Nancy’s post for today is found at Design-World Watch and is on the topic of domain name security. The article has been taken from our monthly e-newsletter. If you like what you read make sure to subscribe today.
Keeping Control of Your Domain Name
Nancy’s post for today is found at Design-World Watch and is on the topic of owning your domain name. This article is taken from our monthly e-newsletter. If you like it make sure to subscribe today.
Multiple Domains and Domain Masking
It used to be a very smart search engine tactic to buy a whole bunch of domains and point them, using domain forwarding to your main hosted website. Another big tactic was to take multiple domains and domain mask them so that it appeared that your main website had many different domain names with the new domain even showing in the URL.
In today’s world, we simply do not recommend this tactic anymore due to Google’s duplicate content penalty. It is best to select one domain name as your main domain and to host your website there. We do not recommend domain masking as this can confuse search engines and end up penalizing your site instead of helping it by fooling search engines into thinking that another site has duplicated your content.
If you have multiple domains, you can point them, however, now GoDaddy, as an example, doesn’t even allow you to forward domains. You will have to select a 301 or 302 error code (that is temporarily moved or permanent moved) if you really must consider domain forwarding. The days however of buying up every domain with your keywords in it is long gone.
How about spin off websites? Do those work? Here we are talking about a domain that you own, that matches a key service. Should you build a keyword dense site on that topic only, and if you do will you get increased traffic? I am testing this procedure right now and it is not looking good. But this is a new blog post as the topic is interesting. Come back next Thursday for that information and whether this is a workable strategy for your business.
Domain Tasting
I had a client send me some information about Domain Tasting and wanted to share what I have found out about it.
Domain Tasting is where a firm usually involved in spamming or AdSense Arbitrage buys many domain names from a domain name registrar. They then set up Google AdWords programs pointing to these domain names and use them for five days. Before five days is up, the user then returns the domain names that have not generated income to the registrar for a full domain name refund.
I had never heard of this most likely because my firm is only involved in legitimate business dealings. I asked the staff at www.GoDaddy.com about this specifically. GoDaddy.com told me that yes the five day grace period does exist and is honored by ICANN. A domain can be refunded during that period. But GoDaddy.com told me that domain name refunds are done on an individual case by case basis. If a number of domains were returned for refund or refunds requested on a regular basis, the account would be red flagged. GoDaddy at that point may choose not to allow the refund for the domains purchased or may choose to close the account or not have future dealings with the person involved in Domain Tasting.
Yes it appears that Domain Tasting does exist, but this is a shady area and one that some people are clearly using to their advantage and by people of possible questionable business intent. It is clear that anyone who is involved in Domain Tasting is not using a main stream registrar and is using one who has questionable business policies.
One good thing for the legitimate business person is that if you spell your domain name wrong when you sign up or realize that you got the wrong ending like .bz instead of .biz, you can quickly get with your registrar and correct the problem.