DomainTools Blog

We just wrapped up our with SMX Advanced in Seattle this Tuesday and Wednesday. If you missed the press release about our attendance, be sure to read it. It was our first time at a search marketing conference, and it was interesting to introduce DomainTools to curious attendees who wanted more in-depth details about all of our services. Those conversations were nicely balanced with  stories from others who enthusiastically said, “I use you guys all the time”.  We love attending conferences as a chance to meet members and learn about what people love to use.

Here are a few photos of the conference, also posted on our Facebook page:

One of the highlights of SMX Advanced, like previous conferences, has been the You&A with Matt Cutts. Coined the Alan Greenspan of Google, Matt is their most well-known software engineer. The You&A was a hilarious and very engaging discussion that started out with Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land, giving Matt a giant Panda bear along with a panda foot stool. An interesting story surfaced about Larry Page, CEO of Google, and his search for the term “warm mangos”. The Google team who was working on improving search quality needed to understand the logic behind someone searching for the term ‘warm mangos’ – turns out, mangoes warm up when they are packaged in boxes due to the carbon dioxide produced. As the banter about ‘warm mangos’ was being highlighted, it is not a coincidence that WarmMangos.com was registered during that session

I was checking Green Lake Massage’s website. They are a small Seattle based company. Great domain name for a firm that gives messages to name itself after the city it is in and the thing it does. [City] [Occupation]. However when looking at there website and their whois record I am shocked at how disorganized everything is. First off their SEO Score was only 52%. They are using only images on the site except for the footer and the title tag! This means that all the copy on the site is invisible to search engines and for people searching for those keywords.

All the graphic links on the page load a javascript image with even more words hidden inside of graphics. This violates so many rules about how to SEO a site. It is a good example site because it breaks so many rules. Surprisingly it ranks #1 in Google for its own name, I would have thought it would be out ranked by a competitor.

This is what the website looks like to GoogleBot:

When I check the whois of the domain name. Green Lake Massage.com I see that the Registrant is “Just Us, Inc.” and not the clinic itself. Bad news for them, they don’t even own their own domain name. Yikes! If a company is not listed as the Registrant, sorry they are out of luck.

My top hints for this site:

1. Don’t put paragraphs of text inside images.
2. Fire your Webmaster.
3. Transfer their domain into their own name.
4. Make multiple pages and don’t use javascript.
5. Add more content and describe what your company does.

Small business owners tend to focus on the details of their business inside their shops, but don’t realize their online presents is a bigger part of their success or lack there of. Customers look up phone numbers, maps, and information about companies online. Most people I know prefer to learn the information about a company on their website rather then playing 20 questions on the phone with the secretary.

Registrant:
Just Us, Inc.
6823 Oswego Place, NE
Seattle, WA 98115
US

Domain Name: GREENLAKEMASSAGE.COM

Administrative Contact:
Watson, Dorothy
Green Lake Massage
6823 Oswego Pl NE Suite 1
Seattle, WA 98115
US
206-527-9709

Technical Contact:
Qwest Internet Solutions
600 Stinson Blvd.
Minneapolis, MN 55413
US
800-672-8520 fax: 123 123 1234

Record expires on 25-Mar-2008.
Record created on 25-Mar-1999.

Domain servers in listed order:

AUTHNS1.MPLS.QWEST.NET 63.231.205.1
AUTHNS3.STTL.QWEST.NET 206.81.192.11