September 1st, 2010
One question which is often asked is how important is the age of a domain name (web address) when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation?
The points behind this question include:
- well-established sites have old domain names, so by reverse logics, an old domain should mean that the site is well established;
- spammers register and drop domains quickly, thus logically spamming sites usually have newly registered domain names.
Generally, webmasters agree that domain age isn’t the most important Search Engine ranking factor but opinions vary:
1. it can be no factor at all;
2. it can play only a single minor factor in the millions of other factors (but it still is);
3. it matters a lot.
Google’s patent “Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data” of 31/03/2005 implies that Google does look into domain registration (1) and renewal (2) dates:
1. … the date that a domain with which a document is registered may be used as an indication of the inception date of the document.
2. Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains.
… Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.
While the patent does sound rather straightforward (by the way its official version is no longer available online, so it might have been deleted), domain age factor is both overestimated and misinterpreted. The point is simple: domain registration date cannot speak for either quality or trustworthiness of a website as:
- domains can be registered but never used for a long time (parked);
- new domains can be used for highly established companies (with the old domain redirecting to the new one);
- domain name can be used for illegitimate purposes for years and then sold to a “good” person/company without any change of the initial registration date.
Thus our verdict to the whole dispute is as follows:
1. Website age (and its backlink profile age) is what really matters;
2. Domain age can play a minor part only as damping factor – i.e. one of the factors signaling the search engine that this might be a spammy / illegitimate site;
3. Old domains may carry more weight due to their past records (i.e. old backlinks pointing to them) – this can be a good point to consider but then again if you are serious about your brand, keep in mind that an established domain already has associations and history before you own it and they might be hard to conquer.
Conclusion: domain registration date won’t of course hurt but it will hardly help. So we would focus on registering a new short niche-related and catchy domain name instead of trying to buy an old (previously owned by someone) one.
Posted in FL1, Marketing, Search Engines | No Comments »
August 6th, 2010
It’s the summer holidays for many, and things typically slow down.
Not for us I’m glad to say, as the internet gets busier and busier with more online business being done than ever before.
A key part of making any business work is being to measure its performance and make effective decisions on your findings.
The internet is no different.
Using tools such as Google Analytics, it’s possible to see what’s working and more importantly not working with your website.
We continue to get asked more questions about Google Analytics than any other subject, that’s why we’re offering a free training session throughout this August.
Drop us a line or follow this link if you’d like to know more.
Posted in FL1, General, Marketing, Search Engines, Technology | No Comments »
August 2nd, 2010
It’s been an interesting past few weeks at FL1 Group.
As well as building blogs, shops and content managed websites, we’ve been involved with securing a company’s website that wasn’t PCI/DSS compliant. The website stored credit card details in a database that was hacked into and the credit card details were retrieved. Two of them were used fraudulently, and that’s where the story began. The banks got involved with fines and costs to recover the costs of the fraud. Added to this the company has been forced to go through a programme of becoming fully compliant. To-date, adding the costs of consultants, website changes, fines, costs to re-issue cards, and significant amount of off-line processing changes and new equipment, the cost to the business at this current time runs in excess of £170,000!
This particular business is lucky enough to be owned by a much larger parent company that could absorb these costs, but these sorts of costs would easily put most small companies out of business.
It’s been an eye opening project that’s for sure, and based on what we’re learning from it, we’ll certainly be putting together a seminar to help more business understand what PCI/DSS is all about and how to stay on the right side of the banks.
It’s not all been about “the dark side” of the internet though…honest!
Ali’s been settling back in and taking to his new role as designer and project manager like a duck to water.
We’ve also teamed up with some a partner that will help our online stores excel using the shopping and affiliate portals, which has to be a good thing in these challenging times.
More on that next month!
As Google’s superb Analytics package gets better and better, we’re proud to announce some free workshops we’re running throughout the summer holidays. We install it on every single website we build, so if you’d like to know how to see how your website is really working, let us know.
The most important thing to consider, is tools like Google Analytics allow you to discover what’s working, but more importantly what’s not!
If you’d like to book a Google Analytics workshop or want to know more about PCI/DSS, drop us a line or call 01727 739812.
See you next month!
Posted in E-commerce, FL1, General, Search Engines, Seminars, Technology | No Comments »
May 26th, 2010
Apart from eating doughnuts, drinking tea, talking at seminars and building blogs and online shops like there’s no tomorrow, what have we been up to?
Well, we’ve been quite a creative bunch really!
Web designer Alex (Janchi) and his band Brocker got to the finals of the Battle of Bands at the popular St Albans live music venue The Horn.
Jason’s band the Kings of Langley have been busy playing throughout St Albans and Hertfordshire, to see Jason and his bass in action soon visit www.kingsoflangley.com
We’re also proud to support a fantastic local event raising money for Leukaemia and Lymphoma research. The event is called the Bond Ball and is held at Chesfield Downs Golf Club, Gravely on Friday 4th June 2010 and has support and raffle prizes from a host of local businesses including David Lloyd, Ocado, Willows Farm, Woburn Safari park, Morrisons supermarkets and Champneys to name a few. For more details on attending this great night out or becoming a sponsor, visit www.bondball2010.co.uk.
We’ve got a few new seminars lined up too including a half-day follow-on to the workshop we ran at excellent Big Event recently called Monitising your blog. We’ve also put together a new seminar for anyone trading or considering trading online aimed at helping you trade legally, securely and best utilising the major search engines and shopping portals.
For more information on what we’re up to or for further details on any of the above, drop us a line at client@fl1group.com or call us on 01727 739812.
See you next month!
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May 6th, 2010
These are busy times here at FL1 and I’m pleased to report we’ve a few new faces.
Thanos joins us to replace Jason Margolin on the PHP development team. Claire joins us on the ASP.NET team, and Alex joins our design team.
The word on the street has it Ali might be re-joining us again soon too!
We’re also pleased to announce Jon joining our team. Jon’s a highly experienced graphic design, project manager and internet consultant with a vast wealth of knowledge and experience. He also makes a damn nice cup of tea!
So what have we been up to?
Well, building blogs, thanks for asking!
If you’ve ever thought about blogging, and wondered if it might work
for you, then you need to read this http://blog.fl1group.com/tag/blogging/.
To get you up and running, we’ve got a fabulous offer running this month that will get you and running with a top-notch professionally set up WordPress blog
See you next month!
Posted in FL1, General | No Comments »