Denver SEO Blog » Domains

Selling BoulderSEO.com

Zack Katz — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:58:33 +0000

A great domain goes up for sale on GoDaddy.

I have put the BoulderSEO.com domain up for auction: with the upcoming release of the top-secret WordPress real estate plugin, I have chosen to sell this prime property.

The BoulderSEO.com auction will be ending in 18 hours, so if you’re into Colorado, Denver, Loveland, or Boulder SEO (you get the idea!), check out this auction.

You will instantly rank well with this great domain.

Currently priced at only $660 – it’s a great deal! With literally no work done on the site since April, 2009, I still get 1-2 leads/month from this site. This domain will pay for itself in a month.

Go to the auction.

YOURLS URL Shortener

Zack Katz — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 23:20:18 +0000

I was having trouble finding the right URL shortening service. My requests for shortening were not too picky. I wanted two simple features:

Good statistics that are visible only to administrators
Edit the long URLs after generating shortened links

…but not one service has both features:

http://sn.im has editable URLs, a bookmarklet, but no stats. Oh, and they kept on deleting my links.
http://bit.ly has great stats, name recognition, but the links aren’t editable and the stats are public.
http://goo.gl is the fastest service (so they claim), they have good stats (maybe the best, since they include OS & browser information), but they don’t have editable links or private stats.

Other smaller offerings may have had both features, but they also seem unreliable. I wanted control of my links.

Self-hosted Link Shortening with YOURLS

YOURLS has a really nice admin page, including good stats.

Enter YOURLS; a self-hosted link shortening service that is created by two amazing WordPress plugin developers: Lester Chan and Ozh Richard.

They created YOURLS in a WordPress-like fashion, with developer goodies such as hooks (actions and filters) and plugin capabilities, so you can easily modify how the application works.

You can set up YOURLS however you want, including making it a public service, public stats, etc. or making it private. I set up a YOURLS installation on my new katz.si domain, which was a snap, except for one minor snag caused by HostGator’s security rules.

You do need to be able to set up a database and edit one configuration file, but other than that, super-simple.

They also have a WordPress plugin that links your WP installation with YOURLS, aut0-generates links, and works like a charm.

Don’t Track Logged-In Users in YOURLS

Once it was installed, I became a link-generating fool. I was clicking the links to see how well the redirections work (they work well!), but the test clicks were logged — this pissed me off with bit.ly and other URL shorteners: don’t offer a way to not track logged in users! I have long thought that this is ridiculous.

To make it so that YOURLS doesn’t track logged-in users, it’s a simple two-line update. Find the following lines in yourls-go.php:

// Update click count in main table $update_clicks = yourls_update_clicks( $keyword ); // Update detailed log for stats $log_redirect = yourls_log_redirect( $keyword );

and update them to be:

if(yourls_is_valid_user() !== true) { // Begin: Don't log logged-in users // Update click count in main table $update_clicks = yourls_update_clicks( $keyword ); // Update detailed log for stats $log_redirect = yourls_log_redirect( $keyword ); } // End: Don't log logged-in users

Do yourself a favor and check out YOURLS

In all, my experience was rewarding: it was very easy to set up the YOURLS installation, once up I have a very configurable and fun URL shortener. I get to build links to a domain I control, which is nice for SEO.

SEO & Switching Domains

Zack Katz — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:11:17 +0000

Goodbye old friend. Hello shiny new domain!

Recently I moved my company’s domain from KatzWebDesign.net to KatzWebServices.com to reflect the change of the business name (over one year ago) from Katz Web Design to Katz Web Services, Inc., to reflect the in company services offerings, and to have a .com domain.

This is a simple switch, not re-launching a new website — just moving the same site from one domain to the next. Here’s how I approached the switch, and it’s a solid method to use for any domain switch:

A week before:

Make sure the new domain works properly
Start pointing some new links to the domain (which will just be parked on top of the current site)

On the day of move:

Add the website and a site-map to Google Webmaster Tools

Update the .htaccess file to move permanently move the domain

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^katzwebdesign.net(.*) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.katzwebservices.com/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

For great .htaccess tips, check out corz.org.

Update the site map to reflect new domain addresses
Fill out a change of address form in Google Webmaster Tools
Request people you know link to the new domain

Week after move, you should slowly change existing backlinks to the new domain

Update profile pages (LinkedIn, Facebook, MerchantCircle, Google Profiles, CitySearch, you know the drill)
Email webmasters and request link changes be made

Matt Cutts tells people to change things slowly and steadily so Google doesn’t freak out:

Note: changing your IP address, webhost, domain name, blog template, and blog version all at the same time is the exact opposite of what you should normally do. It’s better to change only one thing at a time so that if something goes horribly wrong, you can trace what caused it.

What I experienced

Google showed both domains for a while until they completely updated their index. An example: when searching “Denver web design,” they showed katzwebdesign.net. When searching “Denver SEO,” they showed katzwebservices.com.

Buying Domains at Auction

Zack Katz — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:11:52 +0000

Domain auctions are a rush — and a great opportunity

Earlier this month, I was shopping around for some domain names, and I found out that BoulderSEO.net and BoulderSEO.org were available, and that BoulderSEO.com was expiring shortly and going up for auction. I had never backordered a domain before, but for $18.95, it was worth trying out.

When you backorder a domain with GoDaddy, the instant it’s available at auction, they place a $10.00 bid for you. You then have about a month to wait for anyone else to outbid you. If they don’t, you get the domain for the $18.95 you paid. If they outbid you, you’ll receive email notification that you’ve been outbid.

The day of the auction, I was about to leave on a field trip to Sierra Trading Post in Cheyenne, WY, when I found out that I had been outbid with only 5 minutes left. Thankfully, I was in front of the computer. With 2 minutes left, I realized I wasn’t signed in and had forgotten my password to GoDaddy. I raced to reset my password, enter the captcha, and I placed a higher bid in the last 3 seconds. In the GoDaddy system, each time you add a new bid, the auction extends by 2 minutes. The other bidder thought they had taken me by surprise and had it all wrapped up, but in the end, I won the auction.

I’m going to boast: BoulderSEO.com cost $31.00. Can you afford not to check out domain auctions?

A few tips from my auction experience

If you find domains that have [Your Location][Your Industry].com/net/org, buy them. Now.
Don’t bid until the last minute (standard eBay rules apply ), then enter the maximum you’re willing to pay for the domain. With GoDaddy auctions, you will only pay $5 more than the previous high bid.
Read this Mike Davidson article about backordering using different services. It’s very informative (if a few years old).
Then read this SEOMoz article about expiring domain names.

New Yahoo! domain prices — can they be serious?

Zack Katz — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:27:29 +0000

Is Yahoo! nuts? They want a 351% increase for domains!

Might as well say “This is Yahoo calling…and we need your money.”

I just got an email from Yahoo! Domains (where I registered madeindenver.com) that says the following:

Important note: Beginning on July 1, 2008, Yahoo!’s annual domain renewal price increases to $34.95 per year.

Yahoo is going to charge $34.95 a year for domains, up from $9.95. This is unbelievable. I know they’re trying to bolster their bottom line so Microsoft and Icahn stay away, but is charging 351% more than before, and 500% markup the way to do it?

If you’re going to pay too much money for something, you might as well treat yourself to Starbucks and enjoy it.

People are pissed off.

Yahoo Domain Scam
The Big Yahoo Domain Rip-off
Massive Yahoo! domain name price rise – is it to pay for the lawyers?

Yahoo needs all the good press it can get. This was stupid and an abuse of their stature.