PALM BEACH, FL – About a year and half ago in April of 2018, I wrote about an out-of-the-ordinary domain name sale when the new gTLD domain “Vacation.Rentals” changed hands for a little over ‘half a million’ in cash, supposedly. I still sort of question the sale as either authentic and insane - or completely bogus, intentionally and strategically planned to not only create industry buzz, but boost sales for nGTLDs. Either way, and it probably doesn't really mater … [Read more...]
Exact Match Domain Names Yielding “Free Ticket to Ride” Long Over on Search Giant
PALM BEACH, FL – Exact match domain names, URLs which are spelled exactly how a top search term is used in popular verbal expression still work to help boost search rankings well when it comes to Bing.com and Yahoo.com, but on Google.com, it doesn’t seem to matter unless there are powerful “brand signals” in play, such as high numbers of inbound links, frequent references to the URL whether linked or not, and other popular signals such as social media activity with matching … [Read more...]
.COM “King” Chooses Alternative URL “.TV” for Latest Video Updates; No One Cares
PALM BEACH, FL – Few people know the “power” of a good .COM domain name better than Rick Schwartz, widely known as the “Domain King”, a federally registered trademark which represents his insight and experience in the domain name business, and more specifically, according to USPTO (TESS), the leasing of Intellectual Property. Most people who follow Rick and his domain name advice, which as of late, includes lots of video postings where he shares everything from trade … [Read more...]
Using Expired Domains and Domain Redirects to Increase Traffic & Rankings
PALM BEACH, FL – While I see domain name redirects in play - almost every day, rarely do I see them tied to an obvious tracking campaign as one I stumbled onto this morning. Most know, that it’s no secret using expired domain names as strategic acquisitions can be good for business. Just as in real estate, purchasing a good piece of commercial property will yield existing foot-traffic, likewise, purchasing an existing or expired domain name delivers its virtual equivalent … [Read more...]
Debunked: Why Do People Still Believe “Domain Name Age” Matters for SEO?
PALM BEACH – I stumbled on a post today about “domain age” and SEO and how it is a long debunked "myth" that domain name age matters when it comes to SEO, and that of course, it does not. But where did this (if even) false believe originate from to begin with?? Why do webmasters and domainers believe that domain age plays a role at all? Where did this myth come from? And was its source even reliable? It came from the horse’s mouth when Google filed its patent for “DOCUMENT … [Read more...]
Google Say’s Don’t Buy Domains for Past Rankings; Knows When They Change Hands
NEW YORK, NY – In an article that came out in Search Engine Roundtable the other day, long-time search marketing expert Barry Schwartz points out that a Google employee named Aaseesh, tasked with monitoring Google’s Webmaster Central Help Forum, posted a comment which suggests that Google zaps a domains ranking juice, not only when the domain expires (which most have already suspected), but also when the domain merely changes hands or is sold. This adds a new layer of … [Read more...]
Human Quality Ratings and Guidelines Continue to Become Center of Debate
NEW YORK, NY – It’s nothing short of amazing to see all of the time, money, resources and effort search giant Google engineers are putting towards accessing the trustworthiness of specific web-pages these days. I remember when the entire Google algorithm was simply based on the HTML code which made up a website. However, these days Google uses not only artificial intelligence to rank sites, but they also use 'real people' to give websites something called “QR” ratings … [Read more...]
Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Purchase an Ngtld Domain Simply for Search Rankings
NEW YORK, NY – Many who read this site will be familiar with the out-of-the ordinary sales of a few new gTLDs recently, one of which was Vacation Dot Rentals. I stumbled onto an old post about it over at Ricks Blog [I enjoy Rick's ramblings and story telling as I am sure many others do: The post was called "Fake site on a Fake GTLD Sale? The tale of “No Results Found” at Vacation.Rentals" - I'm sure you all read it.] I wanted to see where the site was ranking today … [Read more...]
LSIGraph: A Free, Yet Limited “Latent Semantic Indexing” Word Research Tool
NEW YORK, NY – You might be familiar with my list of online tools to run, market and manage your Internet business; or you might have just seen it for the first time today. I’m adding something new to the list. It’s called the LSIGraph, and it’s free for a limited number of searches. I’ll give you an example of how it works and how it might help your web pages rank better for online searches. For a quick visual on Latent Semantic Indexing, see this very old post. Note: … [Read more...]
Google Has Begun It’s “Mobile First” Indexing Endeavours; Email Notification
NEW YORK, NY - There has been a great deal of chatter on the Internet about Google's Mobile First indexing endeavours since March 2018 when it was announced. I was just explaining this to a client yesterday who happens to not yet have a mobile friendly website. Rather than giving a long explanation of what it is and why it is important, I could probably have simply forwarded this message I received from Google this morning letting me know that one of my sites will be used in … [Read more...]
An Unbiased New gTLD Case Study is Coming; Not Sponsored, Supported or in Anyway Influenced by Any Registry
NEW YORK - I'll have an interesting new gTLD case study coming in the next few days to a week or so. It’s going to be great, because I think it’s going to work. I think the position of the website in Google is going to improve greatly by doing nothing else but changing the URL to a new keyword rich gTLD. If I'm wrong I will have wasted another $150 on gTLDs, but either way I will learn and so will you. Now if you follow my updates you will be aware that I am usually more of … [Read more...]
The “Super Secret” to Appraising Your .com Domain Name for 2018 and Beyond
NEW YORK, NY - There have been many changes over the last five years when it comes to Internet domain names. I will say that this pertains to the average domain (web address), not so much a super-premium domain name, but your average .com two or three word domain name. For the most part, pricing has gone down, for whatever reason. Some changes you may have noticed such as: The EMD Penalty: Where Google will not simply rank the domain at the top of search for its exact … [Read more...]
Greatest Benefits of New gTLDs is PR, Temporary “Buzz Factor” “Link Equity”
NEW YORK, NY – A long time ago, say, 8-10 years ago, to effectively market a website on the Internet you needed to know how to do some very basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and you needed to acquire lots of inbound links to your site – from just about anywhere you could find them, and when you understood this and utilized it, you could reap tremendous reward from search engine traffic. This is because if you simply acquired or purchased enough inbound links to your … [Read more...]
The Disappearing Act of the Web’s Best Web Directories; Where Are They Going?
NEW YORK, NY – Last week, news began to circulate the search optimization-spear that DMOZ.org, one of the oldest and most trusted web directories ever online, was discontinued forever (as of Mar 17, 2017). DMOZ was considered such an incredible resource, that Google itself mirrored it at directory.google.com, as did thousands of other sites across the net. However, Google discontinued the mirror on July 20, 2011, less than a year prior to announcing its “Google Penguin” … [Read more...]
Verisign Still Pushing Hard on .Net Domains; Sales Remain Active; New IDN for Korea
NEW YORK, NY - While at NamesCon, I noticed a television commercial for the .net domain extension pushing it as a leading “trusted extension” and touting its long standing history in the domain space; the .net domain name was created on the same day as the .com in January 1985. (I’m pretty sure the video was part of Verisign’s “Uncommonly Timeless” collection of .net marketing pieces - it looked like one of these on YouTube [one is below].) According to Verisign, the … [Read more...]