New Australian Business Directory Any Feedback Welcome

[ikonic]

Originally Posted by Gavin

Gee your a nice one. I do understand what your saying. Once i've evolved my site i may change the domain name. but we'll cross that bridge when i get to it. It's a good idea, but there is no point changing it now till i've finished what i started. Find anything does have a nice ring to it.

And this where experience comes in, you build up the site now find no one is clicking and you go ok, i'll start a new domain and push all the content across, but by then you've already lost.

Domain age is one factor in SEO and doing it right now is going to give more benefits then doing it later... trust me on this.

Not only that, you then need to implement 302 redirects to the new site to avoid duplicate content penalties, any backlinks you built up will before the change will require updating (if even possible) etc. Basically its just one big hassle.

Also, dont think of having to drop a domain name as a bad thing, currently I have around 100 domain for all different projects and im always buying more, letting some go and working out ways to maximise the ones I already have.

btw, here is a url I use a lot for determining keywords/domain names etc and it should hopefully help you out

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Using this tool, I can tell the term 'Anything Possible' appears in about 12000 searches a month on Google and Find Anything around 5400 a month worldwide (which is extremely low). Also since both terms have a low adsense level it would seem that not much conversions come from either term.

Personally I won't touch a keyword.com.au unless its getting 20k a month in local searches and a keyword.net.au unless its +100k (and the .com.au hasn't been developed).

[leadegroot]

I agree.
While it is fine to have a domain to play with and just see 'how stuff works', it is a mistake to think you can casually move things between domains later - its just not how successful sites work, sadly.
(Blame Google).
So, fine - play and experiment on this domain name, but don't think you can rebrand it easily.
Even calving off sub-themes (that have grown beyond 'sub theme' capabilities) to their own site can be painful.

[Gavin]

Originally Posted by leadegroot

I agree.
While it is fine to have a domain to play with and just see 'how stuff works', it is a mistake to think you can casually move things between domains later - its just not how successful sites work, sadly.
(Blame Google).
So, fine - play and experiment on this domain name, but don't think you can rebrand it easily.
Even calving off sub-themes (that have grown beyond 'sub theme' capabilities) to their own site can be painful.

so i shouldn't put "anythingpossible" on google then? if i'm going to move it all to "findanything" i wouldn't want to incur duplicate content penalties and i'd like to save myself the heart ache thanks leadegroot and ikonic i'll take anything possible off my webmasters list in google so it doesn't get indexed and i'll buyanother domain when i'm able

[newbie]

Originally Posted by Gavin

so i shouldn't put "anythingpossible" on google then? if i'm going to move it all to "findanything" i wouldn't want to incur duplicate content penalties and i'd like to save myself the heart ache thanks leadegroot and ikonic i'll take anything possible off my webmasters list in google so it doesn't get indexed and i'll buyanother domain when i'm able

There will be lots of people that disagree with me but I think that "duplicate content penalty" is more or less a myth, especially with hand-created sites.

What I mean is that if you point two domains at the same folder you are not going to double your traffic (or be harmed by it) but if you have two domains pointing at two folders, each with hand-created traffic it will not matter much if some of the entries are identical. I doubt that you would see any less traffic let alone be penalised for it.

I think you should shake off this idea of having only one domain, have two domains (two hundred is better) with one for freebies and one for shopping.

For freebies pick a phrase containing the word "free" or any word that stems from it and only settle on one with both .com.au and .com available. Same with Shopping - start with "shop" and go down the list from there. You never know your luck in a big city, somebody may have forgotten to re-register something good yesterday.

(Try another registrar like Enetica or similar, it is hard to find a fan of netregistry).

[ikonic]

Originally Posted by newbie

There will be lots of people that disagree with me but I think that "duplicate content penalty" is more or less a myth, especially with hand-created sites.

What I mean is that if you point two domains at the same folder you are not going to double your traffic (or be harmed by it) but if you have two domains pointing at two folders, each with hand-created traffic it will not matter much if some of the entries are
identical. I doubt that you would see any less traffic let alone be penalised for it.

Its important to distinguish between 2 domains with a similar url pointing toward a single instance of the code and 2 domains with different (unrelated) names pointing towards the same . I use this first technique with a ecom site and cc base TLD's with no issues.

Also, duplicate content imposes penalties in different ways, say site www.a.com ranks well for cars but for whatever reason the owner changes the site to www.b.com then since www.a.com has the content first this will result (in same cases) www.b.com not being shown in the result.

Google guidelines suggest

Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

There is also some more info at the following links
Webmaster guidelines - Webmasters/Site owners Help
Multiple Domain Names Penalty | WebProNews
Duplicate Content over Multiple Domains - SEO Issues? « Denver SEO & Web Design Blog
Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues
Duplicate Content on Mirrored Sites across Multiple Domains

[leadegroot]

i'll take anything possible off my webmasters list in google so it doesn't get indexed

Umm, just so you know - thats not how google works
WMT doesn't control whats in google, (although I think there is a 'remove site' link in there. sometimes it even works)
To stop your site appearing in the engines, put this line inside the head element of your html:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

or even add a disallowing robots.txt entry (although that doesn't always work as you expect)

and, I agree with the above - duplicate content isn't that big a worry in 99% of cases. (The other 1% get totally slaughtered )

[Gavin]

i'm taking anythingpossible off the web today. I've been thinking about taking up this guy on his personal self development program and using anythingpossible for that and linking that off find anything as well

i'll be registering a new domain(s) and starting "findanything" on a host that does php... we'll see what hapens and i shall be back soon for some feedback... you guys have helped this n00b lots. i'll let yall know when i'm ready cheers for your help so far every1

any recommended hosts?

[newbie]

Originally Posted by Gavin

i'm taking anythingpossible off the web today. I've been thinking about taking up this guy on his personal self development program and using anythingpossible for that and linking that off find anything as well

i'll be registering a new domain(s) and starting "findanything" on a host that does php... we'll see what hapens and i shall be back soon for some feedback... you guys have helped this n00b lots. i'll let yall know when i'm ready cheers for your help so far every1

You are more than welcome, Gavin.

Reconsider the "findanything" though - when was the last time you opened up a browser and seached for "find+anything"?

Try this page for hosting opinions

[Gavin]

never searched for find anything and i doubt many others do but i might have a sep domain for the shopping, free and bus directory, with the search engines it will index the sites right? so keywords thru out the welcomes/descriptions should get it on the engines.... then it wouldn't really matter what the site name is as long as it's something easy to remember..... i'm not too sure it seemed like a good idea when it was in my head any suggestions?

Findanything is easy to advertise as well ... it does have a ring to it and it's easy to remember as i said before

[newbie]

Originally Posted by Gavin

never searched for find anything and i doubt many others do but i might have a sep domain for the shopping, free and bus directory, with the search engines it will index the sites right? so keywords thru out the welcomes/descriptions should get it on the engines.... then it wouldn't really matter what the site name is as long as it's something easy to remember..... i'm not too sure it seemed like a good idea when it was in my head any suggestions?

Findanything is easy to advertise as well ... it does have a ring to it and it's easy to remember as i said before

Look at the winning domain names for a competitive keyword like flowers

There are hundreds of determinants of constantly-varying importance used to choose the page which ranks first but you might as well try to make every post a winner.

[Gavin]

i see what your saying. I would be taking a gamble doing find anything. but. it all depends on what people search for doesn't it?

I feel like such a n00b heh

If someone searches for something that is in one of my subdirectories with the right key words the site will come up in the search yeah? with SEO keywords does it have to be in the domain name or can i rely on descriptions and keywords in the first paragraph and title

[newbie]

Originally Posted by Gavin

i see what your saying. I would be taking a gamble doing find anything. but. it all depends on what people search for doesn't it?

I feel like such a n00b heh

If someone searches for something in one of my subdirectories with the right key words the site will come up in the search yeah? with SEO keywords does it have to be in the domain name or can i rely on descriptions and keywords in the first paragraph and title

I am sure you are right, (although in the "flowers" example the only site in the first ten without the keyword in the domain name was wikipedia).

Do not be too concerned about this, it is not the only thing or even a big thing. Nobody but nobody really knows what is right and the rules change constantly. However, it might be a good thing to have a keyword like "buy" or "shop" in your domain name if you are building a shopping site for example.

The sanest thing is build lots of relevant content without paying too much attention to seo except for the basics.

[leadegroot]

If someone searches for something that is in one of my subdirectories with the right key words the site will come up in the search yeah? with SEO keywords does it have to be in the domain name or can i rely on descriptions and keywords in the first paragraph and title

For a non-competitive search (ie no one else is actually trying to get that traffic) - yeah! sure! Good chance.
But for something competitive - lets continue the 'flowers' example shall we? - no, nope and no way - not enough. How do you know if something is competitive? Well, the first question is 'is there any money in it?' Guess what. All the fields that have someone running affiliate schemes have money in them, so they tend to be competitive.

There are many factors that determine which page 'wins' the optimisation competition. Keyword in domain is one of them. Content on the page is another. Page Rank is a very small one these days. Title content is another. Keywords in incoming links is a very weighty one at the moment.

But all those factors will change with time.
Knowing what is important this year is the trick.

[Gavin]

Originally Posted by leadegroot

For a non-competitive search (ie no one else is actually trying to get that traffic) - yeah! sure! Good chance.
But for something competitive - lets continue the 'flowers' example shall we? - no, nope and no way - not enough. How do you know if something is competitive? Well, the first question is 'is there any money in it?' Guess what. All the fields that have someone running affiliate schemes have money in them, so they tend to be competitive.

There are many factors that determine which page 'wins' the optimisation competition. Keyword in domain is one of them. Content on the page is another. Page Rank is a very small one these days. Title content is another. Keywords in incoming links is a very weighty one at the moment.

But all those factors will change with time.
Knowing what is important this year is the trick.

ok i get ya. since i'm not focusing on a particular niche it makes it hard to win the competitive searches. My aim is to make a site that has a dir of stuff to do on the internet and a shopping dir i'm going to be registering two domains one for the shopping dir 'australianshoppingonline' and one for the internet dir 'findanythingonline'

ive gone into the php templates in netreg and i never realised how easy it was to set it up haha i'll play with the templates with anythingpossible till i have the others registered and we'll see where we go from there

Keywords in incoming links is a very weighty one at the moment.

in incoming links?

[leadegroot]

in incoming links?

For example, we're currently talking on an Affiliate Forum.

Now, if the links on this forum weren't nofollowed [1][2] then I would just have helped the forum rank for the search phrase 'affiliate forum'.2
Add enough of those and the search engines start to go "hmmm, that site must be something people searching for 'affiliate forum' would want to see!"
(Offset by 'what, all those links say "affiliate forum"? Can't be natural - discount them!')

Its not an easy game we are playing

[1] no, I don't want to get into the technicalities of whether a nofollowed link gives keyword weight :-P
[2] thats interesting - links to the forum are dofollow. Cheeky! I want followed links to! Waaaa!