Ask Kalena

Dear Kalena

I’m currently taking your SEO 101 class for certification.  I’ve been looking over some of the recommended reading and I am confused about something.  Can you tell me if it is SPAM if you have multiple domain names forwarded to one website?

Thanks for your assistance.

Laura

Dear Laura

No, not necessarily. It depends how they are forwarded and the original purpose of the forwarding. For example, if you have a main site e.g. site.com but also own regional domains for the site e.g. site.com.au or site.co.uk and you wish to forward people typing in those regional domains to your main domain, then that is a legitmate use of forwarding.

Same with domains for branding purposes, for example, I own both www.ask-kalena.com and www.askkalena.com but I prefer to use the first one for branding as it is easier to read the site name. However I don’t want to miss any persons who type in the second version of the domain, so I forward the latter one to the former one automatically. You’ll see if you type in the second version it will automatically redirect you to the hyphenated version. This is also a correct use of domain forwarding and the correct server redirection technique to use (not META refresh or similar).

The only time it gets spammy is if you are deliberately redirecting people from one domain to another in a direct attempt to mislead them and trick search engines, for example if you click on a domain in the search results that looks like www.baby-strollers.com and it takes you instead to a porn domain or something. Also the redirection of hundreds or thousands of domains to a single domain is likely very dodgy.

Hello Kalena…

A question I’ve often been asked and don’t really have a good answer for is; Why – when a site is NOT optimized at all for search engines, but it IS an older site, it’s been around a while – does it rank better than younger sites that HAVE been optimized?

Thank You!

Amy

Dear Amy

In their ranking algorithm, Google takes into account the age of a domain, as well as the history of a domain and the age and quality of links pointing to it. Sites that are new to the Internet take a while to build up “trust rank” and link history in Google. So you’ll sometimes see older, well-established sites that don’t appear to be optimized out-ranking their younger optimized competitors for target keywords.

Make sense?

Hello Kalena…

I was wondering if you know anything about the www prefix. My hosting company has my site registered with the www and without, as the same for all sites, I believe. Does this affect how the websites are viewed by the search engines? Also, some directories have my site listed without the www even if I have submitted it with. Does this affect how Google for example counts external links to my site? I have asked many people and no one has been able to answer my question.

Mirna

Hi Mirna

Timely question! I was just discussing this issue today on Twitter. Just to clarify, when you talk about your site being listed with and without the www prefix, that’s called the canonicalization of your domain. Basically, it just refers to your preferred URL for a site, whether that’s with the www prefix or without. Matt Cutts goes into more detail about canonicalization in this post.

Search engines can sometimes index both versions of your domain, creating duplicate content headaches for you and also link popularity dilution. For those reasons, I strongly recommend you decide which URL version you are happiest with and implement 301 permanent redirects at the server end to ensure your preferred version is served no matter which version is typed in. You can also set your preferred domain within Google Webmaster Tools.

Loren Baker wrote a post about the canonicalization issue today, so you might find that helpful. I concur with Loren that using the www is a no-brainer.

Hi Kalena,

Hi! I just read some of your blog posts about Domain Registry Of America! For those of us who have already sent in our check and whose check has been received by DROA, what’s the best way to get out?

Everywhere I’ve seen on the internet assumes you haven’t already done so. Turns out I looked up DROA’s reputation too late. I only looked it up because I received another email from namejuice.com, telling me that they have received a request from droa to transfer my domain name to them. I haven’t confirmed or accepted the transfer, which I’m not sure is a good thing.

Will they take my domain name away if I don’t accept this transfer? Help! I want to avoid any further interaction with droa other than getting my money back or at least keeping my domain name. Then it’s to hell with them!

Thank you.

Raymond

Hi Raymond

I’m so sorry to hear of your experience with DROA. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the best thing is to do in your situation. If you haven’t yet given NameJuice permission to transfer your domain and you don’t want DROA’s registration service, perhaps you can:

1) Cancel your check
2) Tell namejuice that you made a mistake and you no longer wish to transfer to DROA
3) Tell DROA that you wish to cancel your order

I don’t know what DROA’s current stance is on order cancellations. If you signed their contract and they refuse to cancel your order, you might need to contact a lawyer to sort it out.

Good luck!