Archive for July, 2006

If you are serious about building your .com empire, VPS is a recommended solution.

VPS is a truly isolated and private environment. You get root access, your own software and you can depend on guaranteed resources. With Virtual Private Server (VPS) a web server is divided into multiple isolated environments. As with a dedicated server, each VPS has its own independent operating system with its own web server, mail server, and independent software instances. What this means is you can enjoy the freedom and flexibility of a dedicated server at a fraction of the cost.

There are lots of VPS hosting providers, we chose http://www.serverintellect.com/

Here is a Google Search to get you started: http://www.google.com/search?q=vps+hosting

One risk of VPS is that your domains will share an IP address. Even if you co-locate, your non-shared IP addresses will probably be from the same C class. If you truely want to have unique IP addresses for every domain, you will need to have them setup at different hosting services.

We have thought about buying a few hosting accounts for specific applications like Wordpress Blogs, .php software, throw-away domains, to spread out the IP’s. If you are curious how this works, test your current domain to see which domains are assigned to your IP Address.

• Go to http://www.dnsstuff.com/ andEnter the domain name into the “Domain Info” box and click “Get Info”.
• You will be taken to a page with some terrific information about the domain. The IP address for the site will be listed halfway down the page on the right side, and it will be a link.
• Click the IP address link, and under “Reverse IP”, you will see how many sites this IP address hosts. You can also click on that result and dig even deeper.
• Click the “X websites” link for the reverse IP lookup. On your first visit, you will have to register for free.
• Sign up using an email address that you can actually check (a confirmation link will come via email to activate your membership).
• Once you are a member, this tool will show you every domain name on the server. “1 websites” means you are the only domain on that server, and it’s probably dedicated.

There has been debate for awhile regarding whether or not using a static IP address is better than having a dynamic IP address for your website. By preference myself and I think I speak for many SEO’s, we prefer the use of a static IP address when hosting a domain. There are many reasons for this, such as for linking, avoiding penalities on the same IP C Classes blocks, and so on. If you are doing a major site, its just a better idea to have a dedicated IP than a shared one.

Generally speaking having a website on a shared IP address will not cause you any harm. You can rank just fine and there is nothing negative about hosting on shared IP’s. So don’t worry if you site is on it. However what is important to know as I was told is how, Google in particular and possibly other engines look at these static and shared IP.

Regardless of the the goal of your website, having a decent looking site is key to converting your website visitors. Unless you have designed sites previously, I would recommend using available web site templates that are either free or very affordable.

Free Web Site Templates
http://www.freelayouts.com/templates/website/
http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com/template4.php
http://www.freetemplatedesigns.com/templates.php

Affordable Web Site Templates
http://www.templatemonster.com
http://www.boxedart.com/

These templates will get you off the ground quickly. Most of them still require .html knowledge, and even some minor changes in a graphics programs (we use Adobe Photoshop). But having good layouts and images for your website is important for your business.

Finding places to submit your new domain name can be challenging. Here is our current list of avaialable domains submission forms where fees are not charged:

Free Domain Name Submission
1) http://www.anzwers.com.au/suggest_site.html
2) >http://www.exactseek.com/add.html
3) http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
4) http://www.infotiger.com/addurl.html
5) http://pages.alexa.com/help/webmasters/#crawl_site
6) http://www.burf.com/submit.php
7) http://www.entireweb.com/free_submission/ http://searchsight.com/submit.htm
9) http://www.fybersearch.com/add-url.php
10) http://www.walhello.com/addlinkgl.html
11) http://submit2.jayde.com/
12) http://www.stpt.com/directory/addsite.htm
13) http://linkcentre.com/
14) http://www.nationaldirectory.com/addurl/
15) http://search.msn.co.in/docs/submit.aspx

Added 10/5/06 

16) http://kerplop.com/SubmitURL.htm
17) http://sonicquest.com/Submit.htm
18) http://searchramp.com/addurl.asp
19) http://unasked.com/addurl.asp

If you know of any others, please leave them in the comments (we will approve valid comments within 24 hours).

One of our first SEO experiments was finding and purchasing expiring domain names.

Where Can I Find Expiring Domains?
Anyone can download Expiring Domains with an account from http://www.pool.com for the next 5 days. An expiring domain name will have been in a “Pending Delete” status for around 90 days prior to the day it is released.

Why Would I Buy An Expiring Domain?
The attraction to an Expiring Domain might be as simple as a current link in DMOZ.org or the Yahoo Directory. These links can be difficult to get and take lots of time, so an expiring domain found in one of these directories can yield instant traffic and link popularity (or PageRank).

How Much Does It Cost?
Pool.com and SnapNames.com were two of the companies we used and they each charged around $60. When we tried to capture the Expiring Domain, we used Pool.com and they only charged our credit card after successfully capturing the Domain. GoDaddy.com has a back ordering service that only costs around $20 per Captured Domain but they do not have as much success capturing sought-after domains. Note: These fees include 1 year of domain name registration.

How Should I Determine The Value of An Expired Domain?
We used two metrics to determine the value of the domain: a) Directory listing in either DMOZ or Yahoo b) Current links to the domain name in Yahoo or Google To find these domains, we used a third-party software/service that checked 100’s of expiring domains daily to determine which one’s had value. Once identified with potential value, we would check the link and indexed page quality in both Yahoo and Google.

Is Purchasing Expiring Domains A Good SEO Business Practice?
We purchased 3 expiring domains for $60 each and placed content on the sites. In the first 90 days of owning these domains, they have generated approximately $20 worth of Adsense revenue collectively. Based on the amount of work involved and the competition from other SEO players, we decided to experiment with other SEO strategies.