I need HELP! Or could it be that I am beyond help?

I went into Urchin to check my stats...just by chance I had visitors (ya never know) and when I went to the "Referral" tab, I noticed that one of my domains (I have 4 but only my main one is active) was a referring URL. My question is, how can that be?

The only way that one of my other domains would show was if I had a storefront or even an active website for that domain and then decided to go to my Main domain from the other one, correct? Or am I missing something here? Has someone stolen my domain, yet when clicking on it while in Urchin, it will take me directly to my Main domain for the store.

Has anyone experienced something like this happening to them?

Egads! Any help would be greatly appreciated....

Beverly
Goddess Enterprises

Goddess,

I hope I'm not sounding too stupid when I ask if your sure that the 'visitor' referred from one of your other domains wasn't actually you?

Ultimatekeychains,

No.... YOU'RE not sounding stupid..... I had a momentary lapse. When I wrote what I wrote, it wasn't exactly clear to me. Doing some driving on the road made me realize that someone had entered in another one of my domains and it was forwarded to the Main domain. DOH!

I was getting flustered when I saw that because it was like, how could that be? I had forgotten that they were all forwarded, AND since no one had ever used the others.......well, there you have it. I was having one of my moments.

But THANKS! I'm feeling much better now.

Beverly

In case clients are reading this posts that do not understanding domain forwarding.... it is a bad idea.

If you must do it, I recommend building an "original" content heavy html page that has a link to the other site. Don't simply put a redirect on a domain.

Captain,

What is domain forwarding and why is it a bad idea?

The first thing I did when getting ready to start my business was purchase various variations of my domain and other related keyword domains and 'forward them all' to my one store. I then heard that this can cause serious PR issues and maybe even get your site blacklisted from various SE's.

Well, I've already paid for these domains and don't want to waste them so I have since started to create seperate 'mini' sites for each additional domain and point them elsewhere (with a link to my store, of course.)

Example: WinFreeKeychains.com

Is that going to be a problem? I dunno... Any thoughts?

That was the same reasoning behind my gathering of multiple domains (as Ultimatekeychains) ... with the future hope of expanding into other realms of business (i.e. www.the-goddess-principle.com) was going to be for homeopathic, new age, aromatherapy, relaxation, etc. On a more personal level for the customer. So in the meantime while I await the finances for other stores for my domains, I have them pointing (aka, forwarding) to my main domain.

Captain - why would SE's have a problem with this marketing tactic? I haven't used them in SE's yet, but I do sell items that I could "source out" so to speak to my other domains, but as yet has chosen not to.

Didn't mean to get everyone wriled up! LOL



My sincerest apologies,
Beverly

Domain forwarding (in my opinion) is factored into Google's Algo. The goal of Google is create the best Serps possible. Domain forwarding became an issue when search engines spammers bought thousands of domains, posted hidden redirects and forwarding to from spammy sites to one domain. This resulted in diminshed serp quality.

In my opinion, if you want a domain to forward to another... create a content rich .html page as a homepage and then link to the other domain.

It is a good idea to create "niche" stores... for instance if you bought several domain names: discountgolfballs.com, drivers.com, golf-shoes.com etc. Instead of just www.golf.com. Google likes themese... and content. But the content must be unique. Basically Google doesn't mind if you create multiple storefronts, it actually favors it. The only thing you should not do is forwarding and make sure that the "niche" sites create added value for the users. Google's policy is that sites created that benefit the users and are not meant for the sole purpose of "tricking" search engines is acceptable.

Do you agree or disagree with my thought process?

I can see what you mean, at least from the spamming standpoint as it seems that a lot of computer users feel they can make a lot of money by spamming their services, but it also hurts the average, honest store owner who does not use spamming, nor would care to use it. Everyone I talk to has my main domain address so that was why it was weird seeing a referral come from another one of my lesser known domains.

Guess I'll have to step back and re-think on the approach of whether or not to keep the forwarding domains pointing to my main site or let them sit as setting up "niche" or mini sites is not really in my budget right at this point.

Your thoughtprocess is a valid one indeed; just have to figure out "how" to do a content rich .html page and have it read (and catch) a potential customers eye on content alone... unless I add in some "teasers".

As always, thanks for the input!

Beverly

WOW! That was a good thing to learn and think about. I also have bought several domain names that currently point to my main site. I never really thought of them as spamming people to my site, but I can understand how SE's can see it that way.
This was an excellent thread because I will bet that 99% of store owners have other domains forwarding!
Although, I have always thought about making each domain its own site so that I can rank high on certain search terms, but its good to know that if you just use them as forwarders that it could hurt you.
Thanks Captain

Captain,

would google consider www.mineralbeauty.org and www.mineralbeauty.net that forward to www.mineralbeauty.com as spam as well and in turn hurt my rank?

www.mineralbeauty.com

for your .org and .net domains I would create an index page that resides on the domains, that simply link to your main .com address. Make the index pages contain "original" content so Google doesn't see it as spam.

I would not simply place a forwarder on these domains... play it safe and link from an index page.

Captain,

Do i need another host for the Index Page?


Thanks!!!

You will need to host the index page somewhere. We charge $10/per month for each unique IP. You can get cheaper hosting elsewhere... or better yet, does your domain name provider allow you to post one custom page per domain?

MC's hosting is more expensive because of the premium hosting we provide from RackSpace. For a simple index page I would think you can find a host for 2-$3 per month?

Anybody else have any suggestions?

GoDaddy.com has 'one page website' hosting for $14.95 per yr. That's about $1.25 per month. They also have great prices on domain names which would be why I initially aquired so many.

Thanks Ultimate/captain,

I actually looked into that already. I got my domains originally from Go Daddy as well. Thanks for the info. I parked those sites for now and when i get to it, ill create a page with original content for those domains.

Captain, this is probably for a meeting, but I figured I would throw the thought out to our customers for some feedback as well.

I was thinking we might be able to do some very cheap very basic hosting for these domain alternates after we finish the 4.0 changeover and migration. Maybe throw up a cheap linux box and set up some very limited space, bandwidth, sites that our customers can use for specifically this purpose.

I would need to talk to you and the SEO people about virtual hosting as opposed to ip-based hosting, and based on that we could probably crunch some numbers to do pretty cheap basic hosting for sites.

I'd love to hear what our customers think on this so we can decide how seriously to pursue this idea, and as mentioned I do already have a few ideas on what we could do.

That's a great idea! We would definately be interested in that Adam!

All kneel before AdminGuy

Admin,


Let's discuss this in our next meeting to discover the options.

More feedback on this soon.