MSN Domain Spam

Domain spam is when you create keyword rich sub domains for your web site. For example, let say I have the domain domain.com and use this as a spam site to attract visitor looking for anything to do with mortgages.

I would first search the Internet, probably using Word Tracker and other resources, and find out what the "money" phases are for that keyword space. Once I knew what these were, I would create sub domains from my main domain using those keywords. For example, if a money phase was "current mortgage rates", I could create a new sub domain like this current-mortgage-rates.domain.com on my web server.

Normally this will get you banned on any of the major search engines, but for MSN this will probably lead to a great position in most keyword spaces. We don't recommend you do this! This is black-hat SEO and is highly frowned upon.

You can see for yourself how we confirmed this by using Website-Manager to generate a report that showed a Web site's domain, host (domain with subs), and title. We ran the report for the top 3 search engines and highlighted all the keywords in the domain, host, and title. Once you see the data in this fashion, it's easy to spot that MSN is allowing domain spam while the other two are not.

Domain Spam Report

For those interested, here's the custom report for Website-Manager you can import back into the report task to find domain spam in your keyword space. You can even apply this report to prior rankings. See the online help for help on importing custom reports into Website-Manager.

Spam Report for Website-Manager

Firefox: Good or Bad?

Yes, it's the browser we all want to replace IE, but...

We've been using Firefox for a while now and have been through 3 of their updates (1.0, 1.5, and 1.5.0.1). To date, pause here, not very happy with the browser, and very disappointed with the updates. For serious web users, it's not ready for prime time yet. And at their current update rate, I would guess that it will be another year or so before they might be ready.

There's just too many things wrong or not working. Here's our top 10:

1. When downloading files you can't select the directory.
   
2. Once it's been on your computer a while, it slows waaaaay down and becomes slower than IE.
   
3. Problems loading Adobe pdf documents on many occasions.
   
4. Some times clicking a link on a web site does nothing but cause FF to sit and spin.
   
5. iframe tags don't work. If you're an Amazon affiliate you'll hate this!
   
6. If you do a lot of printing of web pages, expect crashes where you need to reboot.
   
7. Not very friendly with Microsoft media types.
   
8. Doesn't work with most, if not all, online banking web sites.
   
9. Very flaky when it comes to java. I don't use FF to buy anything on the web anymore.
   
10. Extremely slow update schedule. It's like waiting for the next version of Windows, but worse!
    

Bottom line, if Firefox want's to grow market share they need to focus and improve the browser. Because of my problems with Firefox, I refuse to try any of their other software.

Domain for sale?

Think your domain name is worth a boat load of cash? Think again. It's not the same world it was back 5 years ago when you could sell a domain name for 2 million dollars. In this show we -- jokingly -- talk about one woman's quest to sell her domain for half a million dollars. Good luck! (We really do hope she gets it!)

The right way to expire or purchase a domain name

Moving your web site from one domain name to another? Thinking about letting a domain name expire? You'll want to listen to the show then. We have expert tips on what you should do with your domain if you are thinking about moving or expiring a domain.

We mention in the podcast a couple of resources to use if you're thinking about purchasing an existing domain name. We urge you to use both during the process, you won't be disappointed.

http://www.archive.org (also known as the "Way Back Machine")
http://whois.sc (more than just a whois database)

About Jerry West of Web Marketing Now

Jerry West is the Director of Marketing for Web Marketing Now and the Search Engine Academy. He has been in the SEO business since 1996 and has consulted for such firms as AT&T, Monster.com, GE, Sun Systems, and dozens of others. His background as a software tester lends him to one of the leaders in testing the search engine algorithms and discovering what methodologies really work. You can catch him on the road speaking for Search Engine Workshops.

Next Week's Show

Next week we're going to try and secure a three-way phone call with one of those SEO spammers who claim they can get your web site to number one on Google and Yahoo in less than 24-hours and find out how they are doing it (if they really are -- not!). This should be both fun and interesting!