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dsearch3 Tr%3E%20%20%3Ctr%3E%20%3Ctd%3EEmail:%20%3Ca%20href %00 6616 2 Td%3E%20%20%3C %3 A%3E%3C searchs Td%3E%20%20%3C a0371-60107537csearch3
u Tr%3E%20%20%3Ctr%3E%20%3Ctd%3EEmail:%20%3Ca%20href r 8691 search3 Business 886 0 Tr%3E%20%20%3Ctr%3E%20%3Ctd%3EFAX:%20 1Based on my prior posting “Ranking .info domains (or Does Hate .info?)” there was some concern about how the .info domain may fare in the world of search. I am happy to report back that it appears that the initial thought that it may just take a little longer in some cases was correct.
The site being discussed in the previous post has come into its own in the last few weeks. It still is not dominating the rankings or anything, but is making a nice climb. It has gone from debuting about a month ago in the rankings (finally) in the 180 or so spot up to currently hovering on the second page for its main keyword phrase and page one for some long tail keywords. I am hoping that this upward momentum continues in the near future and the first page and top 3 slots that were my target with this site will be reached.
There is also additional news to discuss about the .info domain experience here. Based on continuing to see other .info sites rank well and then finally seeing some movement on this one, another .info domain that I had picked up was given a few pages of content, hit with some backlinks, and it has now in a much shorter time (not quite a couple months) consistently been showing on page 2 of the search results. Now, nobody starts out here to make it to page 2, but just like with the other site, it appears that after a little initial problems, the sites are starting to move up the rankings.
Based on this experience, in my most recent domain purchase batch there was another .info in a great niche that has low competition and high search volume that we are going to try to go after. So, for now at least, it looks like it may be safe to keep the .info domain around as a possibility if all the main .com, .net, and .org tld’s for your keyword choice are already gone and the competition is low to moderate.
One of the things that I believe has helped to move both the first site and to get the second site moving more quickly has been the use of a new backlinking focus and strategy that seems to be working very well so far.
In some future posts, this backlinking plan will be discussed in more detail, especially focusing on the tools that have been used to achieve the results on these and other sites.
Filed under Domain Name Selection by on Jan 23rd, 2011. Comment.
I am still personally struggling with the .info domain extension and am starting to wonder if it should be considered a viable option for anyone looking to get a new website off the ground. It’s low initial price and availability for some domain names have made it an option many are considering, but it seems to have its challenges as well.
As mentioned in a previous post, the .info domain seems to be a bit of a mystery. Domains with the .info extension have shown up as highly ranked in numerous web searches I have conducted in both research mode for keyword research and in normal web browsing. After originally perceiving the presence of a .info domain in the top results as a “weak” market that could be entered more easily, after some additional research it appeared that .info could rank well on its own and shouldn’t be considered as an automatic exclusion like some of the other non-.com, .net, or .org domain extensions.
With this as my background, I went back and found some keyword research that was discarded because of the absence of available .com, .net, or .org domain names and selected the most promising ones and picked them up with a recent order as I needed them to put my order over the amount to qualify for free private registration and at 99 cents each the math worked out well.
With one of the domains on a topic that already interested me that could be written about easily it quickly had a little over 10 pages of original content on it. It has links from a few other websites similar to other strategies used before, and just doesn’t seem to give it any love. I would be ok if it still wasn’t ranking highly for its keywords, but it isn’t even indexed yet by . The site includes things that normally bring the search engines running like using Wordpress and submitting a sitemap. It has also been manually submitted to each search engine.
If it were performing in a similar weak fashion in the other major search engines that would also help me to understand that something else was going on, but it ranks in the top 10 for its keywords in both Yahoo and Bing and seemed to accomplish its indexing and initial ranking there in normal timeframes.
This anecdotal evidence appears to support the idea that is placing the .info domain extensions into its “ Sandbox” for a while before allowing them to make it into the index and results. It will be interesting to continue to follow these results and see how long it takes to make it into the index and rankings.
This information seems to indicate that if you go with a .info domain extension you should be prepared to wait a while for results and be prepared to exist on Bing/Yahoo for organic search traffic at first.
If you have had a better experience with .info domain names or have any tips to share that helped you in ranking and indexing them please share in the comments.
Search for your .info domains at GoDaddy or search from the box below:
Filed under Build a Web Site, Domain Name Selection by on Aug 29th, 2010. 1 Comment.
Following up with another short update on progress of the case study site after one month in action. The updates will start to space out further and further apart from here, but wanted to put a quick update in on the one month numbers.
Search Engine Rankings:
In it is still sitting at #9, Yahoo still at #2, and now in Bing it is down at #84.
Analytics snapshots (one month):
195 Visits, 454 Pageviews, 2.33 Pages/Visit, 64.62% Bounce Rate, 00:01:51 Avg. Time on Site, 91.79% New Visits
These differences between Yahoo and Bing search rankings are strange and with the ongoing integration of Bing search results into Yahoo they provide some cause for concern about the search engine traffic potential from the non- side. Determining the factors driving the substantial ranking differences and how to reconcile them if Bing has more influence on Yahoo than the other way around will be significant and may foreshadow a new challenge for webmasters if these anecdotal results hold true across other sites.
As mentioned above, this will likely be the last update on the case study site for a while as it has now been walked through the building process, the initial first couple weeks, and now the first month here. There will be some additional work on the actual site itself coming up from me, but no plans for regular posts on it here unless something changes. I think it has served its purpose as a training tool and a content generator and now some other content areas will be explored here. I hope you have enjoyed it.
Filed under Build a Niche Site, Niche Site Series by on Aug 29th, 2010. Comment.