pilkster.com » Domains and Domain registration

Optimizing For UK And Local Search Engines

pilkster — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:24:08 +0000

Although I live in Australia at the moment, I am an Englishman and most of my SEO and marketing has been done in the UK. I consider UK engines to be much easier to optimize for than US engines as the competition is less. It is possible therefore to be successful working with a broader niche when marketing using natural search in the UK as opposed to the USA.

When marketing to a local audience (and by local here I mean anywhere but the US) most marketers overlook the fact that your whois information is freely available in most cases to the search engines, and that other factors such as the location of your hosting are easy to determine.

Local engines already give trust to ccTLD’s (country code Top Level Domains), and I predict this is set to increase as search algorithms improve. Consider this before you buy domain name. Most local engines are not as advanced as global engines, and often the marketers working these areas are not as sophisticated as those playing in the big money arenas.

Last year I had a great deal of success with MSN UK. The weighting given to UK domain names and especially UK web hosting by MSN was unreasonable; I could rank first for some fairly major keywords by using a UK domain registered at my UK address, UK hosting, and a few low quality inbound links (just to get indexed). No real on-page optimization was necessary, and the quality of content did not seem to be relevant at all. Although MSN’s traffic levels are nothing like Google’s, being in the top spot for many high value keywords made me some good money

There is no geographic restriction on owning a UK domain like there is on owning .us domains, and registration is cheaper than .com’s. Nominet, the UK domain registry, give non-trading individuals an ‘opt-out’ option on whois.

If you are serious about doing business online in the UK from abroad, consider registering a UK Limited company. It is a fairly cheap and simple thing to register a UK Limited company online. Most ‘company formation’ companies offer a registered address service which is a UK address at their offices that will suffice for the purposes of registering and administering UK domains.

Having your UK domain registered to a UK address, or your whois information hidden, may be a good thing in the eyes of the search engines. If they aren’t using this information in their ranking algorithms for local search now, it would make sense that they will in the future.

One way for your link monkey to hunt down other local sites to beg links off is to use a reverse IP lookup on a small site that is hosted in the correct country. Small sites tend to be on shared hosting and many shared hosting packages also share IP addresses.

In summary, when marketing to local search engines:

Register a ccTLD (possible bonus points for local address for the registration).
Host within the country.
Aim for a good proportion of links from sites with the same ccTLD you are working with & also hosted locally.

Useful links:

Expired Domains Prime for Scraping

pilkster — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 20:33:52 +0000

SEO egghead’s post about penalties associated with expired domains leads me to think an excellent blackhat technique would be to exploit lists of expired domains AFTER they had been snapped. Grabbing feeds from these sites for scraper sites could provide content unique in the eyes of Google.

Not my kind of thing, but I know some people who might think it a good idea.

.eu day has been and gone

pilkster — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 11:34:34 +0000

.eu day came and went last Friday. I think a lot of people were dissapointed – especially with the attitude of some of the registrars (godaddy for example) – and with the big boys and their benelux trademarks.

Myself, I caught a few crappy domains and a big bill (60euro each from pool, but only 11euro for the few I got at internet.bs

The few better ones that I caught with pool are now at auction – I guess I will have to sit & think on a value for them.

Would you tarnish your reputation for $5?

pilkster — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 11:26:58 +0000

Well would you?

Domain tools

pilkster — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:43:39 +0000

Hunting around for a decent domain? Check this post on domain tools.

Buying websites… checks to make

pilkster — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:43:30 +0000

I’m not usually one for the forums, and don’t bother reading n00b posts when I do go sniffing around, but this response to a n00bs question about the pitfalls of buying sites is excellent:

Buying a site is usually plain sailing when you are dealing with someone reputable, like Honey says. A couple of things I do before buying a site …

Run a linkage data check using SEOBook’s LinkHounds
Use the Neat-o backlink tool from WeBuildPages to find anchor text on inbound links
If linked from the Yahoo! directory, is it a recent addition with a recurring annual fee
Is it in DMOZ.org?
Does it have any .ac.uk / .edu / .gov links?
Ask about existing reciprocal links, will they stay up?
Ask if there are any paid links, if so what do they cost per month?
Establish the history of the domain using Whois.sc
Does the site rank in Google / Yahoo! / MSN? If so, what are the phrases?
Does the current owner buy traffic using PPC?
Get screenshots of income and traffic stats (Forget about Alexa)
Chat with the vendor
Check out their history on other forums by searhing for their name

I tend to concentrate on getting a solid picture of the site’s foundation because this is what will make you the money in the month’s ahead.

Once you are satisfied, go ahead and make the deal. Settle on a price and a timeline. Most buyers accept PayPal for smaller transactions. However, if you would feel more secure using an escrow service then go for it.

Good job, Andy Boyd. One of the best posts I have ever seen on Digital Point, and a real help to newbies & some of us more ‘experienced’ types too.

Expired and deleted domain names.

pilkster — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 17:37:59 +0000

Buying an expired domain name that has been used previously to host a site related to your topic is becoming a a popular way to get cheap targeted traffic. People allow domain registrations to expire and become deleted for different reasons, and may not realise the value they have.

How to find expired and deleted domain names and websites

Deleted and expired domain names can be found at many domain registrars, however some charge for the service. Some of the sites I recommend are:
pool.com

What to look for in an expired or deleted domain name

Before buying a deleted domain name check out the following:
Is the domain still listed at the major directories?

Being listed in the major directories is important not just because of the traffic that they provide but because they give a boost to your domains ranking at google and other major search engines.

DMOZ Submission and acceptance at DMOZ directory can take time, and may be impossible depending on the nature and content of your site.

Yahoo! If the domain is listed at Yahooâ€™s directory it can save you the $299 cost of submission for a commercial site, or a serious wait for listing of a non-commercial site.
Does the domain have incoming links?

This can be checked at google using a link: search, for example use link:pilkster.com
What was the domain previously?

Checkout the previous life of the the domain at the wayback machine, archive.orgâ€™s cache of the web. Using the wayback machine can also reveal the identity of the domain names previous owner.