Archive for January, 2007

If you are like me you have many domains just sitting around not doing much. I keep a notebook of ideas and when a new idea pops into my head I do two things. I write it down in the notebook and I buy a relevant domain. I may or may not actually develop the idea anytime soon but buying the domain early ensures I get what I want.

You have a number of choices when it comes to dormant domains. Some people are lazy and just leave them parked at their registrar. Other people use PPC parking services to earn a few bucks. I personally like to put my domains in the virtual wine cellar (domain cellar?) to age.

With Google’s current algo, older domains have a much better chance to rank. Over at WebmasterWorld there is a discussion going on whether just having a domain registered counts toward the aging. In my opinion it does not.

I believe you need both content and links on a domain for it to start aging in Google’s eyes. So this is how I prepare my domains to store in the domain cellar.

• Add domain to one of my reseller hosting accounts (unlimited domains).
• Create a front page with a minimalistic design.
• Add brief paragraph on the subject matter the domain is about.
• Add 10-20 internal links to subcategory pages containing 2 frames.
• Each subcategory page used the page name convention key-word-phrase.html.
• The top on-site header frame contains a logo and internal links.
• The lower off-site frame points to another website that is already ranking for the target sub-content.

I don’t bother putting up adsense or any monetization. The investment in the domains future is worth way more than a few adsense clicks or domain parking pages can earn me.

Now that it’s up, make it a habit to get 2-3 links a week for each domain (link condom free). With the number of user generated content sites on the web this should not be hard or take much time.

In a year or so when I finally get around to developing a site I don’t have to worry about a sandbox and the domain has enough history to rank for what I want. So stop wasting precious your domains on domain parking pages and get them ready for the future. You might even get lucky and even start ranking for some keywords before you start to build an actual sites. I actually know of several sites that have such frame pages ranking for certain keywords.

I read someone’s comment on a blog today stating they didn’t think ALT text meant much to Google. There is so much misinformation dealing with SEO it’s sometimes hard to tell the truth from the bull. The confusion usually stems from either old information still live on websites or just the fact that much of what we do is based on past experience. A lot of what I see on forums these days is the blind leading the blind.

While doing a site search on Google for Xuru.com you will find evidence that Google treats ALT text as nothing less than on page content. I used a template for Xuru.com and didn’t do much in the way of SEO to tell the truth. On my category pages where I did not add a description tag, Google is showing the top most content from the page since there are no keywords provided in the search box to center the search listing around. See where I highlighted in the first listing “balloon left slice right slice.” That is the ALT text for the balloons in the pager header. To me that is proof positive that the ALT text is content to Google.

Somehow this post slipped through the cracks but better late than never. I’m sure most of you know Andy Beal and the MarketingPilgrim.com website. Andy was nice enough to invite me to be a contributing blogger.

If your not already reading his site, you should be. You can see my contributions so far here. This doesn’t change anything here. You will still see regular updates on Xuru.