Using Custom Short Domains with Social Networks Posted by Kristi Hines

Do you share your social profile links via Twitter, or on other social networks where there is a character limit? Do you want to track the number of times that your profile link was clicked?
If you answered yes to any of the above, then the obvious thing you would want to do is put your social network URL through a URL shortener. But, if you’re like me, sometimes you’re a bit wary of clicking on shortened links, as they could lead to anywhere, and you’re probably not going to spend the time to research them either.
New people that you send links to may feel that way, especially if you’re sending the link via DM, such as the common “Thanks for connecting with me on Twitter – let’s connect on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. as well.” So the only option is to send them a shortened link they can trust.
Custom Short Domains for Social Networks
Here’s where Bit.ly comes in. If you use Bit.ly to shorten your profile links with networks that have a custom short domain, then people will know that they are going to a page on that specific network. The following social networks have their own custom short domain:

• LinkedIn: linkd.in
• Facebook: on.fb.me
• MySpace: mysp.ac
• Foursquare: 4sq.com

I’m sure there are more, but let’s start with these. Just take your social profile link from these networks and pop them into the Bit.ly shortener. Instead of just any unidentifiable bit.ly link, you will get the custom short domains for the network instead.
I started with my LinkedIn profile, and took it from 39 characters down to 23 characters. You should try to start by getting your shortened profile as small as it will go, such as linkd.in/firstname.
Sorry, That Username is Taken
You will probably want to customize your shortened link further by adding your own name instead of having the random 6 characters. Unfortunately, what you use for your first profile not be available for the next one you shorten, as it recognizes that custom part as being used in the bit.ly system.
Hence, when I was doing mine, linkd.in/kristi wasn’t available, so I did linkd.in/kristih. Then for Facebook, I had to do on.fb.me/kristi79 because on.fb.me/kristih wasn’t available, and so on. Because of that, you will need to consider which network you want to get the shortest first, and then go from there.
Beyond Profiles
Besides your main social profiles, what else can you use these custom short domains for? Consider shortening the links of your fan pages, groups, company profile, and any other page that you regularly refer others to visit.
Organization
I would suggest keeping your customized shortened URLs in a spreadsheet, that way when you need to share them, they will be easy to find and reference quickly. And you will have them for later when you want to check your stats as well, which you can do by adding a plus sign at the end of the shortened URL, for example linkd.in/kristih+.

Your Shortened URLs for Social Networks

Again, I know there must be other networks with shortened URLs like the ones for LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, and Foursquare. Please let me know what they are in the comments, and share how you use these shortened links for your own profiles and other social networking pages.

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Domain age checker

Domain age checker

With this tool you can find the age of domain names and check if domain available to register or in use.

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Is Domain Age Important SEO for Google Rankings? by ecreativeim.com

The short answer to the question is yes, domain age is an important SEO factor for your Google ranking. Among the hundreds of weighting factors that Google considers in determining how to rank search engine results is the age of your domain — in other words, how long that domain has been around.
It’s worth noting that domain age isn’t referring just to how long you have owned a given domain name, but instead how long it has been since Google first indexed that domain, or saw a link to the domain. Because of this many companies purchase “aged” domains that have been around for a while for the extra bit of Google oomph. Of course just because a domain has been registered for 10 years doesn’t mean that Google considers it 10 years old — it has to have actually had a site indexed by Google.
In other words a domain that’s been registered for 10 years but has no actual site up, or nothing that Google has ever found, is the same as a domain that you bought yesterday.

How Important is Domain Age for SEO & Ranking in Google?

There is a certain amount of debate about exactly how important domain age is to your ability to rank well, but testing and experience by SEO professionals paints a pretty clear picture that an older domain age competes for rankings a bit better. In fact, Google has even stepped forward to tell us a little bit about the importance of domain age, though as usual they’re still holding their cards close to their chest.
Here’s the basics of what we know:

• Domain age is a factor in determining Google rankings, and a part of our SEO.
• Sites are significantly devalued for the first few months after Google first discovers them. It is extremely challenging to rank well for competitive terms in those first few months. In fact, some SEO professionals simply won’t work with brand new domains.
• According to Google’s Matt Cutts, the difference between a domain that’s 6 months old and 12 months old is very small.

What Google’s matt Cutts has to say on domain age

Here is a video from Google’s Matt Cutts on the subject:
One of the very important things to note here is that Matt does not say that domain age doesn’t matter. There are a handful of people out there who insist this is the case, and cite Matt Cutts as the source. In point of fact, he clearly indicates that very young domains will struggle to rank, and goes on to mentions the difference between domain ages, saying that they are small… clearly indicating that there is, in fact, a difference.

“The difference between a domain that’s six months old vs one year old is really not that big at all. As long as you’ve been around for at least a couple of months, you should be able make sure that you can show up in search results.”

But as with all things in the SEO world, domain age is just one of many, many factors and it is certainly not one of the biggest factors (those would be on-page optimization and backlinks). Older domains will certainly have a little bit of an edge, but the importance of their age is often confused with the fact that older domains also tend to have a lot more backlinks (and natural backlinks) just due to the fact that they’ve had so many years to acquire them.
But as long as your site has been around for longer than those first few months when domain age is a big factor, you should be able to swing with the oldest of them and claw your way to the top of your Google rankings!


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Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: What are Domains? by Smoz

Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: What are Domains? by Smoz: Domain Domain names are the human readable Internet addresses of websites. Root domains, which are identified by their domain names,...

What are Domains? by Smoz

Domain

Domain names are the human readable Internet addresses of websites. Root domains, which are identified by their domain names, have extensions such as .com, .org, .net, etc. (Ex. http://www.example.com) Subdomains are a lower level component a root domain and precede the domain name. (Ex. http://subdomain.domain.com)

Top Tips
 

• Word Separators
  Avoid hyphens. Hyphens detract from credibility and can act as a spam indicator.

• Top-level Domain (TLD)
  Top level domains (like .com) are the extensions associated with domain names. For best ranking results, avoid uncommon top-level domains (TLDs). Like hyphens, TLDs such as .info, .cc, .ws, and .name are spam indicators.

• Length
  Avoid domain names longer than 15 characters. Short domain names are easier to remember, easier to share and have less of a chance of resulting in typos.

What are Domains?

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Root Domains

A root domain is the top level hierarchy of a domain. Root domains are purchased from registrars. The following are examples of root domains:

• *.example.com
• *.seomoz.org
• *.blogspot.com

Subdomains

A subdomain is a "third level" domain name that is part of a larger, top level domain. For example, "blog.example.com" and "english.example.com" are both subdomains of the ".example.com" root domain. Subdomains are free to create under any root domain that a webmaster controls.
The two most common subdomain choices are:

• http://www.example.com (www is the subdomain)
• http://example.com (has no subdomain)

These are also the subdomains that commonly result in canonicalization errors.

SEO Best Practice

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To maximize search engine referred traffic, it is important to keep each of the following elements in mind:
1. Domain Name Memorability
There are a number of considerations when selecting a domain name. Among them are making the name short, easy to remember, and easy to type. It is also important that the name be easy to type into a browser. This is especially true for word of mouth advertising which forces people to type in domain names into their browser that they might not be familiar with.
2. Keyword Rich Domains
Ideally, webmasters should strike a balance between finding a catchy, unique, brand friendly domain name with having a domain that contains keywords that they are trying to target. The benefit of a keyword rich domain is two-fold. First, the domain name itself is a key ranking factor that the engines consider when calculating ranking order. Second, having relevant keywords in a domain name is beneficial because the domain name is the text that other Internet users will use as anchor text when linking. Since keywords in anchor text are an important ranking factor, having these keywords in a domain name has a significantly positive impact on ranking.

From: Are Exact Match Domains Too Powerful?

 3. Hyphens
For readability sake, a domain name that is longer than 3 words should be separated with hyphens. That said, use of hyphens also correlate with spamminess so domain names with more than 3 words should be avoided.
4. Non .com Top-Level-Domain (TLDs)
When a webmaster registers a domain name, they will be given the option to buy additional TLDs. In order to maximize the direct traffic to a domain, it is advised that webmasters should only buy a domain if the .com version is available. Additionally, it is not recommend that SEO conscious webmasters purchase low quality TLDs such as .biz, .info, .ws, .name, etc. as a means of increasing traffic.
5. Subdomains or Sub-folders
Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exception to this is language specific websites. (i.e. en.example.com for english)
6. Buying & Redirecting Domains
Buying web pages for their links and redirecting them to another site has long been a practice employed by SEOs. Though historically this has been effective, industry leaders (such as Danny Sullivan) post on buying domains suggest that Google largely devalues links from sites once they are expired or when ownership changes.
7. Domain Registration Length
The notion that domain registration length matters as a SEO factor is a myth. When asked about domain registration length Google's Matt Cutts said "To the best of my knowledge, no search engine has ever confirmed that they use length-of-registration as a factor in scoring. If a company is asserting that as a fact, that would be troubling. The primary reason to renew a domain would be if it’s your main domain, you plan to keep it for a while, or you’d prefer the convenience of renewing so that you don’t need to stress about your domain expiring."
8. Moving Domains
If a webmaster needs to move one domain to another, there are several critical factors to consider. It's also important to set up the redirects on a page-to-page basis such that sub-folders and deep content pages are redirected to corresponding sub-folders and deep content pages on the new domain. SEOs should avoid redirecting all pages from one domain to the homepage of another domain. For more information, see Danny Dover's step-by-step guide to How to Properly Move Domains.

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Multiple Domains and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Multiple Domains and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

By Margaret Winfrey in SE Optimization

09 2011 Wednesday

14

Because the search engines, including Google, place a lot of value on the actual words in the domain itself, many people are now trying to Search Engine Optimize their web presence by buying domain names that contain their target keywords.
It’s not a bad strategy because it doesn’t hurt you – but how much does it really help you?
Let’s say you now have 30 domains, all containing your target keywords, but not including your main website. What can you do with them?
1. Keep them registered and do nothing. This prevents competitors from registering them and using them for their benefit. End result: No SEO value, for obvious reasons.
2. Within your registrar’s account, you can set up 301 Permanent Redirects for each one, redirecting them to your main website. End result: No SEO value, but if someone types in the exact domain name of one that you have registered and redirected, he/she will be taken to your main website, so you might get some traffic, but not likely and not much.
3. Use them for a mini-site buildout. This strategy is to actually use each domain on its own by building a mini-website around it. End result: Potentially a TON of SEO value.
Let’s take a look at this “mini-site buildout” strategy; the one with the most SEO value.
One by one, you take each domain and host a site for it. If you have a hosting account for your main website, chances are you can just add on new sites to that same hosting account. This is very common and you can easily find out if you can do this and how you can do this by calling your hosting company to inquire.
Once you have your hosting set up and each domain pointing towards its own mini-site, you then want to build each site.
To build each site most easily, you should do two things: first, plan all the content around your main keyword (the keyword that is in the domain name) to include both articles and videos; and second, develop the site using some type of ready-to-go website template with a built-in CMS (Content Management System). Probably the best CMS to use in this case would be WordPress because it is very user friendly, search engine friendly, easy to set up, and there are a ton of free (and well-designed) templates out there.
OK, so now you’ve got your domains pointing to their own respective mini-sites, you have created all the content for them, developed the sites, and finally published all that content you created on to the sites, hopefully using a CMS like WordPress to do it.
Now, keeping your main website in mind, you’ll want to make sure you drive traffic from your mini-sites to your main website. To do this, simply include content about your main website in those mini-sites and include links going back to your main website. Furthermore, if you have a business phone number and operate over the phone, make sure to include your main business phone number on all those mini-sites.
There are more advanced SEO techniques you should employ but that is way beyond the scope of this information piece.
In conclusion, if you have already invested, or want to invest, in buying multiple domains for SEO purposes, then put them to good use. Keeping them “locked up” unused or simply redirecting them to your main website is not an effective strategy. You want to use them to build out an “Internet empire” with a lot of “Internet real estate” all focused on your target keywords and eventually leading people to your main website and business.

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Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: Sub-Domains For SEO Is No Good by Jon Waraas

Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: Sub-Domains For SEO Is No Good by Jon Waraas: I used to use sub-domains a ton for my websites, since Google used to treat a sub-domain like its own website it was pretty easy to rank s...