May
8
I love Eric Ward. Coolest link builder out there. I have read every article by him. Any guy who gets to email a Yahoo founder in his student account about opening the Web Promotion section of Yahoo Directory is a Godfather of Internet marketing in my book. Having said that, and knowing his busy schedule, I just wanted to give him an SEO tip through my blog.
Please 301 redirect netpost.com to www.ericward.com to prevent duplicate content and get your website power up. It really is SEO 101 and I know you dont care about your site as much (as you probably get more referrals than any of us in SEO business but I just had to say it). I guess after you do this business for a while small things bother you a lot (and this is one of the pet peeves for me). Anyhow let’s count this as a lesson to people who want to learn SEO. To prevent any duplicate content issues and to maximize your link power to a website you should 301 redirect all domain names pointing to the webpages of the website that they want the domains to be redirected to. Have a wonderful day from your big fan, Eric.
Comments
2 Responses to “When Netpost.com becomes EricWard.com”
Leave a Reply
Hi Mert. I know I know. I’ve wondered for years what would happen if I 301′d it, but then I have seen other cases where the 301 caused really unexpected and unintended things to happen. So I figure if it aint broke, don’t fix it. I rank 1st at G/Y/L/A for the phrase that matters most to me, so I hesitate to do it. I think I’m safe because the domains have both been live since before there were ANY crawlers, so my intent was never to have dupe content. It was for people who typed in ericward.com looking for me that hadn’t heard of netpost.
What’s your opinion on the realized impact of doing a 301 vs the potential unintended cons.?
Eric,
You are one of the few people in this business whose name is more well know than their successful business (Rand and Danny are others).
I feel like a student lecturing a teacher here but here are some facts
#1 Number of Inbound links to Ericward.com outweight netpost.com 25 to 1. (13K+ to 500+)
#2 When you search for “netpost.com” in Google you show up at #7 (and not even the home page but a page from awards95.html) which means Google could not care less about that domain. The only reason that page is ranking is that it is getting links from your (ericward.com domain) overview.html, press.html, netpost.html, and /news/ pages which brings me to point #3
#3 You still have links pointing to netpost.com urls from ericward.com urls encouraging duplicate content more within your own website. That is probably hurting you rather than helping you.
#4 If you were my client, I would say make an internal linking standard within your website (all urls pointing to ericward.com rather than netpost.com).
From an SEO point of view, I strongly doubt, it will hurt you to 301 your domain but again there are more things in life than SEO which brings me to #5
#5 a)There are issues such as brand management, traditional company url promotions and marketing programs to consider which I might not be aware of (as you are not my client). I am pretty sure your website has a lot more referral traffic than search engine traffic.
b) I know, I know, don’t fix it if it aint broke is the line of logic, but I would not call myself a good SEO if I played it safe every time.
c) honestly given the authority of your site, 500+ links being 301 redirected wont make or break you either way (may be get you a few ranks up for the keyword link building.. a huge maybe).
If you ask me (strictly from an SEO point of view) I would say do the 301, but again I am not the one managing your company’s offline brand image campaign, you are. Geesh I just felt like a third grader sweating through an unannounced oral exam in front of his teacher (teacher being the mighty LinkMoses)
Thank you for honoring my blog, Eric. If you ever stop by Chicago drop me a line. I would be honored to take you for Chicago style pizza or hot dog. Anyhow, at least let me buy a coffee. I look forward to seeing your action on the subject.