Tag: SEO

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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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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.
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Why I am Watching Co-Citation

I get asked all the time, “what are you watching, what’s new and exciting, what trends to you see happening?” Right now, I’m watching co-citation.Google has made really sweeping changes to how it rates websites and what used to work for years to garner organic placement is not considered spammy by Google and may even run into a placement smackdown filter. This is why I am very carefully and intensely watching co-citation.

Watching co-citation.
Watching co-citation.

Here are a few articles about co-citation that you may want to read:

SEOMoz take on co-citation

Jim Boykin’s take on co-citation

In lay terms, co-citation is close to link bait and article marketing but with natural growth. Both authors state that Google and Bing as so smart now that they do not have to be fed keyword phrases, they will decide on their own based on the content that links to you. But, here’s the change it is not the link text that they are weighing, but rather the jist of the content where the link to your website is embedded. In fact, the page that links to you may not even link to your service and may not even contain keywords on which you want to place. Instead it is an “authority” factor.

So here’s what I understand so far…

Google and Bing spider the web, they read incidents of mentions of your name and content, they spider your own website and get a picture of the services you provide, then they review how what people say about you and the authority of the site that links to your site talks about you. They then use this in their algorithm to place you in importance to being an authority on a specific topic. Way Cool!

Although I don’t think that anyone in my industry really knows yet what works for organic placement in this new world on Google and Bing, but it is clear that content, the sharing of your content will be a very strong impact for organic placement.