“Hi Doctors.

I am looking for your experienced feedback on the domain name ‘VacuumSupermarket.com’.

6 million vacuum cleaners are sold each year or 16,500 each day.  I am confident that a strong website can affiliate sell 250 vacuum cleaners each day, generating £410,000 annually.

I have launched one site, www.vacuumsales.co.uk, but I am interested in your views on using the domain VacuumSupermarket.com.

Many thanks.

Gareth.”

Dan

Hi, Gareth.

I’m not sure whether you’re asking “which of these 2 domain names should I use?” or “should I launch a second site on this other domain?” or “I’m trying to use one of these for the UK, one for the USA, will this work?” – so here are my quick thoughts on all 3:

1. VacuumSales or VacuumSupermarket?

Stick with the one you’re using. The only difference between the 2 in terms of potential is the .co.uk vs .com . You already have some content there & the domain name isn’t holding you back, so stick with it.

2. Should you launch a second site on it?

If you’re just targeting the UK & you’re thinking of launching the second site to try and get more sales, I think you should forget aout it for the time being. When your first site hits the top few spots on google for your primary terms, then take a look at launching the second.

3. Should you launch the .com as a USA site and the .co.uk as a UK site?

Yes: If you have the time & the energy to do both, why not sell in both markets? (I assume they call them vacuums over there? and supermarkets?)

4. Bonus thoughts

Bonus thought A: If you’re already making money through vacuumsales, and you’re serious about wanting to make this really big, why not try and get one of the generics? There are at least 8 decent generics  (vacuums/vacuum/vacuumcleaner/vacuumcleaners.co.uk or .com) – even more if you hyphenate!

Bonus thought B: I’d love it if you did make £0.41m through this site per year, but it would be tough. If my maths is right & your numbers are right, that’s just under 2% of the entire market. I suspect offline sales are fairly high with vacuums, and that many people go to a brand they trust online direct when buying a vacuum (i.e. just go straight to John Lewis/Argos without ever hitting search).

Bonus thought C: You may want to put together a ‘Vacuum Buyers Guide’ and give it away in exchange for the visitors email address. Send them an automated ‘top 10 vacuum cleaners’ email (with aff links) in return. It immediately gives you extra chances to sell to them with no real ongoing effort.

Hope that’s useful & good luck with the site.

Dan.

“I have just had my website re-designed and this went live last Friday.  Previous to that I had an off-the-shelf template website from EKM Powershop.  I must now wait for the SEO the designer has done as part of the new website to start working which I know can take several weeks.  However, I already had SEO in place on the previous website, but now when I check certain keywords in Google I’m appearing in some reasonable positions, but when clicking on them it says the web page is not available as obviously this is relating to the old website.  Is there anything that can be done?  It seems a shame to have actually gained some reasonable places by virtue of the SEO I did with EKM to now start at the beginning again.”

Dan

Hi, Janice, how are you?

I don’t think this is really an affiliate question, but here are some notes that I hope will help you.  I’m going to tackle it in 3 parts and I’m also going to assume that your domain name hasn’t changed.

Here are the 3 parts of my answer:

1) What you’d do if you were going to fix this problem
2) Why I wouldn’t bother in your case
3) What you should do instead!

WHAT YOU’D DO IF YOU WERE GOING TO FIX THE PROBLEM

The most straightforward fix would be to tell the search engines firstly that your pages have moved, and secondly where they’ve moved to.  The standard way of doing this is by using a ‘301 redirect’ for each page.

You’d generally do this using either ‘.htaccess’ or, in your case (as your site is database driven, on an apache server, with thousands of pages), a better option would be a ‘mod_rewrite’ rule.  Mod_rewrite is a little module that helps out your server, looking for certain formats of URL & translating them into your preferred format.  For example, if your old format was ‘/category/bathrooms’ and your new format is ‘/bathrooms.html’, you’d set up a rule to look for the word ‘/category…’ before mod_rewrite would work its magic, pass people to the correct pages, and notify everyone that this was a permanent change.  You’d do that rejigging your old style URLs to your new ones.

WHY I WOULDN’T BOTHER IN YOUR CASE

In your case though, it looks like the site only has a couple of links coming into it, and that all of the links are to your homepage anyway.  That’s good news, as it means there’s not a huge advantage to sorting out this problem with dead links (and so you need not worry about the complexities of mod_rewrite).

It’s bad news however, as inbound links are hugely important as far as search engines are concerned, and a lack of inbound links probably means you’re not getting very much traffic from search engines.

WHAT I’D DO INSTEAD OF FIXING YOUR URL ISSUE

Instead, I’d firstly start putting some effort into building links to the site, and secondly I’d fix some other little SEO issues on the site.

I won’t give you any linkbuilding tips here, as there are many ways to do that and it’s far removed from your question.  I do know that one of the other doctors has a very good linkbuilding service over at http://www.contentnow.co.uk/link-building.php though.

My gut instinct is that your new site could do with some big changes.  My gut instinct is often wrong though, so instead here are 3 quick on-site SEO Tips and 2 conversion tips:

1) Fix the Titles on your Category Pages

If you go to this page: http://www.divineinteriorsandgifts.com/Lamps_and_Lighting–c6.html, you’ll see that the page title is “Products: Divine Interiors and Gifts”.  There are hundreds of category pages on your site with that same title, all of which are very unlikely to rank anywhere in Google.  You should ask your web developer to fix those so that they’re relevant to the individual pages (in that case something like “Lamps and Lighting at Divine Interiors” – this could be automated for every page on the site with about 30 minutes work).  While they’re at it, it would be worth you asking them to put your page headings into ‘h1’ tags too.

2) Dot com or Dot co dot uk?

Google has latched onto your .com address, yet in your question you referenced the .co.uk address.  You can fix this by redirecting the.com to the .co.uk. (again your web company should be able to do this very easily).

3) Register with Google’s Webmaster Tools

Google would happily let you know about both of the problems above (and many more) if you signed up to their set of fantastic tools and notifications totally free (‘Google Webmaster Tools).  Visit www.google.com/webmasters/tools/, follow the instructions, and it will give you various bits of info and offer suggestions for improving your site.  A little sidenote is that you’ll probably have to fix the 404 page on your site in order to do this.  Again, your web developer should be able to do that.

4) Conversion Tip: Move your ‘Buy’ buttons

At the moment, the ‘buy’ buttons on your product pages are miles away from the product image, price and stock information.  They’re also in the same colour as all of the other buttons on the site.  I promise you that if you move them nearer the price and change their colour to contrast with the rest of the site, they’ll do better.

5) Conversion Tip: Fix your cart process

When I hit the ‘buy’ button, it’s taking me to a cart page with a link that says ‘Confirm’.  That’s fine, though perhaps ‘Check Out Now’ or something would be better.  But the rest of the cart process is a real struggle to get through.  I’d recommend that you go through this yourself, pretending you’re a first time buyer and then hassle your web people to fix the painful bits.

Semi-finally… there are plenty more little fixes, and bigger fixes, that could help out your site, but I’ve already gone on forever here.  Feel free to get in touch if you want more.

Completely-finally… your site isn’t an affiliate site, but you could benefit from setting up an affiliate program.  A few of the other doctors could help you out with this so do add a comment if you’re interested.

I hope at least something there helps.

Dan.

Clarke

Redirect the pages that are ranking to the new versions via 301 redirects.  It’s not ideal, but it’s better than losing the visitor to a 404 error page.  Your 404 error page is the same as your homepage at the time of review, and that’s going to cause you issues with Google unless of course the server is correctly telling Google it’s a 404 page and it should ignore the content.  Either way, it’s a bad idea to have any 404 showing, check your logs and 301 redirect the links to another page and or front of the site.  Less than ideal but not the end of the world, you have a sitemap in place, and would imagine that Google knows about it, so it should be a case of just waiting for the new pages take effect, but the time can vary on when this will happen in full.

What you should have done where possible is to re-use the same URLs and site structure, unless of course it was not SEO friendly in the 1st place.  Keeping the same page titles during a swap to a new layout and design can help when it comes to not losing rank on the pages that do rank, you can then slowly edit them over time.  I have noticed in the past that any complete shift in site URL structure and page titles leads Google to treating the site like it hasn’t seen it before, and not always a bad thing.  Sometimes you need to take short term pain for the longer term gains the new site structure, page layout and SEO can bring.

By the way, each of your sections in the product menu has the page title “Products: Divine Interiors and Gifts”.  This must be killing you on the SEO front; I would advise you get each title renamed to reflect the products sold in each section.  You also have no description meta-tag for each of your products, again not great for SEO.

Elaine

Your web designer should have used 301 (permanent) redirects on your site.  This is to tell all the search engines that a particular page is no longer available and automatically directs them to the new page.  Here’s some more information, 301 redirect, but your web designer should already know how to do this.
 

Kirsty

Well, if I were you and if the pages that have been 404-ing have counterparts on the new site version, I’d be pulling on my big tackety boots and asking the developer if they wouldn’t mind just bending over and giving me a minute or two to take a good run up.

It’s an easy job for a developer to set up redirects from old page versions to new ones to ensure a smooth transfer for your new site version in the serps. 

Even if there are some pages which didn’t have counterparts in the old site version, your developer should have anticipated 404s and set up a nice looking custom 404 page to help your site visitors find their way around.  

Kier

Hi Janice.

If I understand you correctly the issue you’re having is that with the site change, URLs from the old site are still showing up in Google but aren’t leading anywhere as the URL structure has changed.  To remedy this you need to use what’s called a 301 redirect for all the old URLs and have them redirect to the most relevant page on the new site structure.  You can find more info here.

Editors Note

Hi Janice.  Thanks for sending in your site for review, and apologies for taking so long to get it published.  It’s a very nice looking site overall and fits well with the product offering you have.  However, aside from the Docs reviews, I also noticed that you have a Twitter account associated with the site, although it doesn’t look like you’ve been very active with it since setting up.  You would definitely benefit from putting a little effort into this direction to pull in some targeted traffic to your website.  Without going into all the ins and outs of twitter, take a look at the following two articles by Kieron and Clarke on how to use twitter to grow your business and some general twitter advice and tips.  Kieron has used twitter to great effect in building and promoting his large userbase for ShareMyPlayLists.com.

“Hello, I have a newbie question about subdomains.

I would like to register a generic domain such as http://fromwales.com and run some niche sites on subdomains from it such as http://lavabread.fromwales.com or http://leeks.fromwales.com.

Does that make any sense from an affiliate marketing and SEO point of view?  Will Google always favour http://www.lavabreadfromwales.com over http://lavabread.fromwales.com, or do you think a bit of hard work and good content can make that strategy work?

Many thanks.

Neil”

Clarke

Personally, I would go for a main domain name for each niche site.  It’s better in the long run as it will allow you more flexibility should you wish to sell the site on, change your hosting and any issues you may encounter with link strategy.  For example, if a particular linking strategy were to backfire and kill a site, only the one site would be affected.  If you use sub-domains from one main domain, you run the risk of killing everything in one go.

However, if you have a domain and a lot of “on-topic” mini-sites, then I see no reason why sub-domains would not work.  I have done this on sites in the past, but it was to host different content and prices, based on the country the person was from, and in that case I hosted the sub-domain in an IP range of the country the sub-domain was targeted towards.  Google favours good content; your IP plays a part, but if Google can’t work out what country a site is targeted towards, you will only get ranked based on getting links in and having decent on-page optimisation.

Elaine

I don’t use subdomains on Allkids, but I do have different sections with several pages attached, and I have found that the main page is usually indexed in Google quite high for relevant terms, many at the coveted No 1 position.

For example:

Kids Beds – Single Storage Beds
                   Bunk Beds
                   Cabin, Mid Beds
                   High Sleeper Bed
                   Etc.

The main page, i.e. Kids Beds, is usually the indexed page for most of the ‘kids beds’ related terms, but quite often I get both pages listed, which is a bonus.  Google does take an overview of the whole site, so a large site with a dedicated theme, should win over several smaller sites all interlinked, especially if you take care with the internal linking structure and urls.

“Hi Docs.

I’m pretty new to affiliate marketing and am building a site for, say, red widgets.  I have both redwidgets.co.uk and redwidgets.info and am wondering which to use?

The site will have a one page review for each type of red widget with a price comparison block in the right hand column.  I am thinking of using the .info domain and swapping the price comparison affilate links for adsense ads (or even USA affilate links – is this possible?) for non-British traffic.

Or would I be better off just sticking to the .co.uk domain and, if so, why?

Really great site, by the way.  Filled with very useful advice – thanks.

Mike”

Here’s what the docs had to say:

Kier

Hi Mike.

The downside to using the .info rather than the .co.uk is twofold.  Firstly .info isn’t a TLD that’s generally associated with good quality sites.  Secondly, by passing up on the .co.uk you’ll be missing out on the high ranking Google will give to it for UK based searches.  As such, at a very minimum you should use the .co.uk for a UK focused site.  You could develop the .info into one aimed at the US, but be sure to not use duplicate content; you might want to consider using a .com for this.  Also bear in mind that affiliate marketing is even bigger in the USA than it is in the UK, so there’s no reason to be using adsense instead as it’s likely you’ll be able to find US affiliate programs to promote that stock your product.  Good networks to check out in the states for retail include CJ, Google Affiliate Network, Linkshare, Shareasale and of course Webgains.

Lammo

Hi Mike.

Purely my own opinion, but I don’t like .info domains, and would never use one.  Stick with the .co.uk, and just geotarget (Google “geotargeting” to see how to do this) to change the content based on the non-British traffic, or dig deep and buy the .com for the US traffic.

Price comparison for USA affiliate links is totally possible – just grab the feeds from the US networks as you would with the UK.  If you’re not tech-savvy to build your own price comparison, then Easy Content Units will have a US version very shortly (or it may even be live by the time you read this!) which will do that for you.

Clarke

If you are doing the “same” site targeted to different countries, then I would use both and host the UK on a UK server and the US site on a US server.  I would also make sure that the content is significantly different for each country version, and that you use American English e.g. Center and not Centre etc..  You will need to build different links in to each site, so you are in effect taking on double the work if you’re doing it right.  However, most people are a bit lazy and do the same thing when the sites cover the same subject, but this can ultimately lead to Google thinking you have just duplicated your site content when clearly you have a purpose for having two totally separate sites covering the same subject area.

If you’re new, I would get one site up and running 1st to make sure it works and you can rank before you do the 2nd, but that will depend on how much time you have and whether you will be upset if they don’t work out or not.

Kirsty

I would recommend that you make use of the .co.uk domain.  For the UK market it’ll be more brandable and SEO friendly.  I’ve found people are far more likely to click on domains with the .co.uk extension.  .info domains are often seen as having an association with spammy websites.  In the past MSN have blocked access to that extension on their service and Google have made ominous maneuvers regarding sites on such domains (a couple of years ago now).

If you want to try and target the US market in the same niche you’d be better to try and source a .com – it seems like a much safer bet!