Frequently Asked Questions

If the new domain is highly targeted to searches customers make on Google, the new site is much more likely to get a higher ranking on Google than the existing site. Links are then added to the newer site to direct visitors to the main company website.

For example, if a law firm handles divorce cases in addition to many other types of work, a separate site can be set up that focuses entirely on divorce law, such as www.divorcelawyer.com. Then when visitors click a link for more information, they will be seamlessly directed to the law firm’s main site.

There are two ways. The first is a simple redirect (just ask your webmaster, this only takes one line of code to implement). With a redirect code, the visitor never lands on the newer website, instead they are instantly sent to your company website and never see the first website at all.

The second method is called a “slave site.” This is usually a one-page website that has some brief text with links directing back to specific pages on the main or “master site.” Often the slave site contains frequently asked questions on a topic, but cuts off the text in mid paragraph. The visitor clicks a link for more information and is then sent to a specific page in the master site that finishes the information.

If the same layout and theme is used for the slave site as the master site, the visitor may never know they have left one site and are now on a new site.

Why go to all the trouble of setting up slave sites? Because these simple sites will usually rank higher on Google and other search engines, for specific topics, than a redirect site because the search engines pick up the text and give it more authority.

Additionally, it will usually rank higher than the main or master site for that topic because the slave site’s text is entirely focused on that one topic, whereas the master site must cover multiple topics.

Imagine two companies that make garage door openers. The first has a website titled, www.acmemanufacturing.com. The second company has a site named, www.garagedooropeners.com.

Because the keywords, or search terms, are included in the domain name itself, the second firm will almost always get higher rankings from Google whenever someone searches for “garage door openers.”

More and more, people are searching for businesses geographically. If a C.PA. has the domain name www.taxaccountant.com, she will get visitors from all over the country. But if her domain is named www.boisetaxaccountant.com, she will get high rankings for both people who include the name of her city, Boise, in their search for a tax accountant. Additionally, she will also come up higher when someone does a search from her general geographic area (at least on Google).

The reason for this is that Google has sophisticated tracking tools that identify the specific geographic area (often as precise as the zip code the person’s computer is located in) a person is at the time they are doing a search, and delivers results that are targeted to that area.

This means that a person doing a search for the term “tax accountant” from Norfolk, Virginia will see different results than the person doing the same search in Boise. The Norfolk person will see more Virginia C.P.A. firms, whereas the Boise person will see more listings for CPAs in Boise and surrounding communities.