Kikabink News

If you have even a vague interest in buying and monetizing domain names… want to buy an expired domain… or simply want to understand the life cycle of a domain name, check this out:

==> Domain Life Cycle

It’s a nifty diagram and explanation of how domain names go from being available for registration… to expiring… to dropping… to becoming available again.

Search Engine Roundtable recently published a transcript of a presentation given by Shawn Moore, where he lists seven (7) proven ways to get a page #1 listing.

Mr Moore’s 7 tips are:

1. Have good copy, images, videos, content, etc to support your keyword research. In other words, ensure your landing pages not only reflect what people are searching on when using certain keywords, but also effectively persuade visitors to take the most desired action (MDA).
2. Ensure the navigation and architecture of your website are easy for the search engines to navigate.
3. Write a blog, and maybe include images and videos too.
4. Aim to acquire quality, keyword-rich inbound links.
5. If using a database, make sure it’s easy for the search engines to navigate.
6. Send out press releases online.
7. Have a domain name strategy. Aim for keyword-rich domains or, if possible, forward such domains to your primary website. And register your domain name for the long term.

Source: Shawn Moore, “7 Proven Ways to get Your Website on Page 1 Organically & then Convert”, Search Engine Roundtable, August 19, 2008

No one, except the search engine themselves, knows exactly what goes into the algorithms that determine where a website ranks in the organic search engine results pages (SERPs).

But there is a general consensus over the four (4) critical factors that affect your ranking. And it’s these factors that you really want to focus your attention on in order to improve your ranking:

1. Domain Age

In general, the older the domain, the higher a website will rank in the SERPs. This is for a number of reasons. One of which is the fact that Google’s patent specifies domain name age as being a factor in how it ranks websites, another being that older domain names (e.g. expired domain names) are likely to have more sites linking to them.

2. Content

The search engines tend to favor websites containing plenty of copy. According to Mark Jackson of Search Engine Watch, you want at least 150 words on a webpage, and this should include a decent smattering of your targeted keywords, which should ideally be within the first paragraph of text, and in your H1 tags.

3. Title Tags

Your webpage title tags should include the keywords targeted for that webpage.

4. Links

Domain age, content and title tags are all necessary… but not sufficient. Getting back links from authoritative and relevant websites is where the real search engine optimization game is at. The more quality back links your website has, the more highly it will rank in the SERPs.

Source: Mark Jackson, “Search Engine Optimization: Back To Basics”, Search Engine Watch, August 19, 2008

No Internet marketer – well, no Internet marketer with at least a passing interest in search engine marketing – should be without:

1. The Firefox web browser - whether Firefox 2.0 or 3.0 (the latest version); or

2. The free SEO tools and software available from Aaron Wall’s Seobook.com website. These are available as plugins for Firefox.

I’ll cover some of these tools in future issues of Kikabink News. For now, though, let me explain why Aaron’s RankChecker tool is a must-have.

To put it simply, if you want to know how your website ranks for one or more keywords… RankChecker will tell you. You basically type in your domain name, type in however many keywords you wish to check, click “Start” and RankChecker will tell you where you rank (if at all) in Google (US and international), Yahoo Search, and Microsoft Live. You can also export the results in CSV format (i.e. to save in your spreadsheet program).

Click here to download or learn more about RankChecker (yes, it works with Firefox 3.0).

If you haven’t already, click here to download Firefox 3.0 (I’ve heard a couple people say it’s buggy but it seems fine to me… and it certainly leaves its main competitor in the dust).