11 replies to this topic

[w0051977]

Hi,

I have a Wordpress Blog, which I use to write about software development. The URL has no relevance to the content of my Blog, which I believe hinders my SEO efforts.

I am thinking about registering and setting up a parked domain (the parked domain will have a relevant name to my blog) and their will be a permanent link redirection (301) setup from the parked domain to the original domain. However their seems to be mixed opinions of this approach as to whether it helps or hinders SEO efforts because of content duplication etc.

I would be grateful for any advice/opinions.

Regards

[mickmel]

It'll make no real difference. Content duplication is irrelevant, since the parked domain will be content-free.

If you're really concerned about this, you could try doing it the other way -- move your site to the new domain name, and then 301 the existing URL over there. That would certainly have a short-term negative impact on your SEO, but might be worth doing long-term. It'd be a risk, though.

[Kernelpanic]

Have you considered using a sub-domain to place your non-relevant content? nonrelevantcontent.yourdomain.com

Edited by chrishirst, 11 July 2010 - 02:46 AM.

[chrishirst]

I have a Wordpress Blog, which I use to write about software development. The URL has no relevance to the content of my Blog, which I believe hinders my SEO efforts.

Actually you would be wrong.

The URL has little or no relevance for SEO.

[w0051977]

Thank you everyone for your responses

chrishirst, say my blog is about Java and my new url is javadevelopment.com (this is just an example). Then someone typed in java development into Google - wouldn't they have a better chance of finding my site if it had the parked domain with a more relevant URL? rather than just my name: ian-stanford.co.uk (this is just for example purposes). I realise that there is a lot more to SEO like meta tags etc, but I still thought the URL choice was important.

Regards

[Kernelpanic]

Actually you would be wrong.

The URL has little or no relevance for SEO.

respectfully sir, you are wrong. During beta testing of caffeine we tweaked a crawler app we have and performed 300 Google searches, 100 highly competitive terms (like furniture), 100 moderately competitive (like granite counter tops) and 100 local searches (search appended with geographic area).
Links for each site in the top 5 for every search were analyzed and given a score based on relevance, age of domain (which is only a rough indication of link age((age of domain has no bearing on authority)) and page rank. the study went 100 links deep where applicable, on every result. (about 11k links were analyzed).

I then factored the title relevance and URL. Each site was given a score and sites with KIDs performed an average of 21% better.

We then performed the same test using Caffeine beta. KID sites performed +15%.

If you have any evidence that shows KIDS have no bearing on ranks, I would love to hear about it.

[Kernelpanic]

Thank you everyone for your responses

chrishirst, say my blog is about Java and my new url is javadevelopment.com (this is just an example). Then someone typed in java development into Google - wouldn't they have a better chance of finding my site if it had the parked domain with a more relevant URL? rather than just my name: ian-stanford.co.uk (this is just for example purposes). I realise that there is a lot more to SEO like meta tags etc, but I still thought the URL choice was important.

Regards

Meta tags have no bearing on ranks

[w0051977]

Thank you KernalPanic you have given me a lot to think about.

Back to my original question. Would it be better for me to register a new domain name and park it on my existing domain? I have heard that this can have a negative impact on SEO. I found the following post, which basically says as long as it is done properly it should not have a negative impact: www thesitewizard.com/domain/point-multiple-domains-one-website.shtml. What do you think?

Regards








<live link removed >

Edited by chrishirst, 11 July 2010 - 08:20 AM.

[chrishirst]

respectfully sir, you are wrong. During beta testing of caffeine we tweaked a crawler app we have and performed 300 Google searches, 100 highly competitive terms (like furniture), 100 moderately competitive (like granite counter tops) and 100 local searches (search appended with geographic area).
Links for each site in the top 5 for every search were analyzed and given a score based on relevance, age of domain (which is only a rough indication of link age((age of domain has no bearing on authority)) and page rank. the study went 100 links deep where applicable, on every result. (about 11k links were analyzed).

I then factored the title relevance and URL. Each site was given a score and sites with KIDs performed an average of 21% better.

We then performed the same test using Caffeine beta. KID sites performed +15%.

If you have any evidence that shows KIDS have no bearing on ranks, I would love to hear about it.

And did your "testing" remove the factor of LINKS to the site/pages that use the URL as the anchor text or did you simply choose to ignore the moderately important effect that anchor text has on Google results?????!!!!!!!

[Jill]

respectfully sir, you are wrong. During beta testing of caffeine we tweaked a crawler app we have and performed 300 Google searches, 100 highly competitive terms (like furniture), 100 moderately competitive (like granite counter tops) and 100 local searches (search appended with geographic area).
Links for each site in the top 5 for every search were analyzed and given a score based on relevance, age of domain (which is only a rough indication of link age((age of domain has no bearing on authority)) and page rank. the study went 100 links deep where applicable, on every result. (about 11k links were analyzed).

First of all, what does the caffeine update have to do with anything? The changes Google made for the new infrastructure of how they crawl sites wouldn't effect whether or not a URL with keywords would be more likely to show up than one without.

Second of all, you did automated queries on Google with a crawler? I find it hard to believe that you could get results since they disallow automated queries and would have shut you down while trying to do them.

Third of all, how could you examine the links pointing to the sites since there's no way that I know of to know all the links that point to a any site.

Fourth of all, of course domains with keywords in them would be most likely to be optimized for the keywords that are in the name, and therefore would be more likely to show in the search results.

Fifth of all, none of that means that domains without the words in the URL have a lesser chance of showing up if the website was just as optimized for the keyword phrase.

To the original poster, I would recommend that you keep the domain that you have and simply optimize it for the keyword phrases you want to rank for. It's worked for most of us for 2 decades and should also work fine for you. You can always add keywords to your file names if you're concerned about it.

I can assure you if you get a new domain for this purpose and optimize the site the same as your current one, you will be disappointed in the results.

[Kernelpanic]

lol guys, ok. You can't send automated queries is the funniest thing I ever heard Good luck with your forum, when facts punch you in the face, just ignore them

[chrishirst]

lol guys, ok. You can't send automated queries is the funniest thing I ever heard Good luck with your forum, when facts punch you in the face, just ignore them

Well HR does seem to have survived without your valued input for SEVEN years (in six days time) so you won't mind if we carry on just doing what we do.

But of course, you do not have to take our word for it.

http://www.google.co...mp;answer=66357

http://www.google.co...%...f74f3&hl=en

http://forums.search...read.php?t=4588