Category: Google

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Buying a Previously Used Domain Name

I’ve had a few clients buy previously used domain names when they become available. If you’ve ever considered doing this make sure you watch this important video from Matt Cutts the voice of Google to the SEO industry about the dark side to spamming and how this may impact the use of a previously used domain. http://youtu.be/lGUw9oS5csI

The bottom-line is that if you do not check to see if your prospective domain has been used to deliver spam, you may get burned. Matt even recommends checking the webmaster control panel tied to that domain and website to look for messages from Google.

If you see all kinds of spammy and questionable links pointing to and from this domain, it is by far better to start with a fresh unused domain. Even if a website is new with all new files, the Google algorithm behind the scenes may be penalizing this domain and you’d never know until you simply could not get placement when you started to use it.

The last two domain purchase I was involved with for transfers only, were both over $10,000 for the purchase. I doubt either site owner had investigated the domain and how they had been used before money exchanged hands. Be careful and when in doubt don’t put your money down go with a new domain.

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Plan Ahead with Google’s Digital Will

There have recently been some very sad stories in the news of young people who committed suicide and their parents were fighting to get access to their minor children’s or young adults online photos and Facebook pages and even emails. It is heartbreaking for these parents to hear that they have no legal access to these accounts.

Google has just introduced a new digital will that allows you to cede your online rights to items on Google properties to your loved ones before you die. It’s called the Inactive Account Manager. You can sign up or find out more on this Google page.

First off you will need to login to the Inactive Account Manager using your Google ID. From there you will add a mobile phone number for verification and security and then set a time out period, such as one month. Then you specify if you want someone else to have access to your account and their email address or if you want all your data deleted. This leaves you in control of what you have online. The choices you make will affect all Google properties like Picassa and Google+.

 

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Why Does Your Page and Website Fluctuate in Organic Placement?

It is not unusual for a new page on your website, or for that matter a new website to place, well initially in the organic search results and then drop in placement over time. Why?

Matt Cutts at Google explains why there are fluctuations in organic placement on Google.com in this video found on YouTube http://youtu.be/BzfK6isC7CA.

Here’s a synopsis:

  • As Google spiders the Web, it may find similar content knocking down your placement.
  • New content may be created over time that is more recent and knocks down your placement.
  • Google initially boosts the page and then drops it if over time it does not garner backlinks.
  • Google is initially guessing where a page should place and then understands later due to links and co-citation if the page should continue to stay highly placed.

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Matt Cutts on WordPress SEO

If you can’t see this YouTube video, you can watch it on YouTube.

In this video you’ll see pure unvarnished personable Matt Cutts, cat lover, talking about blogging and WordPress. Although the video is really for a newbie webmasters and not really for hard core SEO pros.

There are some good nuggets in the video and here they are:

  1. WordPress takes care of about 90% of the mechanics of search engine optimization.
  2. You can optimize WordPress with a few simple plug-ins.
  3. Matt likes Cookies for Comments and Enforce www Preference for his own blog.
  4. PageRank is the number of people that link to you and how important they are. The higher your PageRank the higher you’ll place organically. Quantity is not important, but rather the quality of links.
  5. You can flow through your PageRank to other sites by linking out to them. But the authority decays with each link.