I’ve been very busy these passed few weeks building on a few new websites. Some for clients and other for my own uses. My own site is about natural skincare with the focus being on treating acne for sensitive skin.
I spent hours trying to choose a new domain name that would be both relevant and suitable for SEO purposes. I know that since the Penguin/Panda updates, the days of stuffing long-tail keywords into your domain are over, but I still wanted a name that “does what it says on the tin”.
After countless searches I decided on natural-acne-solutions.net. A name in fact that my partner came up with. Given that the skincare niche is so competitive, I was surprised that this name was actually available at all.
Once the name was registered and hosting in place I logged the details with an analytics tool that is very handy for SEO tracking, Traffic Travis, one of Mark Ling’s pieces of software.
To my surprise 100’s of back links were appearing already in the stats! I realised that the domain was not a fresh one and that further research showed it had been purchased in 2010 and allowed to expire last year after.
The name has been on the shelf for 9 months so there is no PR value attached and any searches show that it is either banned/new. Adsense however says the domain is not banned which is a start.
Now the question is did the name just expire because the domain was not needed, or was it allowed to expire because it was banned after the Penguin update. The domain name is such that it would have been used for affiliate marketing and looking at the history of the domain, it was used for one f those affiliate adsense gateway sites that you come across sometimes. Spammy, but not illegal.
Do any of the legacy back links come from illegal sources? I have entered the site into Google Webmaster Tools and no warnings come up so I have upload the site map.
I now just have to see whether it gets indexed or not…
Have you had any painful banned domain name experiences? Let me know.