I was asked to help out on a website which has dramatically lost rankings since changing from a non-www domain version to the www version – the same domain, I should stress.

The .htaccess file had been setup correctly but as the dramatic drop in traffic happened 2 days after the redirect happened, it had to be the culprit.

Something that stood out, in the Google listings was that the homepage of the domain was still being listed as the non-www version despite other pages now showing up as the www version.

After some careful analysis of the website it transpired that the CMS used absolute links for all internal linking and all of those links were using the non-www version of the domain.
This essentially would be a confusion for Google as the .htaccess file was telling it to use www links, while the website itself was using non-www – in essence, creating an infinite loop.

With this now fixed I am waiting to see how the big G reacts and if this simple yet essential attention to detail is going to get the traffic back to the site.

The moral of this is that you shouldn’t mess around with domains unless it is really necessary – and you know exactly what is required!

A lot of people seem to get confused about what domain extension they should have for their website. Let’s face it, most non-webbie people seem to refer to all websites as .com – “try domain.com” someone will tell you. “Maybe it’s .uk – I can’t remember”.

When I buy a domain and I am serious about the longenvity of it, I will buy both the .com and .co.uk domains, and will redirect one to the other. This means that even if someone typed in mydomain.com, it would automatically forward to mydomain.co.uk. Those of us who work withing the internet industry, will generally know that if a .com doesn’t work, replace it with .co.uk or even .net and you will probably find the site you are looking for. Most people using the internet do not have the knowledge that we do, so the domain issue can be a problem.

So which extension should you redirect all other extentions to? Should you have a .com or a .co.uk extension?

Although the .com extension was originally created for the USA, it is now seen as a global domain. If you are targeting the UK as your main customer base, then use the .co.uk domain. It will reinforce to the search engines, the fact that you are targeting the UK market. If you are going to be a global company, then use the .com.

There is one final thing to consider. The combination of your web host location and your domain can have an impact on your search engine optimisation. If you use a non-UK web host and you use a .com domain, you may experience trouble in ranking for Google.co.uk as there is no immediate signal to the search engines that you are targeting the UK market.

In Summary, you should use your country specific extension when targeting your local market, and also when you are using non-uk hosting.

I find that a lot of people don’t give due consideration to their domain name yet a little careful planning could boost your online presence.

It has long been known that using important keywords in your domain name can add some weight to your search engine optimisation process. However, due to spamming over recent years, the importance has diminished, but there is still some worth in having a keyword rich domain.

A word of caution though – before going out and buying keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4.com, you should try and keep the number of dashes to a maximum of 2. Lots of dashes in a domain name flags up the related website as a possible spammy site.

However, if you have a big brand already, you may get people entering your company name directly into the address box and append .com or .co.uk to it, so in that case you may be better choosing to have your company name as your domain name.

I find a good combination is to buy your company name and have it redirected to a more search engine friendly domain that includes your company name. That way you are helping to build your brand, but are also using a big keyword i.e. www.companyname-keyword1.co.uk.

However, before you all ruch out and buy new domains incorporating your brand and your major keyword, if you have a long held domain name, I would not advise changing your domain as it can have an effect on your search engine listings.