5 ms·

Before anyone out there buys one of these domains for SEO-purposes: I work as a technical-SEO consultant and we had the funny idea of checking all these domain

Before anyone out there buys one of these domains for SEO-purposes: I work as a technical-SEO consultant and we had the funny idea of checking all these domains about a year ago: None of them are worth buying! None of them has any SEO-potential! - the page-rank passed from milliondollarhomepage.com to these domains is minimal (huge PR divided through tons of links is worthless) - domains expired for a long time get some sort of "reset" from Google (we experimented with this - strong domains last used years ago do not rank faster than "fresh" domains) Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger. And in general: Buying old domains for backlinks is a waste of time. Getting high-quality backlinks from legit sites and improving your own domain in regards to technical optimization and usability is much more effective - and scalable. Edit: Improved formatting

tobr 7y ago
> It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger. In your opinion, is this ethical?
- KabuseCha 7y ago
  In my opinion: It's neither ethical nor necessary! There are easier ways to get a website ranked. Publishing good and useful content, creating a valuable product, optimizing your site (for crawlers and users), and following a sane marketing strategy is much more important than backlinks and page rank. I never had any problems outranking poorly made sites that had a much "stronger" link-profile than my sites. Needless to say: You will also build a better product/business if you do not waste your focus on cheap SEO-tricks ... But I do not judge people using these tactics: SEO is daunting-game and - as long as Google acts as intransparent and unpredictable as it has in the past - people will focus on "esoteric" tactics.
  - _carl_jung 7y ago
    > Publishing good and useful content, creating a valuable product I follow a lot of indie game development forums, and one of the most striking things to me is how many people want to hit success with garbage casual mobile games by focusing heavily on app store tips and tricks.
  - itwy 7y ago
    This sounds like a diplomatic answer so you don't get downvoted. You say you are "technical-SEO consultant" then you say SEO tricks are useless and one should only create good contents and SEO will take care of itself. What are you useful for then (as a consultant)?
    - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
      you say SEO tricks are useless SEO tricks are useless, but that's not the same as saying SEO is useless: > optimizing your site (for crawlers and users), and following a sane marketing strategy That's a lot of what (non-jerky) SEO is these days. One can argue that it's not something worth hiring an SEO consultant for, as there's enough info floating around out there to do this yourself if you're moderately savvy. But there are folks who aren't savvy about that sort of thing, as well as folks who think it's just worth paying someone else to worry about it.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
      Because people need to be told this. Over and over again. A highly-paid medical doctor saying "You need to eat less and exercise more to lose weight" is not unexpected. The problem is that people really want to eat crap and not exercise and still be healthy. I (an industrial controls engineer) worked on a website for my employer's small business some years ago. I was given about 40 hours to design and implement the website to describe some 200 products that we've built over the years. Some had pictures, and some even had manuals. Most had some kind of a spreadsheet entry, but between Google (now Open) Refine and some intern hours we had a product page for each. "Magic algorithmic keyword SEO juice" was the desired strategy, such that each product page ought to zoom to the top of Google results for its search term, and I (not being a technical SEO consultant) was unable to effectively convince my boss that hiding 100 copies of the title and thesaurus-generated synonyms in white-on-white text at 0 point at the bottom of the page was not the way to do it, and that linking to it from a useful and therefore popular page would work better. A lot of small businesses view documentation as pure overhead, to be minimized at all costs. The idea that you'd have a project manager or engineer write up the email you sent (or phone call you narrated) describing how to calibrate an XYZ blagometer, copy edit it, add some diagrams, and post it as an article or whitepaper to improve future sales is viewed as wasteful and not worth the effort. The SEO industry is like the weight loss industry. When you hear an SEO consultant advocate creating good content, that means they're one of the good ones. If you hear them describe miracle cures, they're a hack.
- kabwj 7y ago
  Nothing about SEO is ethical. It’s about appearing on google when you wouldn’t under natural circumstances.
  - gbear605 7y ago
    It depends on the type of SEO. SEO includes, for instance, making sure that your page loads quickly when otherwise you wouldn’t have prioritized that. A lot of it is unethical though.
  - moonbug 7y ago
    What, precisely, is "natural" about Google?
    - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
      The progression towards evil as it became more of a monopoly.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    What Google has done over the years is thwart some of the scummy SEO practices by penalizing websites that do it; a big part of current-day SEO practices are to make your website conform to web and content standards. Basically, turn it into a decent site. There's still the black market SEO where people hire spambots to send links, but that's been thwarted / voided by just adding a nofollow to links in user generated content like comments.
    - mcnesium 7y ago
      but then you wouldn't do "search engine optimization", but rather proper web engineering.
      - Jorsiem 7y ago
        SEO has become an ambigous, all encompassing term. "Proper web engineer" is now a subcategory of SEO. Also "proper web engineering" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
- danvoell 7y ago
  In your opinion, is it not ethical? Should people not buy the real-estate either because a company went out of business there?
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    If you buy the storefront of a company that went out of business, keep the signage so their old customers will come in looking for them, and install a conveyor belt that whisks them directly to your store instead, yeah, that's unethical. There's honestly not a great meatspace analogy to the situation, no matter how you look at it. But it's clearly not the same as just buying foreclosed real estate.
    - travisjungroth 7y ago
      Buying a doctor’s practice feels a lot like this to me.
    - wolco 7y ago
      My local convience store is called Tom's.. It has been around for many years. The current chinese owners never changed the name nor the owners before. Same sign, same products.. nothing unethical. Kind of like when a big company buys a smaller company and keeps the brand name.
      - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
        > Same sign, same products.. nothing unethical. Exactly. If it's basically the same business under new management, there's nothing wrong with keeping the name. If it's a new business with no relationship to the old, trading on the name to grant false credibility and bring confused customers into their own shop, that's unethical.
        NikkiA 7y ago
        And kinda stupid if you're trying to game the reputation of a business that went bust.
stablethrowaway 7y ago
> Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger. I never understood how this works. What do you do with these domains? Do you just redirect them to the main business site or do you create a supporting site on them that heavily links to the business site? Anyway the old domains won't get any new attention if you don't work on that and then you can just can work on your main domain.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Anyway the old domains won't get any new attention if you don't work on that and then you can just can work on your main domain. It doesn't have to get any attention. Links (or a redirect, or other things) from it will still (massively, depending on the quality of the domain) improve your ranking. You could also throw some unrelated content on it, and will likely rank for quite a while until somebody complains loud enough that Google manually sets up a -100 on your domain.
paulpauper 7y ago
>And in general: Buying old domains for backlinks is a waste of time. Getting high-quality backlinks from legit sites and improving your own domain in regards to technical optimization and usability is much more effective - and scalable. Yeah no kidding. Like saying that a 5 star hostel is nicer than 1 star one. Obviously, it's much more epxnsive. If buying a $11 expired domain is good enough to help get the page indexed, then it may be worth it even if does not help your rankings. >Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger. yea this is old method that is saturated. there are many of ppl with programs scanning for expired domains
Maven911 7y ago
For someone who wanted to learn cutting-edge SEO (for Google mainly) what are some good resources ?
- hnjim 7y ago
  Ahrefs and moz have large amounts of tutorial content and posts that dig into current issues.
- russh 7y ago
  I'd start with "The Godfather" and if you still have any questions follow it up with parts II and III.
Piskvorrr 7y ago
Is this domain-name-is-everything.nonsense still a thing? Not in SEO myself, but even a few years back, the ranking was heavily shifted towards actual content, never mind the domain name.

tobr 7y ago

> It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger. In your opinion, is this ethical?

KabuseCha 7y ago
In my opinion: It's neither ethical nor necessary! There are easier ways to get a website ranked. Publishing good and useful content, creating a valuable product, optimizing your site (for crawlers and users), and following a sane marketing strategy is much more important than backlinks and page rank. I never had any problems outranking poorly made sites that had a much "stronger" link-profile than my sites. Needless to say: You will also build a better product/business if you do not waste your focus on cheap SEO-tricks ... But I do not judge people using these tactics: SEO is daunting-game and - as long as Google acts as intransparent and unpredictable as it has in the past - people will focus on "esoteric" tactics.
- _carl_jung 7y ago
  > Publishing good and useful content, creating a valuable product I follow a lot of indie game development forums, and one of the most striking things to me is how many people want to hit success with garbage casual mobile games by focusing heavily on app store tips and tricks.
- itwy 7y ago
  This sounds like a diplomatic answer so you don't get downvoted. You say you are "technical-SEO consultant" then you say SEO tricks are useless and one should only create good contents and SEO will take care of itself. What are you useful for then (as a consultant)?
  - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    you say SEO tricks are useless SEO tricks are useless, but that's not the same as saying SEO is useless: > optimizing your site (for crawlers and users), and following a sane marketing strategy That's a lot of what (non-jerky) SEO is these days. One can argue that it's not something worth hiring an SEO consultant for, as there's enough info floating around out there to do this yourself if you're moderately savvy. But there are folks who aren't savvy about that sort of thing, as well as folks who think it's just worth paying someone else to worry about it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    Because people need to be told this. Over and over again. A highly-paid medical doctor saying "You need to eat less and exercise more to lose weight" is not unexpected. The problem is that people really want to eat crap and not exercise and still be healthy. I (an industrial controls engineer) worked on a website for my employer's small business some years ago. I was given about 40 hours to design and implement the website to describe some 200 products that we've built over the years. Some had pictures, and some even had manuals. Most had some kind of a spreadsheet entry, but between Google (now Open) Refine and some intern hours we had a product page for each. "Magic algorithmic keyword SEO juice" was the desired strategy, such that each product page ought to zoom to the top of Google results for its search term, and I (not being a technical SEO consultant) was unable to effectively convince my boss that hiding 100 copies of the title and thesaurus-generated synonyms in white-on-white text at 0 point at the bottom of the page was not the way to do it, and that linking to it from a useful and therefore popular page would work better. A lot of small businesses view documentation as pure overhead, to be minimized at all costs. The idea that you'd have a project manager or engineer write up the email you sent (or phone call you narrated) describing how to calibrate an XYZ blagometer, copy edit it, add some diagrams, and post it as an article or whitepaper to improve future sales is viewed as wasteful and not worth the effort. The SEO industry is like the weight loss industry. When you hear an SEO consultant advocate creating good content, that means they're one of the good ones. If you hear them describe miracle cures, they're a hack.
kabwj 7y ago
Nothing about SEO is ethical. It’s about appearing on google when you wouldn’t under natural circumstances.
- gbear605 7y ago
  It depends on the type of SEO. SEO includes, for instance, making sure that your page loads quickly when otherwise you wouldn’t have prioritized that. A lot of it is unethical though.
- moonbug 7y ago
  What, precisely, is "natural" about Google?
  - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
    The progression towards evil as it became more of a monopoly.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  What Google has done over the years is thwart some of the scummy SEO practices by penalizing websites that do it; a big part of current-day SEO practices are to make your website conform to web and content standards. Basically, turn it into a decent site. There's still the black market SEO where people hire spambots to send links, but that's been thwarted / voided by just adding a nofollow to links in user generated content like comments.
  - mcnesium 7y ago
    but then you wouldn't do "search engine optimization", but rather proper web engineering.
    - Jorsiem 7y ago
      SEO has become an ambigous, all encompassing term. "Proper web engineer" is now a subcategory of SEO. Also "proper web engineering" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
danvoell 7y ago
In your opinion, is it not ethical? Should people not buy the real-estate either because a company went out of business there?
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  If you buy the storefront of a company that went out of business, keep the signage so their old customers will come in looking for them, and install a conveyor belt that whisks them directly to your store instead, yeah, that's unethical. There's honestly not a great meatspace analogy to the situation, no matter how you look at it. But it's clearly not the same as just buying foreclosed real estate.
  - travisjungroth 7y ago
    Buying a doctor’s practice feels a lot like this to me.
  - wolco 7y ago
    My local convience store is called Tom's.. It has been around for many years. The current chinese owners never changed the name nor the owners before. Same sign, same products.. nothing unethical. Kind of like when a big company buys a smaller company and keeps the brand name.
    - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
      > Same sign, same products.. nothing unethical. Exactly. If it's basically the same business under new management, there's nothing wrong with keeping the name. If it's a new business with no relationship to the old, trading on the name to grant false credibility and bring confused customers into their own shop, that's unethical.
      - NikkiA 7y ago
        And kinda stupid if you're trying to game the reputation of a business that went bust.

stablethrowaway 7y ago

> Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger. I never understood how this works. What do you do with these domains? Do you just redirect them to the main business site or do you create a supporting site on them that heavily links to the business site? Anyway the old domains won't get any new attention if you don't work on that and then you can just can work on your main domain.

luckylion 7y ago
> Anyway the old domains won't get any new attention if you don't work on that and then you can just can work on your main domain. It doesn't have to get any attention. Links (or a redirect, or other things) from it will still (massively, depending on the quality of the domain) improve your ranking. You could also throw some unrelated content on it, and will likely rank for quite a while until somebody complains loud enough that Google manually sets up a -100 on your domain.

paulpauper 7y ago

>And in general: Buying old domains for backlinks is a waste of time. Getting high-quality backlinks from legit sites and improving your own domain in regards to technical optimization and usability is much more effective - and scalable. Yeah no kidding. Like saying that a 5 star hostel is nicer than 1 star one. Obviously, it's much more epxnsive. If buying a $11 expired domain is good enough to help get the page indexed, then it may be worth it even if does not help your rankings. >Therefore, in the case of PageRank and SEO-potential: It is better to try to buy domains of local companies in your area that went out of business. These are much stronger. yea this is old method that is saturated. there are many of ppl with programs scanning for expired domains

Maven911 7y ago

For someone who wanted to learn cutting-edge SEO (for Google mainly) what are some good resources ?

hnjim 7y ago
Ahrefs and moz have large amounts of tutorial content and posts that dig into current issues.
russh 7y ago
I'd start with "The Godfather" and if you still have any questions follow it up with parts II and III.

Piskvorrr 7y ago

Is this domain-name-is-everything.nonsense still a thing? Not in SEO myself, but even a few years back, the ranking was heavily shifted towards actual content, never mind the domain name.