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SiteProNews Blogs

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• Titus Hoskins

Could New Generic Domains Spell Trouble for Google & Webmasters?

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

ICANN, the governing body for all Internet addresses, has announced new changes on how domains will be named in the future, which could definitely spell trouble for not only Google but all the other search engines as well. But they won’t be the only ones. Small webmasters and online marketers should be more concerned and troubled by the introduction of these new “generic” or “dot anything” domains.

Why?

Mainly because these new ICANN changes will transform and alter the web forever.

The impact and range of this transformation will largely depend upon two factors. First, how wide or liberal will ICANN be in their interpretation and implementation of these new domain naming changes? Second, how quickly Internet users adjust to these changes and for that matter, whether or not, they will even use these new generic domains.

However, if human nature stays true and previous Internet usage stays firm, web users will want the fastest and easiest way to find what they’re looking for on the web. This is where the new “generic” domains could change the whole playing field. It could even possibly transform the web as we know it today.

Reader Rescue : How Do I Tackle Regional Keyword Issues in SEO?

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Hey Kalena,

I’m trying to optimize a site for the first time. Its a fashion jewelry site. I have come up against a couple of stumbling blocks that I need a little clarification on. One is the target market – its a New Zealand website, but we want to target New Zealander’s, Australians and the rest of the world this brings up issues of spelling – do we focus on Jewellery (New Zealand/British spelling), Jewelry (US spelling, but where a lot of the current customers come from) or Jewellry (a common misspelling).

Secondly, I’m having a hard time trying to choose my keyword phrases. Silver jewelry and costume jewelry (which seems to be the most common way people search for fashion jewelry, even though fashion jewelry sounds so much more modern!! – found out through the Google Keyword tool) seem to be the best as they are well searched for. I want to be more specific however i.e *women’s silver jewelry*, or *silver jewellery nz* or *buy silver jewelry* etc. but the search volume according to the Google Keyword tool is well below 20 per day.

Can you please suggest what I should do in this situation?

Thank you!
Mitchell

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Hi Mitchell

To answer your questions:

1) The regional spelling issue is a tricky one. There are a few ways you can approach this – do you have the .com as well as the regional Top Level Domains (TLD)  .co.nz and .com.au? If so, you can use the American spelling on the .com domain and the British spelling on the regional domains. However, this may create duplicate content issues unless you block robots from the near-duplicate pages.

Alternatively, you can simply use the appropriate language version for your largest target market as the default throughout your site. For example, although we are based in New Zealand, our main target market for Search Engine College is the US, so we use American English throughout our web site. Most regional markets will understand that American English is common on the Internet, so you should not isolate them by doing this.

Another, trickier, option is to use British English on your main site to attract organic local search traffic and then create a Pay Per Click advertising campaign (e.g. Google AdWords) with tailored landing pages and ad text using American English to suit your other markets. Then, run your PPC campaign targeting only those countries where American English is used more commonly, making sure you block search engine robots from indexing your American English landing pages. You could do the reverse if you decide American English should be your default language.

As for misspellings? Those are fantastic for picking up extra traffic your competitors are missing. Best way to get that traffic is by targeting the misspelled keywords within your Pay Per Click campaign or by including the misspellings in your Page Titles and META Tags (the META Keywords tag is a particularly good place for them if you don’t want human visitors to see them).

2) You are spot on wanting to target the longer tail keyword phrases such as *women’s silver jewelry* and *buy silver jewelry* because it is these specific phrases that are more likely to bring you qualified visitors who are more ready to purchase. But the beauty of targeting these longer phrases is that they also contain the more popular shorter search terms such as *silver jewelry* and *women’s jewelry*. So, by default, you are also optimizing your web site for these shorter phrases by integrating the longer ones into your tags and page copy.

Choosing long tail phrases that contain more generic popular search ones is a great way to save valuable keyword real estate in your page titles and meta tags. For example, instead of having to include both *buy silver jewellery*, AND *silver jewellery* in your meta description tag, you only need to include the longer one as it covers both. A META Description tag of “Buy women’s silver jewelry from French Fashions” sounds a lot less redundant than “Buy silver jewelry and women’s silver jewelry and silver jewelry from French Fashions”, don’t you agree?

When researching keywords for multiple international markets, remember to use a keyword research tool that offers regional search data so you can pinpoint what persons are searching for in each country. Apart from regional spelling, regional jargon such as (accommodation vs lodging) can impact keyword search trends considerably.

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Got a Reader Rescue question of your own? Post it in the comments and you might see it featured here on the blog.

Do Trademarks Always Trump Domain Names? Not always.

By admin in Featured

Online start-ups are faced with the daunting task of selecting a domain name that will withstand legal challenges.

There’s a general belief among online start-ups that a trademark owner will always trump a domain name registrant with the same or confusingly similar domain name. That’s not always the result… as two recent 2010 UDRP decisions point out.

The UDRP

What is the UDRP, and why is it important?

The UDRP acronym stands for the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. The UDRP is a set of procedures and rules that are supposed to help determine who should prevail in a dispute over domain name ownership.

The UDRP is important because it provides a faster and cheaper way to resolve a domain name dispute than a full-blown lawsuit in a court of law. Instead of litigation, it’s an administrative proceeding where the contestants present written arguments to a panelist-arbitrator who issues a binding decision. In-person hearings (including hearings by teleconference, video conference, and web conference) are permitted only in exceptional cases, and are therefore rare.

The UDRP has not been without its critics. Most of the criticism centers on the fact that the UDRP was established to benefit trademark owners in taking non-trademark owners to task in domain name disputes. And UDRP critics often point out the fact the UDRP decisions seem to come out overwhelmingly in favor of trademark owners.

There are three requirements for a trademark owner-complainant to prevail over a domain name-respondent in a UDRP proceeding:

1 – the domain name registered by the respondent is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights;

2 – the respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and

3 – the domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith by the respondent.

The Arizona State Trailer Sales Case

This case involved requirement no. 1 above.

The complainant, Arizona State Trailer Sales, argued that the respondent’s www.littledealerrv.com domain name was confusingly similar to the complainant’s registered mark, LITTLE DEALER LITTLE PRICES and the complainant’s common law marks, LITTLE DEALER LITTLE PRICES RV and LITTLE DEALER .

The respondent argued that it should prevail because its registration of its www.littledealerrv.com domain name occurred prior to the complainant’s registration of its trademark.

The respondent won. The UDRP panelist noted that a complainant has to show that the respondent’s domain name is identical or confusingly similar to complainant’s mark. “This provision necessarily implies that Complainant’s rights must predate the registration of Registrant’s domain name”, the panelist concluded.

The take-away – the respondent won because it registered its domain name before the complainant registered its trademark.

The University of Texas Case

The University of Texas at Austin (UT) case involved requirement no. 3 above.

UT showed that it owned the www.texassports.com domain name, as well as the following registered trademarks: TEXAS, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, TEXAS LONGHORNS, and LONGHORNS. UT also showed that its TEXAS mark is registered for “Entertainment services, namely, providing college athletic and sporting events.”

UT argued among other things that the use of respondent’s domain was in bad faith because it was used as a “parking” website for information related to University of Texas sports and sporting events.

The respondent won. The panel found that UT did not prove “bad faith”. The panel reasoned that because the term “Texas Sports” is geographically descriptive, the respondent was free to register its domain name using the term on a “first-come, first-served basis”.

The panel also found that UT did not have a registration for the term “Texas Sports”, and therefore there was no likelihood of consumer confusion.

Conclusion

Selecting a domain name that will withstand legal challenges is a strategic undertaking for any online start-up. The important lesson is that although the UDRP may help in deciding in favor of a respondent in a domain name dispute with a trademark owner, the recommended approach is to avoid the dispute altogether by undertaking a thorough search of preexisting trademarks before selecting a domain name.

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Leading Internet, IP and software lawyer Chip Cooper has automated the process of drafting Website Legal Forms www.digicontracts.com for website legal compliance. Use his free online tool — Website Documents Determinator — to determine which documents your website really needs for website legal compliance. Discover how quick, easy, and cost-effective it is to draft your website legal forms at www.DigiContracts.com.

Taking Action on Parked Domains

By Kerry Finch in Featured

Internet marketers and business owners who invest in dot coms tend to purchase the “org”, “net” or “info” variations and misspelled versions to prevent competitors from using them. These parked domains may be worth thousands of dollars someday if developed into thriving websites using an affordable site building service.

Benefits of monetizing

Maintaining a huge collection of names is a cash outflow that can be costly when you consider the renewal registration fees that you have to pay for them annually. Balance the outflow by monetizing them to promote cash inflow. Here’s what you can do with them:

Increase their resale value

Keyword names and those with suffixes other than “.com” don’t always sell well, if at all, in the resale market unless these point to active and thriving websites. Your strategy should be to build and develop multiple websites, generate traffic and sell products on them so you can easily resell them in bulk when you’re ready to unload these names.

Start a business

Sell your own items or promote affiliate products on your sites. With sales automation tools, your websites can turn into passive income streams so you can earn while aging your domains.

Build and lease

Offline businesses and traditional brick and mortar establishments often need websites with relevant keywords and visibility to jump start their entry into the Internet. You can fill this need by activating your domains, building sites and optimizing them with your target niche in mind and then offer to lease them for a few years and give them the option to buy the site and name at the end of the lease period.

What you need

You will need the following to monetize your parked domains:

1. website
2. content
3. traffic
4. products and
5. enough time for aging

If you’re an Internet marketer with advanced skills, aging websites is something you can do on your own, but could be overwhelming when you’re looking at a vast collection of about 30 to a hundred names.

If you don’t have the time or the skills for aging your own websites, why not follow the lead of domain experts who outsource this task and use a reliable service to do it for them? An experienced outsourcer will take care of building, adding content, optimizing and feeding fresh articles to your sites for you to get the best return on your investment.

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Start aging your parked domains now to get high returns on your investment. It’s hassle free if you let us help. www.domainnameaction.com

Reader Rescue: How important is domain canonicalization to SEO?

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Hi Kalena

I use a company that “specializes” in mortgage sites and hosting. Since I am in the process of applying everything I am learning, I saw fit have my site graded by one of the many online tools available.

The tool showed that my site is coming up for both the www and non www versions of my domain. When I enquired with my host about doing a 301 for my domain to one version, they said

“There is nothing we or you can reset on the Xsites as this is beyond anything we have control over. We do not support any of this nor have the capability for any one else to have it”.

How much is it going to hurt me in SEO if I don’t get this fixed like the site grader suggested?

Alex

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Hi Alex

What you’re referring to here is domain canonicalization.

Search engines can sometimes index both www and non www versions of your domain, creating duplicate content headaches for you and also link popularity dilution. Therefore, it’s best for SEO purposes if you can stick with one version of your domain and make sure all links point to that version. The www version is my recommendation because most sites will link to you using that version anyway.

Judging by the response you got from your hosts, it sounds like they’re not familiar with the issue of domain canonicalization, which is concerning. If your site host won’t allow you to use a 301 to create a conditional redirect to your preferred version, you probably need to get a new host! Alternatively, you can use the Canonical Link Element. You can also specify your preferred URL version in Google Webmaster Tools.

My blog post Does the canonicalization of my URL impact my search engine rankings? might also be of interest.

Kalena

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Got a Reader Rescue question of your own? Send it to kjordan [ at ] sitepronews [ dot ] com and you might see it featured here.

Reader Rescue : Does a longer domain registration period affect ranking?

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Hi Kalena

I was just wondering, does a longer URL registration period have a positive effect on a site’s search engine ranking?

Thanks,

Louisa
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Hi Louisa

Google has confirmed in the past that both domain age and ownership history may impact the way a site is handled by the algorithm, albeit slightly. But what you’re asking is whether registering a domain for a longer period of time makes a difference to the site’s ranking?

I haven’t researched this for other search engines, but I recall that a couple of people have asked this question in the Google Webmaster forum in the past.

Google staff member John Mu responded that the length of a domain’s registration period does NOT impact how Google ranks the site. As he states, many registrars don’t publish expiration details and so if Google can’t adequately determine when a site expires, they can’t compare it to other sites so they don’t include that as a ranking factor. Besides which, a registration period for a domain doesn’t reveal much about a site.

The content on the domain is much more important from a search engine perspective than how many years it has been registered for.

Kalena

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Got a Reader Rescue question of your own? Send it to kjordan [ at ] sitepronews [ dot ] com and you might see it featured here.

Understanding The Mysteries Of Website Aging

By Richard Adams in Featured

In general, Google gives precedence to older site’s in it’s results. That is, if two identical sites existed, the older of the two would likely rank higher in the search engine results than other.

This makes logical sense of course.

If a website has been up and running for some years it is likely that the webmaster cares enough about it to keep renewing it each year.

Equally his visitors like the site enough to keep returning – thus making it worthwhile for the owner to continue working on it.

Conversely spammers throwing up hundreds of por quality sites realise that their type of sites tend to be banned from the search engines quickly so these sites never last long. After all, why pay to renew a site if you can’t get any visitors to it?

And so this leads us to the mysteries of website aging.

In short, when you launch a new website you will typically have to wait anything between 3 and 6 months for it to really start performing well in Google.

Because of this, older domain names and sites have value purely in terms of their age. Indeed, some internet marketers refer to “aging” a website like a bottle of wine, for best results.

For new web masters this is often not a possibility but as your website empire expands you may want to consider this process for faster results.

The technique is incredibly simple, and essentially involves planning ahead.

You decide on the web site(s) you will likely be building in the next 3-6 month window and buy the domain names now. You stick up a one page “holding site” – the sort that simply says “This site is coming soon” – and then get it indexed in Google.

When it comes to the time to actually build the site you have a well-aged domain.

Another tactic in the websitw aging arena is to register domains for longer periods of time for the very reasons discussed earlier.

Some entrepreneurs have claimed that registering a domain for 2,3 or more even years rather than the standard 1 year will help to convince Google that you’re in for the long haul and that you aren’t planning any “funny business”.

One final technique to discuss on this topic is that of buying existing sites or domains that have been registered in the past.

Here’s an example.

Someone buys a domain, builds a website and markets it. They start generating links to the site buy eventually for whatever reason they stop paying attention to the site.

You may well be able to convince this person to sell you their site – a pre-aged site – for next to nothing which you can then turn into your own site for an instant search engine advantage.

Alternatively you can wait until the domain name expires and hope the owner doesn’t bother renewing it.

You could then snap up this domain for the price of any other – but this time it is pre-aged. It’s already in Google’s index and has links pointing to it.

So you bought yourself a considerable asset at a knockdown price.

Richard Adams has been teaching about ecommerce and online business since 2000 and has a free report for you on how to accept credit cards.

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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