Every now and again I am surprised when going through the SEO news articles with regards to issues people are having getting their website noticed in google.
On such question was posed by an company who purchased a domain that had been previously owned and used for piracy giving it a bad reputation and dissolving the trust google uses as part of its ranking algorithm to determine page position.
An article on Search Engine Journal where a google employee was posed this very question.
In a nutshell it would seem that most issues such as this will resolve them selves over time in that google wont stop indexing but that trust score needs to be worked on.
At AME WebTech we would advise the following.
If you have not yet purchased the domain, check if it has been used over the past few years, check out websites such as the archive.org way back machine can show what your website looked like at different times, should the previous owner have published pirated content, offensive material or anything that could be seen as illegal or dodgy it may be worth choosing another URL.
When your website is live ensure it is protected by an SSL certificate
Ensure your contact details match other websites but also ensure they are visible on other pagers
Where ever possible get external links going back to your pages from other websites
Get as many reviews as you can either via trust pilot or google reviews as well as any testimonials or case studies all of which show you are advertising what you do and you do it well which can help increase your trust score.
Choosing your domain name is a confusing process, having your company name in your domain name can be seen as the most important thing however a lot of the time these can already be taken and also not very descriptive, why not review our article “Finding Local Customers In Aylesbury Search Engine Optimisation For Local Businesses” it has some useful tips on choosing more descriptive domains and may help you choose one that will help with SEO and promote your website more effectively.
But once chosen taking 10 minutes to see if there are any hints on the internet that the domain name you have chosen may be seen as un-trustworthy will help in those early days of trying to ramp up your sites SEO.
If you already use a domain name that is affected by the illicit behaviour of its previous owner the reputation will improve over time assuming nothing “too bad” was detected previously, for an initial period your domain will have a low trust score regardless of its history so if you have already got to having a site go live on one of these domains then it may be best to wait it out and conduct business as usual.
