Does Using Expired Domains For SEO Work?

November 30, 2012 By Joe Leave a Comment

Expired Domains For SEO

A large factor in search engine rankings depends on inbound links to your website. A great link building blog I read is Point Blank SEO. Check it out if you need link building tips!

Buying Expired Domains For Links

One article I came across on there recently suggests buying up expired domains and then redirecting the links to your website. Here is the article >> http://pointblankseo.com/abandoned-domains

The method explained is basically buying the expired domain (which only costs the registration fee) then putting up a number of pages of content and linking back to your website.

Another method discussed is buying and hosting the expired domain then putting a 301 redirect from that domain to your website. A 301 redirect passes 95%+ of the ‘link juice’ from one website to another.

I was doing some link building shortly after I read the post and came across a website in one of my niches which was expired. Bingo! I thought. I bought it, put it up on my server and did a 301 redirect to my website. The website had about 20-30 links which isn’t that many but they were good quality links and worth £6 for the domain I thought….

Top Authorities’ Views

I could see the potential of this method of link building so did a bit more digging before I invested any more time and money in buying expired domains. It was lucky I did because I found this post from Danny Sullivan who is a global leader in SEO http://searchengineland.com/do-links-from-expired-domains-count-with-google-17811.

In this article Danny states that when the domain expires it loses its link equity. Hence there is no point in buying expired domains for their ‘link juice’ as it is precisely zero. There’s this article too with a conversation with Matt Cutts, Google’s webspam guy where he advises against the practise >> http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019854.html

Hmm

I have done more digging and there are webmasters who insist there can be benefits of buying expired domains for links. Others suggest buying domains cheaply before they expire from, for example, Go Daddy auctions.

It looks to me like the only possible way to gain the link juice from old websites would be this: Buy a domain from an auction before it expires (no content on the site at this point), rebuild the website using http://archive.org/web/web.php and http://www.majesticseo.com/to find what pages were on the old website. Link back to your website/s from the pages on your new site.

According to Danny Sullivan in his article on the subject above this method would not work. However, there are webmasters and SEOs using this method or similar who insist they are benefiting from redirecting link juice from old websites.

There’s a Pin In It

In the future if I have the time and inclination I may try building links using domain bought at auctions but for the time being I am leaving the method to one side. As for the domain I bought with the 301 redirect set up, I’ll just leave it, unless I become desperate for room on the server.

If you are an SEO/ webmaster who can clarify, feel free to dive in in the comments.

Joe

PS. If you are buying domains, expired or otherwise, I recommend TSOhost, they are the cheapest and best.

Filed Under: Blog, SEO

3 Real Life SEO Tips for Manchester Businesses

November 16, 2012 By Joe Leave a Comment

I have been practising SEO for a little while now and I want to share with you 3 techniques which have brought massive traffic to websites I manage.

1. Create a Web Tool

I had a problem last year with a clients Twitter account. I needed to delete large numbers of tweets but couldn’t find an app up to the job. I thought it was a good opportunity to create one. I didn’t have the technical expertise but I found a developer who did and he developed an app to do one thing: delete all tweets from a Twitter account. The app has been live just over a year and now ranks no 1. for ‘delete all tweets’. It also ranks pg. 1 of Google for many related search terms.

The app now gets over 1,500 visitors every day and has attracted around 9,000 links. 7,000 of these are from one site but you have to agree that’s still not bad! I added the site to a handful of Twitter app directories and made a video which I submitted to around 10 video sites, the rest are organic.

Is there a simple web tool which customers in your industry could make use of? It could be good for SEO, generating leads and for branding. Making the app may not be as hard as you think. Get in touch if you need help with an idea.

2. Review an Event

One website I manage is a blog about an interest of mine. I went to an event and wrote a review. It was a local event in Manchester and took about 1 1/2 hrs of my time. I really enjoyed the event too!

In the review I mentioned people by name, I obviously mentioned the location and the name of the show etc. It was only natural to mention these things. This review has attracted over 110 links. The webmasters who linked must have picked the post up using Google Alerts.

The site which has the review on is doing very well in the Google listings and I attribute that in no small part to this 1 review. The great thing about these links is they are all natural and Google can tell, their algorithm is smart!

3. Tie in Content With TV Shows

When people watch a TV show which piques their interest they may well search for related content after the show. TV shows have resulted in a traffic spike on one of my websites and a traffic surge on a colleagues. I had 600 visitors in 24 hours and a colleague of mine has had 6000 from 1 show!

This all resulted from TV shows about which we had previously published related content. The content on my site was actually about a guest on a chat show. The guest was directly related to what I write about on that website so was a relevant subject. Writing about this guy has actually brought me 1000s of visitors in total now because of his media profile. These are targeted visitors too because his fans are interested in the niche.

This principle can be extended to relating your content to topical subjects, celebrities and events. If you know people are going to be searching for something soon write a piece about it, particularly if it is quite niche and few others will be covering it.

I hope these tips help. If you are based in Manchester and need help with SEO feel free to get in touch using the contact form.

Filed Under: Blog, SEO

Freelance SEO Manchester

September 19, 2012 By Joe Leave a Comment

Freelance SEO Manchester

Think Genial now offers honest, holistic SEO to Manchester businesses. That means we can increase targeted visitors to your website.

What I Learned

Working with businesses in Manchester and being a small business owner myself I have come to realise there is a big need for honest and effective SEO for small businesses. Print advertising is ineffective, online directories push you to take paid listings that send a trickle of visitors, you are bombarded by cold calls from SEO firms promising the world….

As a small business owner you face the dilemma of knowing you need high search engine rankings but not knowing how to go about it. If you hire an SEO firm you don’t have the knowledge to tell if they are doing a good job. Should you go with a firm someone recommended? Are you getting value for money? Is what they are telling you correct…?

Over the past couple of years I have been learning and practising SEO. I have optimised websites for local companies resulting in 1st place Google rankings and I have a number of websites of my own which attract significant targeted web traffic.

Freelance SEO Offer

I am offering keyword research, on site optimisation (if you have a WordPress website) and off site optimisation. If you don’t have a WordPress website the keyword research and off site SEO can be enough to get you a No. 1 ranking (examples provided).

The holistic approach means social media optimisation and optimising local listings. For further details please see the SEO page.

The SEO services I am offering start at £100. However, for a limited time I am offering a free SEO audit and basic keyword research*. With a list of quality keywords you will be well armed to work with another firm or if you decide to do some SEO yourself.

Why Contact Me?

Many SEO firms wont consider a project of less than £1k. The service I offer is for small businesses aiming at medium difficulty keywords so prices start at a lot less. You can spend hundreds on print ads and directory listings with little or no return. With my offer you will see the increase in visitors in Google Analytics. If you aren’t happy with the results after 60 days I’ll give you all your money back.

You may not believe I can significantly improve your web traffic and to be honest, unless you know me, I don’t blame you. There is a lot of false information and false claims made to local companies about SEO. If you contact me I will provide you with:

Free SEO audit*
List of keywords
Examples of SEO work I have done.

Contact me today for a free SEO audit and keyword list >> SEO CONTACT FORM

* Greater Manchester businesses only

Filed Under: Blog, SEO, Slider

WordPress Themes – Genesis Framework Review

September 7, 2012 By Joe 1 Comment

Do you want a good looking website? One that you as a beginner can install and customise yourself? Read on.

Getting Started

I got my first WordPress site around 2 years ago and my first self hosted site 18 months ago. I am not a beginner now, though it feels like it sometimes. I am not a ‘tech’ person and have few graphic design skills.

When I started self hosting I wanted to do things as cheaply as possible. I tried quite a few free WordPress themes, using Athualpa for a while. If I was going to spend money I wanted to make sure it was well spent.

I couldn’t find a free theme that did what I wanted so I started looking at premium themes and found the Agency Theme on Studiopress.

I asked around and reports were good so I went ahead and invested the Genesis Framework and Agency Theme for $79.95. With a little help from a designer friend I had the Think Genial site.*

Since then I have built 3 websites myself using the Genesis Framework and free themes. 2 of these are making me money as affiliate sites and they haven’t cost me a penny more from my initial investment. All are hosted with TSO host for a total of£4.99/ month.

WordPress Frameworks

A framework is a set of computer code which sits on top of the WordPress Content Management System. It adds more functions to WordPress such as easier customisation, enhanced security and impoved SEO. There are 2 widely used WordPress frameworks – Thesis and Genesis.

Genesis

Recommended by WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg
Used on over 80,000 websites
40+ Child Themes

Upload

You upload the Genesis framework through the WordPress dashboard like a theme. If you are using a Child Theme you upload Genesis first then the Child Theme. Any customisation is made to the Child Theme.

Child Themes

Agency Copyblogger (free) Genesis (free)

The Child Theme for this site has had a little modification from a designer. I used instructions found in the forum for my other 3 sites. The range of Child Themes is such that there is something for everyone. Its easy to change the colours, fonts, logo etc.

Support

65 Genesis Framework tutorials available
Tutorials for all paid themes
Expert moderators on forums
Learn everything from how to change design, add logos and customise just about everything in forums

SEO

SEO optimised out of the box. I recommend the free WordPress SEO plugin for further optimisation, though plenty of options available in Genesis.

Updates

When updates are available you will be notified through the dashboard. NB. Make sure you have the latest version if updating any Genesis plugins. Updating the plugins first has caused my site to go down. I needed to go into the FTP to fix it (it could not be done from the WordPress dashboard).

Plugins

There are quite a few great Genesis-only free plugins. Here are a few:

Genesis Hooks: Allows you to add bits of code without having to go into the CSS. If you want to easily add code for things like Facebook buttons or advertising you can use this plugin (tutorial available)

Footer Widget: If you want to add more footer widgets, use this

Design Palatte: Change the colour of backround, text, links and borders with a few clicks; change fonts too.

Who?

These big shots recommend Genesis.

Conclusion

If you are starting out with your first self hosted website I would take a look at the Genesis Child Themes. If you find one you like its worth spending $80. If you did want to make further websites you can do so for no additional cost. If you need more Child Themes they are $25 each once you have the framework.

There is an option to buy rights to all the paid themes for $349.95. I wouldn’t go for that unless you are a developer.

The all inclusive package has recently gone up $50 from $299.95 to $349.95. If you are considering making the purchase I would think about buying now to avoid any price increases. There is a 30 day money back guarantee if you change your mind.

Click here to visit the marketplace>> StudioPress Marketplace

*edit: The design for this site is now my own work. Studiopress redesigned the Agency theme and gave me download access for free because I had the old version. The logo was done by a designer.

Filed Under: Blog, Business Blogging, Review, SEO, Slider, Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing

WordPress Plugin Recommendations For a New Site

August 9, 2012 By Joe Leave a Comment

One of the best things about using WordPress is the plugins. Thousands of developers create plugins and a lot of them are free. I have been adding plugins to a new site today:

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

I use the Genesis Framework for all my sites which comes with a lot of SEO functionality. This plugin comes with additional functionality and instructions how to optimise your site.

By default the plugin gives your site great SEO. The options I have changed on other sites are titles and meta descriptions for the homepage and ‘blog’ page (for increased clickthroughs).

2. WP Security Scan

This plugin makes your site more secure. Hackers are constantly scanning the net for vulnerable sites. If you install this plugin and follow the instructions you can vastly increase the security of your site. Making your site editable from 1 IP address and securing the wp-admin page are a couple of the security steps.

3. BackupWordpress

If you value the content on your site you need to back it up. If files become corrupted during an update or if the whole site gets deleted, you have a copy of the site and can get back up and running. BackupWordpress is easy to use and can be set to automatically send backups to an email address.

4. Digg Digg

This is a social sharing plugin, used by a lot of popular sites eg. Mashable. You can make it easy to share your web pages through 24 social networks with Digg Digg, though you might want to make this number more manageable .

5. Fast Secure Contact Form

If you want people to be able to contact you through your WordPress site the best way is through a contact form. Using a form you don’t have to put your email address on the site, which can be picked up by bots for spamming. It looks professional and you can customise the form to request the info you need.

6. All In One Favicon

The favicon is the tiny image that appears next to the page title in the web browser. You can customise it with this plugin which accepts png and gif files as well as ico files.

Further Recommendations

Premise for WordPress

On some pages the action you want visitors to take should be very specific. Landing pages are pages on your site dedicated to converting visitors. That might be to leave their name and email address or to buy something.

To create landing pages properly you need a plugin. Premise works with any WordPress site to create fully customisable landing pages. Premise is a premium plugin. When you buy Premise as well as the plugin you also get access to a knowledge base which teaches you about landing pages and copywriting. The knowledge base is excellent and teaches everything from PPC optimisation to increasing traffic and conversion optimisation.

Mailchimp and Simple Popup

If you want an easy way to increase signups to a mailing list use the Mailchimp widget with Simple Popup. When visitors land on your site a popup appears requesting name and email address. You can set the time delay and other options and its a free solution.

Hope this helps,

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, SEO, Social Media Marketing

Tsohost Review

June 22, 2012 By Joe Leave a Comment

A web host is a provider that keeps all the files from your sites on its servers, making them available when people type in the URL eg. http://www.thinkgenial.com.

I currently have 8 sites hosted with Tsohost who I have been with for around 18 months. Here’s a quick review:

Overview

Founded 2003
Uptime guarantee 99.9%
Prices start £14.99/yr
UK based hosting
Linux or Windows
UK based customer service
Email/ email forwarding
1 click WordPress installation

Promo code, 10% off hosting: JWTG10

UK Based

Tsohost are a UK based hosting company with servers and customer service based in the UK. The location of your servers is important for search engine optimisation so if you are targeting customers in the UK you want UK based hosting.

The location of the customer service is important if you need to contact them. An American call centre may be closed when you want to call and that call may cost you a bit from the UK too.

Customer Service

The customer service from Tsohost is excellent. Their call centre is open 9am – 11pm and their staff are very technically knowledgeable.

The usual route if you have an issue is to submit a ticket and in my experience their reported average response time of 12 minutes is accurate. If I have ever had a problem it has been quickly and efficiently dealt with.

Products

The first domains I bought were from 123reg.com. However I looked into getting them from Tsohost and found them to be cheaper so have bought my last few domains with Tsohost. There is less messing around too if you buy hosting and domains from one place.

For one site I needed an SSL Certificate. This makes the site more secure and is standard for e-commerce sites. I looked around for the best deal and found that was with Tsohost too….

That brings us on to the pricing which starts at £14.99 for 2 sites. I am on the PRO package which gets you 6 sites for £49.99/ yr with a free domain worth £8.99. My other 2 sites I bought through a Tsohost reseller. If you need to add any more sites to the PRO package its an extra £25 for 5.

Promo code, 10% off hosting: JWTG10

Summary

For a small business owner like myself or a blogger I can’t recommend Tsohost highly enough. You get a handful of sites hosted for next to nothing and the customer support is first class. Reviews of their high end packages seem to be favourable too.

If you are looking for hosting in the UK I would definitely consider Tsohost. Use the promotional code JWTG10 to get 10% off any hosting package for life. Good for one per customer.

Visit Tsohost

I hope you found this review useful. Have you used Tsohost or another hosing company? What was your experience? Feel free to leave a comment.

Joe

Disclosure: The link to Tsohost above is an affiliate. If you click through and decide to buy, I earn a small commission.

Filed Under: Blog, Review, Slider, Web Hosting Tagged With: blog, customer service, hosting, SEM, SEO

8 Tried and Tested Linkbuilding Techniques

June 21, 2012 By Joe Leave a Comment

If you want your site to rank well in the search engines its important to get some backlinks. Try this:

1. Guest Posting

One great thing about guest posting is the sites you post on are relevant to yours. You can also choose keyword rich anchor text. This strategy takes time and effort which means your competitors have to expend similar energy to imitate you.

You have to make contact with website owners and have them agree to the guest post, you also have to write a decent article as the host won’t want any old rubbish on their site.

2. Sign up for Social Media Sites!

Many social media sites allow you to put a link in the profile. A lot carry a high PR or pagerank score which passes lots of ‘linkjuice’ to your site. Links from sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are great and there are many more social media sites you can sign up to. that brings us to 3…

3. Use Onlywire for Social Bookmarking

Though not really linkbuilding, submitting your site and blog posts to social media and bookmarking sites passes SEO juice to your site. With Onlywire you can submit a blog post to around 50 social media sites at once. You have to manually input details for all accounts once but after that you can make submissions with a few clicks. Edit – Onlywire used to be free, it is now a paid service.

4. Link Back from Web 2.0 Properties

This is part of a strategy I have been using for some affiliate sites and have found the overall strategy to work well. Create a profile (or use an existing profile), put a link back to your main site from the profile if possible and create a few articles for each site with backlinks in each.

To save time you can use article spinning software such as the best spinner. To spin an article just take one from your main site and put it through the software then read through and change any grammatical errors. These articles are fine for your web 2.0 properties which will be read by few people and are just for backlinking purposes.

5. Article Marketing

Use the article spinning software to create articles and submit them to article directories. The articles should be in reasonable English and should be unique each time.

6. Link Back from Video Sites

There are loads of video sites out there and you can get some good, high PR links from them. Post a few videos if possible and also add clickable links using html if possible too.

7. Use Fiverr

Fiverr is a site where people provide a vast array of services for $5 a pop. There is tons of fun stuff on there and you can also pay users $5 to build some links. Use with caution, you may want to blast a ton of links at your web 2.0 properties as the linkjuice flows through to your main site.

8. Hubpages and Squidoo

These are web 2.0 properties, however don’t use spun articles for these 2 as the content is more vigourously monitored. Also, if your article for Squidoo is less than great it will actually drop out of their listings and any links will not count. You need to put html into Squidoo to link from the main body of the articles.

Fantastic ways to attract links that I have yet to try!

Linkbait. If you have some excellent content and get plenty of people to give it a push using social media it can attract many thousands of links. Controversial posts can also be effective linkbait, however you need to bear your branding in mind so tread carefully.

Create an infographic: In the online marketing sphere there have been tons, however in many other industries there is plenty of room for useful infographics which could earn a lot of links.

Have a comment? Be my guest.

Take care,

Joe

Filed Under: Blog, SEO, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Linkbuilding, SEM, SEO

Delete All My Tweets

January 31, 2012 By Joe 27 Comments

Have you ever wanted to wipe the slate clean?

If you have ever managed any social media accounts, whether it be your own personal account or that of your employer you will have made mistakes. It is just human nature, we can’t do everything right all the time!

>> Delete All My Tweets

Here’s What Happened

I was recently asked to manage a Twitter account where 22,000 tweets had been automatically posted using the Twitter API.

The follower count was low, as you can imagine, and I was worried I would have a hard time attracting new followers.

The account had been mismanaged in the past but now was on the right track. The only trouble was I couldn’t easily communicate this to potential followers….

There was only one thing to do, I decided to delete all the tweets. I knew that with 500,000 apps available for Twitter there must be a few which could mass delete tweets. I didn’t know at this stage how ineffective they would be…..

>> Delete All My Tweets

‘Delete All Tweets’

I Googled ‘delete all tweets’ and a few apps came up near the top:

Twitwipe

TweetEraser

Delete My Tweets

I thought great! and set about deleting tweets. the first app I tried didn’t work at all, so I moved onto the next. This didn’t work properly either…. would any do the job?!

I was messing around for 2 days with these useless apps, the end result being I was down to 19,653 tweets. I gave it up as a bad job. The only trouble was now only 1 tweet was showing on the timeline!

Between them these ‘delete all tweets’ apps had deleted the tweets but not recorded it, completely screwing up the account!

After all this wasted time and effort and the resulting messed up account I decided to get together with a great developer and make an app which does 2 things – deletes all tweets from a Twitter account and takes the account back to zero.

What We Did

What we came up with was DeleteAllMyTweets. The app has now gone through rigorous testing and this version is highly effective.

Due to some technical aspects of the OAuth interface and server timing issues the limit to delete tweets has been set at 1000 per deletion. If you need to delete more, as I did, you will simply need to repeat the process a few times.

Let’s Face it…

There are times when you may need to reset a Twitter account.

It may be that an account has been mismanaged, maybe you have taken the account over and want to start afresh, maybe you have test accounts that you need to reset…

If you need to delete all tweets from a Twitter account it now couldn’t be easier, just jump on over to the app and give it a go!

>> Delete All My Tweets

Your friend,

Joe

PS. If you use the app and have any feedback please use the contact form to let us know so we can improve it even further.

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media, Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: customer service, Twitter, Twitter Marketing

The Most Powerful Technique

November 18, 2011 By Joe 8 Comments

The Power of Newsjacking

Like all great ideas the new book by David Meerman Scott leaves the reader thinking ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’, and the ideas in this book are great. The book is Called ‘Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage’ and is available by digital download only.

What is it?

The central idea of the book is that your company can gain massive media exposure by becoming part of a news story. To do this you must identify an item of breaking news where you can add value, produce some quotable content then get the content to journalists covering the story or get them to notice it. Your goal – to be quoted in paragraph 2 of as many articles about the story as possible. The net impact of a successful newsjack can be £1000s of free exposure for your company.

Its Easy

Sounds simple doesn’t it? and it is, but there are certain things which are mission critical if you want to be a successful newsjacker. DM Scott tells you how to put the systems in place to discover stories, how to get your article found by journalists researching the breaking news, he gives examples of successful newsjackers including a lady who newsjacked Paris Hilton and a porn king who is a serial newsjacker. He even shows you how to get the journalists bringing stories to you for your input.

Review

For me this is a fantastic book and the techniques are something I am going to encourage my clients to implement. I have immediately become aware of 2 great opportunities recently where one of my clients could have used newsjacking techniques to gain media exposure.

I have not read a Kindle book before and it was just like reading a high quailty ebook. I think it was the right decision to publish it in ebook format because the book is very concise and the links really add to it.

If there is one thing the book is a bit light on it is that DM Scott talks about the necessity for large companies and corporations to put themselves in a position to fend off newsjacking events but doesn’t really say how to fend off a newsjack in progress.

Verdict

I think newsjacking is going to become much more widespread over the next few months and years. If you are at all involved with marketing read this book now and get ahead of the trend!

Want to be a Newsjacker?

Put systems in place to monitor news and monitor avidly
Have the ability to publish at short notice
Use the right angle and the correct language in communications

Buy the book here >> (affiliate link)
Joe

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media, Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: listening, New Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

Buying Expired Domains For Links

Top Authorities’ Views

Hmm

There’s a Pin In It

1. Create a Web Tool

2. Review an Event

3. Tie in Content With TV Shows

What I Learned

Freelance SEO Offer

Why Contact Me?

Getting Started

WordPress Frameworks

Genesis

Upload

Child Themes

Support

SEO

Updates

Plugins

Who?

Conclusion

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

2. WP Security Scan

3. BackupWordpress

4. Digg Digg

5. Fast Secure Contact Form

6. All In One Favicon

Further Recommendations

Mailchimp and Simple Popup

Overview

UK Based

Customer Service

Products

Summary

1. Guest Posting

2. Sign up for Social Media Sites!

3. Use Onlywire for Social Bookmarking

4. Link Back from Web 2.0 Properties

5. Article Marketing

6. Link Back from Video Sites

7. Use Fiverr

8. Hubpages and Squidoo

Fantastic ways to attract links that I have yet to try!

Have you ever wanted to wipe the slate clean?

Here’s What Happened

‘Delete All Tweets’

What We Did

Let’s Face it…

The Power of Newsjacking

What is it?

Its Easy

Review

Verdict

Want to be a Newsjacker?

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