb.ie.  It has been that way as long as I can remember.  They have a LOT on inbound links to the site, google recognises the acronym ESB as standing for Electricity Supply Board and they are ahead of their competitors forcing them to make excessive use of PPC campaigns.

So what do they stand to lose by rebranding as Electric Ireland?

1. They have to start a new domain presumably (electricireland.ie since they have already bought the domain – and .com, .org etc).  Time is a factor in the ranking of websites.  Established sites that have been around for a few years have gained trust with the major search engines.  A year or two back there was much talk of the “google sandbox” where sites were not allowed rank until they had proved themselves a bit.  Whether you think this is still the case or not, there is no denying that established sites tend to rank better.
2. The new site will have a new look presumably too.  To customers that are familiar with the old look this is confusing.  It requires a great deal of advertising to get the message out there about the change.  Luckily the ESB have a regular mail shot (the bill) to customers that they can use as a vehicle for part of this re-education, but they will also need TV and radio advertising too at the very minimum.  In short, it’s going to be very expensive.
3. Goodwill.  The news of the rebranding is being widely touted as a “waste of money” at the very time when the country is in dire financial shape.  Spending that much money on something that is deemed a waste of time by customers is only going to encourage them to go to Bord Gais or Airtricity (the two largest competitors).
4. Inbound links.  These are the life blood of any website and starting up a new site as part of a rebrand effectively removes all of these.  The probable outcome is a site that ranks well below their competitors.

Those are the major problems facing a site that wants to completely rebrand.  There are only two advantages that I can think of in the case of the ESB

1. They have to do it if they want to be able to set their own prices (Big brother said so!).
2. Some people may think they are not the ESB and they may gain customers as a result. (I know that’s a bit cutting, but that’s the sort of country we live in, like it or not)

What I would do if I was the ESB

Once I had my new domain I would do all my css styling to reflect the new brand image and then take the existing ESB site and plop it straight onto my new server.

To say that in a more straight forward way, I would make sure the content on my new site matched the content on my old site but with different logos.

At the same time it would be necessary to 301 redirect (permanent redirect) all pages from the old site to the same pages on the new site. Thus anybody following a link to the old site gets to exactly the same content on the new site.

Then I would start link building like my life depended on it.  I would back that up with a ppc campaign that would put Anglo’s debt to shame.

Only after about a year and with plenty of links rebuilt, would I slack off on the PPC campaign and let the site stand on it’s own two feet.

I would start a competition (probably through facebook ads) that in some way encouraged links.  I would get out into the blogging community with it too and do the same there.

Most importantly I would cross my fingers and hope that I had not forgotten something vital.  Changing domains and branding in one fell swoop is not for the feint hearted.

Links are good for SEO.  The link text is very important.

By linking sites together you can create a loop of links, or a pyramid, or a network.

What use are these?  I actually think that they can be quite dangerous to your SEO.  Conversely they can aid your SEO efforts quite a bit.  It all depends on how you do it.

Google put a lot of time and effort into finding spam (for spam read unnatural) links.

Say I have 20 sites, all hosted with the same company.  These sites will be on the same subnet (first few groups of numbers in your ip address for the site).  A lot of links from the same subnet with the same link text is going to raise flags with google.  They will not necessarily penalise you for it…. but you won’t get the results you may expect.  Large numbers of links pointing to the same pages from one location are suspicious.  If all your sites are on the same subnet it becomes obvious that those links are an attempt to influence search results.

How to get around it.

Building domains purely for SEO purposes does not have the same effect it once had.  Domaining (buying domains for keywords) still has some clout, but not as much as it once did.

Be careful, remember, that a site that is full of nonsense will be treated accordingly.  Build each site with the purpose of making that site rank well.  Then links to your target site will carry some weight.  Same goes for blogs.  Write good information in a blog that people will reference and do not over-link to your target site.  Link to different pages on your target site and only use text that is relevant to both the blog post and the page you link to.

In short.  Keep the number of links down.  My preference is for a pyramid structure… linking from multiple domains to one domain.  I sometimes interlink the lower tier domains too – but only if it is natural for them to link.  The subject matter has to be relevant.