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Expired Domains on the move – a truly mobile experience !

mobileIf you have not realized yet our site has been fully updated to make us mobile friendly, we are now one of the few sites out there that offer as much data as we do that really offer this experience. No longer are you tied to your desktop or laptop to find those expired domains on a daily basis, you easily can now access our vast data base of nearly 30 million domains anyhow/anywhere..

A vision a longtime in the making of designing a data driven site with the usability and functionality more accustomed to a online retail shopping experience, heavily customizing Twitter Bootstrap we feel we have achieved our goal. Searching domains on your phone, tablet or watch has never been easier or more seamless.

The redesign was not just aimed at our mobile customer base, moving our user interface onto Twitter Bootstrap enabled us to enhance our existing desktop experience too, again with the vision in mind of moving away from simply mining data but having an  intuitive look and feel that lends iteself to fast, efficient and effective search, imperative in the expired domain industry.

If you have not checked out our domains and completely free user interface out why not start now, hundreds of other around the world have made us their go to site for picking up domains so it a go…! expired-domains

The rise and importance of the mobile experience and SEO

 

As if you were imobile_users_statisticsn any doubt the rise of the mobile generation is upon us, even here at expired- domains where our website is heavily data driven we receive many requests to make the site more mobile friendly, so yes we know the demand is there but how does this equate to the modern day search engine optimization we are all learning to live with.

Well here is the lowdown most organic searches these days produce a different set of search results for smartphones than desktops (As much as 62 percent according to research). A major driver of this difference is that mobile results are location heavy, you know you are out and about and search a business search engines want to show businesses located near your position, especially if they have high ratings and reviews — particularly for queries with local intent such as “coffee shop” or “dry cleaner.” But how is this relevant to websites and domains like mine that are purely internet based?

Even from my business and experience which is selling expired domains, it has become extremely apparent that there is a big demand for a mobile friendly experience regardless of location and search engines such as Google and Bing are now adapting their treatment of websites to represent this changing environment.

Crucial to improving your mobile user experience lies in choosing the best way to configure your mobile website. Many websites have now become outdated and are misconfigured for mobile search or not configured properly at all, resulting in a loss of potential mobile traffic but also being penalized by the Search Engines in the SEPR’s.  A website’s mobile SEO rankings may vary slightly depending on which mobile configuration has been implemented, but the biggest effects are user experience and site maintenance.

  1. Responsive design involves serving up the same content and URLs across all devices, just altering the layout and formatting to fit the user’s window size (accomplished with CSS). This is Google’s preferred mobile configuration, and it works well if your mobile users have similar intentions as your desktop users.
  2. Dynamic serving involves using the same page URLs but changing the content dynamically, depending on what device is being used to access your website. This works well if mobile users and desktop users have different motives, but requires the use of an HTTP “vary response” header so search engines don’t think you’re trying to hide content.
  3. A separate mobile site requires maintaining two separate websites with different URLs and different HTML content on each. This configuration can be best if mobile users have very different needs than desktop users, but site maintenance involves twice the work and you run the risk of creating duplicate content for search engines

When it comes to your mobile SEO strategy, user experience (UX) is the single most important factor for success. An awesome mobile design welcomes visitors and helps them engage more fully with your site. It can also impact your site’s rankings in a tie-breaker situation, since search engines prefer to serve mobile-friendly websites, all other things being equal.

Simple is best when it comes to mobile strategy

How many times have you ever visited a website from your smartphone that made you zoom and reposition the screen just so you could see it and then give up and move onto another website.  A poor user experience like this causes most people to leave the site and find another with a more optimal mobile user experience. When it comes to mobile search, less is more. Make every word count with relevant and focused content:

  • Optimized with the mobile perspective in mind.
  • Easy to access with clear and functional navigation options.
  • Large enough to read in a font that is legible on a small screen.

 

So a quick hint whether you are buying those domains to develop websites, or to add to your portfolio and merely add a parking site don’t forget those important and ever growing mobile customer base.  Here at expired domains we are working on improving our responsive design, and will have a new format available to both our mobile and desktop visitors in the coming days, so keep an eye out.. In the mean time as always check out our awesome site for finding expired, expiring and dropped domains today! Go to expired-domains

Check List for modern day website owner Part 1

The domain has been purchased, the name has been registered and the content has been built so here are a few easy steps to follow to ensure Search Engine Optimization rules your world.

1) Install the right tools!Google analytics

Any disconcerting work man will tell you the right tools is the difference between a good job and a bad one, ensuring your domain wins the SEO battle you will need the right weapons up your sleeve and I would would recommend you install Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. Two programs that we at Expired Domains constantly utilize to track errors, visitors, traffic sources, key word impressions and many more. The Google Analytics phone app is neat too, which means you can monitor your site anytime and anywhere.

 

2) Identify your target Keywords.

KeywoKeywords_2rds are king and beyond important in ensuring your domain becomes an SEO success story. Focus on high volume but low competition keywords but keep adding a smaller tail of keywords to your content to ensure you have a saturated your target market.

 

 

 

3) Cloaking is only a good thing when it comes to an interstellar battle in Star Trek!

Cloaking in USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-A)domain terms is showing one version of a page to users, but a different version to search engines. Google, Bing etc want to see the identical results users are seeing and will penalize any site that uses this type of outdated black hat tactics. If in doubt just ensure that technically any hidden text, hidden links or cloaking is avoid.

 

 

4) Speed Demon 

Go fasterSpeeddemon, faster, faster when it comes to your website’s server speed and page loading time (commonly called “site performance”)the speed will impact the user experience and SEO, as well. A site’s accessibility issue for users and spiders is crucial, the longer the web server response time, the longer it takes for your web pages to load. Slow page-loading times can loose you customers and increase bounce rates as your site visitors get bored and leave, it will also slow down search engine spiders so less of your site gets indexed.

You need a fast, high-performance server that allows search engine spiders to crawl more pages per sequence and that satisfies your human visitors, as well. Keep in mind bad website design can play a key role in site performance, so ensure this is a key focus for you once you have bought that domain. Google has an awesome free tool tool Page Speed Insights to analyze a site’s performance. Last but not least in this competitive world of SEO site performance is really seen now by Google as a tie breaker between otherwise equal web or mobile results.

 

5) Redirect, redirect, redirect…

Y301redirectes this can get confusing, especially when you are managing a website with a lot of content but be careful one wrong move here and you may feel the penalties for a long time to come. Firstly when you move a web page to a different URL, make sure you’re using the right type of redirect, and that you’re also redirecting users to the most appropriate page. A 301 tells the search engine to drop the old page from its index and replace it with the new URL. Search engines transfer most of the link equity from the old page to the new one, so you won’t suffer a loss in rankings.

Mistakes are common with redirects. A webmaster, for example, might delete a web page but neglect to set up a redirect; this causes users to get a “Page Not Found” 404 error. Furthermore, sneaky redirects in any form, whether they are user agent/IP-based or redirects through JavaScript or meta refreshes, frequently cause ranking penalties. In addition, we recommend avoiding 302 redirects altogether. A 302 (temporary) redirect signals that the move will be short-lived, and therefore search engines do not transfer link equity to the new page. Both the lack of link equity and the potential filtering of the duplicated page can hurt your rankings.

6) Keep your content fresh and original on each page.

Original-Content-Here.jpgThis can actually be tricky, especially if you have tag lines which you want to be repeated on multiple pages. Here at Expired Domains we have made that mistake, and once fixed almost imediately reaped the Google rewards. So if you haven’t already fix and prevent duplicate content issues within your site. Search engines get confused about which version of a page to index and rank if the same content appears on multiple pages. Ideally, you should only have one URL for one piece of content. When you have duplicated pages, search engines pick the version they think is best and filter out all the rest. You lose out on having more of your content ranked, and also risk having “thin or duplicated” content, something Google’s Panda algorithm penalizes.

If your duplicate content is internal, such as multiple URLs leading to the same content, then you can decide for the search engines by deleting and 301-redirecting the duplicate page to the original page. Alternatively, you can use a canonical link element also known as a cononical tag to communicate which is the primary URL.

 

7) Error pages are important too!is-this-the-best-internet-explorer-error-message-ever--12d66f9327

I learned this a long time ago in my CRM days but error pages really are important, they convey a message that resonates with the end user. Generic “Page Not Found” HTML Error 404 message (such as the one shown below), will send your site visitors away never to come back.

standard 404 error

 

Most website visitors simply click the Back button when they see that standard 404 error, leaving your site forever. Since it’s inevitable that mistakes happen, and people will get stuck sometimes, you need a way to help them at their point of need. To keep people from jumping ship, create a custom 404 error page for your website.

First, make the page. A custom 404 page should do more than just say the URL doesn’t exist. While some kind of polite error feedback is necessary, your customized page can also help steer people toward pages they may want with links and other options. Additionally, you want your 404 page to reassure wayward visitors that they’re still on your site, so make the page look just like your other pages (using the same colors, fonts and layout) and offer the same side and top navigation menus. In the body of the 404 page, here are some helpful items you might include:

  • Apology for the error
  • Home page link
  • Links to your most popular or main pages
  • Link to view your sitemap
  • Site-search box
  • Image or other engaging element

Since your 404 page may be accessed from anywhere on your website, be sure to make all links fully qualified (starting with http).

Next, tell your server. Once you’ve created a helpful, customized error page, the next step is to set up this pretty new page to work as your 404 error message. The setup instructions differ depending on what type of website server you use. For Apache servers, you modify the .htaccess file to specify the page’s location. If your site runs on a Microsoft IIS server, you set up your custom 404 page using the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. WordPress sites have yet another procedure.

We should note that some smaller website hosts do not permit custom error 404 pages. But if yours does, it’s worth the effort to create a page you’ve carefully worded and designed to serve your site visitors’ needs. You’ll minimize the number of misdirected travelers who go overboard, and help them remain happily on your site.

7. Robots are in charge

If you did not already know this the first thing a a search engine looks for upon arriving at your site is a text file kept in the root directory of a website that instructs spiders which directories can and cannot be crawled called a robots txt file. With simple “disallow” commands, a robots.txt is where you can block indexing of:

  • Private directories you don’t want the public to find
  • Temporary or auto-generated pages (such as search results pages)
  • Advertisements you may host (such as AdSense ads)
  • Under-construction sections of your site

Every site should put a robots.txt file in their root directory, even if it’s blank, since that’s the first thing on the spiders’ checklist. But handle your robots.txt with great care, like a small rudder capable of steering a huge ship. A single disallow command applied to the root directory can stop all crawling — which is very useful, for instance, for a staging site or a brand new version of your site that isn’t ready to be launched but remember websites have been known to sink without a trace in the SERP’s because the webmaster forgot to remove that disallow command when the site went live.

Google offers a robots.txt checker in Google Webmaster Tools that checks your robots.txt file to make sure it’s working as you need. At expired domains we also frequently use the  Fetch as Google Tool tool if there’s any question about how a particular URL may be indexed. This tool simulates how Google crawls URLs on your website, even rendering your pages to show you whether the spiders can correctly process the various types of code and elements you have on your page.

So that 7 tips to get you started, or you could go to our own expired domains search engine and pick up a few more domains to optimize! Expired Domains.

Love is in the air…….

 

Well 2-hearts-in-lovemaybe love is a kinda strong word but like a lot a lot a lot has a nice ring to it..! So yes I think its time to shout it out with Valentine’s Day just around the corner – Google rather likes me these days. It really does appear that in the case of our website expired domains the update to the Penguin algorithm is living up to what they claimed they envisioned it to be – returning highly relevant content directly linked to specific search terms and key words. For so long as my website languished on the depths of pages 5 and 6 in search results for my number one target key word, and I looked at the websites ranking higher than me, I was so frustrated with the old content and outdated blogs that were outperforming my website on a daily basis. How much more relevant could my website be to the key word “expired domains” for goodness sake that is all my business does is provide updated lists daily of expired, expiring, deleted domains, my content was being refreshed constantly with up to 100,000 domains being added on a daily basis yet a blog written 5 years ago (so the information was wrong now anyway) about how to find expired domains constantly out ranked me.

So many months, many blogs, some social media interactions and Penguin 3.0 later, I can happily report I am ranking pretty well against my target keywords and those outdated blogs are picking up the search crumbs many pages behind me now, so do I give myself a huge pat on the back and say it was all me? Well as much as I would love to looking at how relevant ALL the websites are now on Page 1 for my top keyword I have a pretty big hunch that those birds and bears at Google have had a lot to with my change of fortunes..

Its not SEO anymore its ABC..

ABC-LogoOver recent years the frustrations with Google’s contstant tinkering and additions of new algorithms has had people up in arms all over the world, that sinking feeling of having the rug pulled out from under you, flying high at the top of search results only to wake up one morning to an update to Panda or Penguin and to find your once successful online business languishing on the dark pages of 4,5,6…..Times have changed though and we the consumer and the online business owner are now reaping the rewards of Google’s constant updates, their fine tuning of the Penguin algorithm and the clever and much needed addition of Hummingbird has enabled their slogan of “Content is King” to really start ringing true, no longer is it a David versus Goliath situation, small online business’s with strong content are now competing on a more level playing field against the bigger business’s who have large SEO budgets and funds to buy backlinks. SEO really has got much simpler, stay focused on your business, build a product your customers will want and need to use and the traffic will find its way to you. Is that what Google had in mind all along?

Let me know your experiences with Google recently would love to hear your thoughts.

Last but not least as always we have some awesome domains expiring on the site today – go take a peek before you go expired domains.

More Registrars, more choice even happier customers!

 

You guys reqchoiceuested and we listened, as of yesterday a new Registrar has been added to our list of partners, you can now register those expired and expiring domains directly from our site through the hugely popular Uk based registrar 123-reg.co.uk. For our European and even more specifically British based customers your selected domains can be registered in pounds sterling, and you can take advantage of the many other services they provide which include, web hosting, website creation and email marketing campaigns.

The registrar 1 and 1 has been added back to our selection of partners and we are working on the addition of an another Registrar specifically focused for our customers based in India.

The last few months have been an incredible journey for us as we  continue to grow and gain loyal customers that continue to come back time and time again. We are working on big things at the moment as we continue to evolve our site to provide the best possible user experience for our customers out there both from a mobile and desktop perspective, as well as continuously updating our data and adding domains every single day.

I am sure you will agree the biggest change for us has been the addition of the word matching domain service that we provide, it is now easier than ever to find those valuable, catchy and easily marketable domain names without even looking as we have done the searching for you. I myself who previously trawled through lists upon lists of expired and expiring domains am now amazed how many incredible domain names literally jump out at every time I login!

If you haven’t already check out our domain search engine go to expired domains and start searching I know I am biased but I promise you you will not be disappointed, with thousands of domains added daily to our existing database which now has over 15 millions domains, and a unique user interface that is completely free to use, once you have visited our site you will never go anywhere else to find your domains!