Buying an Existing Domain Name & SEO

One of the major reasons that you would want to buy an existing domain name is to receive the PR value or previous link popularity the domain has. Try to purchase dot com domain names since these are the most popular and more authoritative domains. Not to mention that a dot com domain comes to mind first and foremost. The advantage to buying a previously owned domain name is getting the link popularity of all of the links that point to this domain name. It is extremely important that what you plan to use this domain name for is relevant to the links that point into this domain name. So if the previous site was about busses you wouldn't want to purchase the domain name and use it for used cars.

Another good reason to purchase a domain name is if it contains exactly what someone would search for. As we mentioned in previous posts Google's algorithm like keyword rich domain names and you will get high rankings from them without needing to do a lot of SEO work.

Here are some additional items that will help you in deciding if you want to purchase an existing domain name:

How much money did the website generate in sales? Normally the worth of a domain name is around 12 months of revenue.
How many visitors did the domain name have per month and per year?
What is the current PR value of the site and how many inbound links does it have?

A good place to purchase existing domains is Website Broker.

Factors for Getting High Rankings

SEO is a misunderstood art. Many people believe that they can get high rankings on Google in a few days. Why anyone would believe this I’m not sure. I have had call from prospected clients who believe this to be true. The web is so competitive that this is just NOT possible. There are many factors that need to be met before your website is at the top of the SERPS (search engine result pages). Below we will explore what some of those factors are.

The age of your domain name:
Google does not let a new website come into the marketplace and compete with all of the other pre existing websites until it reaches a period of time. A maturity if you will. That period of time varies depending on who you talk to. Most people agree that it takes 18 to 24 months. Compete is defines as searches that are done against the Google index with a fair to great amount of frequency. So simply put searches that are sought after quite frequently. As a new website that doesn’t mean you won’t come up in searches for terms that are not searched for with great frequency. These are the terms that you want to focus on in the beginning.

How well are your web pages optimized?
As we said above you want your website to reach maturity in order to better compete, but your web pages can be optimized for your industry from the beginning. When optimizing your web pages you can still optimize for highly sought after phrases and keywords, but you also want to research less frequently sought after phrases and keywords and optimize for those also.

SEO is not a one and done process:
Good SEO takes time and has to be changed and restated to gain better results. Once you see how people are finding you through your web analytical program you can make changes to your web pages accordingly. This is important and your website should be in constant change to get better. Albeit these changes can be ever so minor when you are looking to make minor adjustments to get better rankings.

Building inbound links:
You want people to link to your site and mention you as often as possible. This also is a very important part of your SEO strategy. Look back at our blog for articles that discuss how to build links to your website.

Get ideas by looking at your competition:
When researching your industry try looking to see what your competitors are doing. If you see that they are gaining high rankings look at how they have structured their site and their web pages and get some ideas from them.

Choosing the Right SEO Company

SEO takes time and patience. It's important to realize that your SEO strategy will happen over time. Finding the right SEO Company should not be a hard process. Prior to trying to find the right SEO Company you should know what your expectations are for your website. Know what you expect and research your industry and know what buzzwords and buzzphrases you are looking to target. Do some minor research on your competitors and see how they come up in the searches. Also look at the top 10 companies in the search engine result pages and determine how those results might apply to you.

Now that you realize what your SEO strategy is it's time to go out and find the right SEO Company. With all of the social networking sites out there you can follow and ask questions to experts in the search industry. Once you narrow your search down to SEO companies that you like you want to ask them for references. Also ask them to provide you with a list of their proven results in regards to SEO. You want to see the keywords and keyphrases that they have optimized for and you want to see the results come up in the top 3 pages of the search engine results pages. Pay attention to the SEO Company’s website and see how they come up in searches. I would not trust a company who promotes top search engine results who doesn't have examples of their own company being in the top 30 results for numerous keywords and keyphrases.

Finally when making you decision you should go with the company who you enjoyed speaking with, and the company who provided you with the results that met your expectations.

If you have any SEO stories that you would like to share that would be helpful, please add your comments to this post.

Are Keyword Rich Domains Good?

If there are any flaws in Google's algorithm it might be that they favor keyword rich domains and have for some time. If your running words domain is a match to the search term there is a high probability that you will find your domain name near to or at the top of the SERPS (search engine results pages). One can only assume that Google favors keyword rich domains because they are suppose to state what they do. So if my domain name is lampsandchandeliers.com then Google assumes that I sell lamps and chandeliers. Notice that the domain name is not hyphenated, this is a known spam practice and is a red flag to the search engines.

I have been curious for some time now why Google hasn’t adjusted their algorithm so this isn’t so easy to manipulate. Google any answers?

Breadcrumbs; Does Your Website Need Them?

Breadcrumbs are a hierarchical website navigation links that are usually generated through code that show a user where they are at on your site using a hierarchical navigation system relative to the homepage. You have seen them before on websites, they look like the following: Home > Category > Sub category > Webpage.

Google recently started showing breadcrumbs in some of their search engine results pages (SERPS). If your site is one of the fortunate ones to have breadcrumb search results shown on Google you are lucky. Why lucky, well not only do you get the link from the original search result but underneath that you also get the additional breadcrumb result to your additional website pages.

Matt Cutts from Google has stated that in order for your website to have breadcrumb results in Google’s search engine results pages your website needs to use breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are still new to Google search and the rules for their uses have not been fully defined by Google. In the video below Matt discusses the use of delimiters when it comes to using breadcrumbs.

If your website doesn't currently use breadcrumbs and you have a fair amount of web pages on your site then you may want to consider adding breadcrumbs.

Tutorial: How to Create a JavaScript Breadcrumb Script

Black Hat Tricks Lead to Artificial Results

What is black hat SEO? It is the use of search engine optimization techniques that are used to get higher search engine rankings in an unethical manner. The major search engines state in their search engine guidelines what they consider to be black hat otherwise known as spam.

Known link farms that give you inflated results are a red flag to the search engines. If you have inbound links from known link farms that can hurt your website, and will place you further down in the search engine result pages or get your website removed entirely. The search engines "prefer quality over quantity" this is what both Google and Bing say.

Hidden text is another black hat technique used to try and gain artificial results. In this black hat technique they place keywords throughout a page to gain artificial results. These keywords or keyphrases are used by making the text color the same as the background page color so the user doesn't see them. This practice when caught will get you removed from the search engine result pages.

Search engine result pages are determined by hundreds of algorithm parameters. Search engine algorithms are designed to prevent users from manipulating the indexes. These algorithms are in constant change. The best practices are to use white hat or ethical means to get positive results.

• Create unique, accurate page titles
  
• Accurately describe the page's content
  
• Create unique title tags for each web page on your site
  
• Use brief, but descriptive titles
  
• Make use of the "description" meta tag
  
• Improve the structure of your URLs
  
• Use words related to the web page information in URLs
  
• Create a simple directory structure
  
• Make your site easier to navigate
  
• Offer quality content and services
  
• Write better anchor text
  
• Use heading tags appropriately
  
• Optimize your use of images
  
• Make effective use of robots.txt
  
• Be aware of rel="nofollow" for links
  
• Promote your website in the right ways
  
• Make use of free webmaster tools
  
• Take advantage of web analytics services