9 replies to this topic

[snidely]

Great to be a part of the forum :) I hope I put this in the right category :)

Is it true that a domain name is better to have than a URL from an ISP in terms of making the search engines happy? Thus www.yourname.com would be better than www3.yourISP.com/username?

What would happen if you have a domain, but have it forwarded to your ISP URL-how do the engines feel about that scenario? Would one get less coverage?

Thanks for your help

Snidely

[Jill]

Welcome, Snidely! (Is this you? :stash: reminds me of Snidely Whiplash from the old cartoon )

As for domains, you definitely don't want to forward one. It's fine to use a directory as your main domain, just like this forum does: highrankings.com/forum Not a problem at all.

Where it's a problem is if you're using a free hosting company that often hosts lots of spam pages. You don't want to really be part of that sort of thing. But if you're on a regular domain and use a specific directory on it, you shouldn't have any problems.



Jill

[snidely]

Hi Jill,

Great icon, that gave me a laugh!

Thanks, I hadn't even thought of the spam angle.

The client is on a general ISP domain like www.earthlink.com/username (not exactly this but you get the idea!), that is why the forwarding looked so attractive.

She has just purchased a .com domain and wondered whether she needed to host it-and I think the answer now would be yes.

Thanks again-I love the forum and the newsletter-do you ever sleep???

Cheers

Snidely

[mcanerin]

Jill, Are you sure about the forwarding one?

Not questioning you, but I want to make sure this is not a "I don't like it" vs "The search engines don't like it" scenario.

The reason I ask is because I have a client that has a site already designed on their local ISP directory "www.isp.com/users/site" and although the site looks very nice, the URL looks unprofessional.

They (naturally) don't want to pay for web space when they already have it and want to use URL cloaking so that www.domain.com resolves to their current site. Most current DNS services companies offer this, often for free/cheap, and I was planning on using it. Note that this is a DNS forward, not a metatag refresh forward. There is no landing page that does a fast redirect.

If you know something I don't here please let me know before I go ahead with this. Thanks Much!

Ian

[snidely]

mcanerin thanks for beinging this up-as I now have a secondary question that relates directly to your email.

My client is wanting to do the exact same thing-only the redirect-no metas. Thus I will be interested in the replies

I also have a client that is going one step further. They will have the same forwarding but it will also include meta tags (but no page I gather). This sounds like what you mentioned. Is this not a good thing for one to do as it may anger the engines?

Cheers

snidely

[snidely]

It is a day of more question-however this one is another version of what I originally asked (I thought I might as well get them all out now!)

The registrar I use to book domains and have them forwarded also offers domain gripping. It is a variation of Domain Forwarding. Gripping creates an 'invisible' frame that holds ("grips") the desired URL, while displaying the content of the site being forwarded to. Thus instead of seeing www.myisp.com you will always see www.mydomain.com on all pages.

Would this be the same as forwarding? Or would it be classed in the meta tag group?

Thanks for your patience.

Snidely

[Jill]

Jill, Are you sure about the forwarding one?

Not questioning you, but I want to make sure this is not a "I don't like it" vs "The search engines don't like it" scenario.

Ian, no problem, question me all you want! I definitely don't know everything!

I should have said, that it depends on the kind of forwarding. I've seen some of those supposed forwarders that just put your site in a frame, and that sort of thing. Or it's a meta refresh, etc.

Certainly, I would agree that if you do it at the dns level, there should not be a problem at all!

With hosting costs so low these days, however, personally, I'd just pay for hosting. But you are right, that's more of an "I don't like it" thing then the search engine's don't like it. It really depends on how you do it.


Just read Snidely's last post too...and that's exactly the kind of fowarding...through frames, that I was talking about as being the bad kind! Those are generally death to search engine rankings!

Pay a few bucks and host the site. It's so cheap. And you know what? It takes money to make money. It's not gonna break the bank to host a domain and a site. You will be very happy that you did it, once you do it!

Jill

[schecky]

Here's a neat DNS service I've been using so I can flip a site between different versions while building this site. If the site goes down we go to this site change the IP and instantly we are now serving from the second site. No DNS trickle down to worry about!

http://www.dyndns.org

[mcanerin]

Dyndns is very well though of, though my fav right now is Zone Edit.

Ian

[snidely]

Jill, thanks for posting that info-I am glad I asked Don't want to get the clients on the 'bad side' of the engines!

Thanks again

Snidely