1+ web addresses in google ranking etc

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bill Kennedy on January 26, 2012 at 4:53am

The common wisdom is that people tend to search using the terms "hypnosis" and a geographic location, like "Seattle."  

Permalink Reply by Julias Shaw - The Mental Artist on January 26, 2012 at 9:25am

Hi Sarah,

The short answer to your question is... Yes, this will affect you (negatively) in Google a bit.

Any time you redirect someone from one site to another you lose a bit of the link juice (that's the importance a search engine assigns your page because of another page linking to it) that it would have gotten. Depending on how the redirect is done that link juice may be lost entirely. Various test have shown that correctly done redirects will preserve 80%-95% of the link juice. Fortunately your redirects are correctly done with 301's and http refresh.

The bigger problem is that you have multiple redirects chained together. This means that links to www.mm-ch.co.uk and www.mindmatters-ch.co.uk are passing somewhere between 64% and 90% of their link juice. This can be easily fixed by changing www.mm-ch.co.uk and www.mindmatters-ch.co.uk to send users directly to mm-ch.tumblr.com. 

How important this is depends on how many people link to each of those pages or share them on places like Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. The more shares and links a page gets the more important Google thinks it is and the more important it is for you not to waste any of that link juice. 

My questions back to you are... why do you have so many domain names and what are your goals for the tumblr site?

Cheers,

Julias

Permalink Reply by Ian Last on January 26, 2012 at 2:08pm

Hi Sarah,

The following quote is from Google's Webmaster Guidlines  ( http://www.google.com/webmasters/ )

"Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

......

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

What it is basically saying is that if you do have multiple domain names, put UNIQUE content on a landing page for each domain.  After that you can have a link to the main domain. (Cutting and pasting will cause Google penalties because of duplicate content.)

NOTE: This is not the best way to handle multiple domains, but is much better than the way it is currently set up, the best way is to get rid of them and concentrate on 1 domain name only.

Bill hit the nail on the head - "mindmatters" will only be searched on be people who have heard of and are looking for "mindmatters", whereas  "hypnosis" followed by location as the domain name will be searched on by everyone in the area looking for hypnosis practitioners.

Permalink Reply by Craig Eubanks on January 27, 2012 at 11:07am

 

Hi Sarah,

 

SEO is complex because Google guards it's algorithms for search results like the USA guards the gold in Fort Knox.  And they CONSTANTLY change the algorithms.  SEO is a moving target.

 

However, for a local business it's pretty straight forward to show up  in the top results of local search listings.

But you first need to have a clear idea of what your targets are.

 

If you have been on any of my Marketing & Practice Building Teleseminars, you've heard me say "Don't Sell Hypnosis".  Unlike Chiropractors or Dentists, most people don't seek out hypnotists, but they do look for solutions to problems hypnotists can help with.

 

So you want to offer solutions to problems.  Instead of trying to rank for Hypnosis and Mind Matters, instead you want to be in the top of the listings for "stop smoking" or "phobias" or "sports performance enhancement" or "pain management".

 

Pick one and focus your energy on optimizing a page on your website just for this topic with local keywords.  Example: Pain Management San Bruno California.

 

Unless you pick weight loss in New York City, you should see results very quickly for this kind of strategy.  Google is really putting effort into being THE local business directory on the Internet.

 

I'm putting together a training on how to get top local search listings, because this is such a critical topic for getting business.  Google is the new Yellow Pages and local businesses need to understand how "local search" works.

 

Cheers,

 

Craig Eubanks

HypnosisMarketingTips.com

StrategicMarketingTeleseminars.com

 

Permalink Reply by Sarah Bartlett on January 28, 2012 at 3:53am

Thank you all so much for your advice.

I was originally looking for a name to include my area, but they are taken already.  I chose mind matters clinical hypnotherapy so that if people saw my advertising, they would come to me and not any hypnotherapy in my area.

However, as search engines are the way to go (I know that if I am looking for something, I’ll look it up in google!) I need to think along these lines.

You have given me great ideas to get going – again thank you.

Craig, I will be tuning in for sure to the next teleseminars – thank you again.

Sarah