SEO ethical practice in question
-
A family friend asked me to take a look at her website.
www.designsbymaida.com
First thing i noticed is what seemed a 301 redirect or a forward to
http://funktionaldesignstudios.com/dbm-old/
So her site is hosted with what it looks like, in his site(funktonaldesigns). What does this means in terms of how google sees her site and in terms of SEO.
My thought is that he is boosting his domain name. He is getting the link juice.
Thanks for the insight and help.
-
Haha, what the??!! They're charging her for hosting and putting her in a sub directory of their own domain? Jeez, that is brazen. And they clearly must be one of those companies that profess to supply SEO but don't actually know squat about it. Tell her to fire their ass! And to ask for a refund on all her hosting payments. Tell her to tell them that all us crazies on this thread would like to throw wet kippers at them!
-
Her new site might have a problem with the content on this guy's domain. I would want him to put up a permanent redirect. But I bet he will not do it.
-
She may want to consider moving the site to another host! She can get a hosting plan at a number of reliable places for under $10 per month. Then she can start doing some SEO for her site! If she just wants a place where she can tell people, "Hey, this is my web address" then what she's got is sufficient. But, if she wants to be found by search engines, this just ain't going to work.
-
OK.... not a design proof. thanks
-
This site has been this way for like a year and she pays for hosting.
-
I agree with you entirely. Good answer.
-
She is paying for "website" hosting. Apparently Funktion Designs also does SEO. How could a company view this as acceptable.
-
Good point, Steve. It could be a design proof.
-
Are you sure the site is fully ready and released yet? When we used to build sites for people, we'd host them like that on our own site in a directory just so the client could see the site, etc... up until it was ready to go live, at which point it would have it's own hosting.
If not that, then yeah it's ridiculous and your friend should tell them it needs its own hosting.
-
** What does this means in terms of how google sees her site and in terms of SEO. **
I'd say she doesn't have a site. The service provider has usurped her site by intent or ignorance.
-
Sorry, she*
-
If he's serious about his business he'd have the site on his own domain name.
The site he's got his site hosted on doesn't carry much weight so I don’t see the point. Also, having a site hosted on another companies domain looks really unprofessional.
-
It looks to me like this isn't her website at all. Instead, she has purchased space on the funktional designs website. "www.designsbymaida.com" isn't a website - it's just a domain name that redirects to the designer's site.
So if there was any linkbuilding effort geared towards designsbymaida, then yes, funktional designs would benefit.
But, I don't this this is an ethical question. I don't think they're trying to do anything shady. They're just giving space on their website. Now, if she wants to SEO her site she's got to talk to Funktional Designs about taking her content and putting it on a self hosted site.
-
Agreed, very questionable. Maybe hes saving on hosting fees!
In the current scenario any inbound links to your friends site will be building the Domain Authority etc of the FunktionalDesignStudios domain. Thus, yes he is boosting his own domain. Though technically speaking it will also be boosting your friends site whilst it is served from a sub directory of the funktionaldesign domain.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What type of website is best for seo.
I need a new website for my health insurance business. What type is best for SEO? Many thanks
Web Design | | laurentjb0 -
Is this CSS solution to faceted navigation a problem for SEO?
Hi guys. Take a look at the navigation on this page from our DEV site: http://wwwdev.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/handheld-microphones While the CSS "trick" implemented by our IT Director does allow a visitor to sort products based on more than one criteria, my gut instinct says this is very bad for SEO. Here are the immediate issues I see: The URL doesn't change as the filter criteria changes. At the very least this is a lost opportunity for ranking on longer tail terms. I also think it could make us vulnerable to a Panda penalty because many of the combinations produce zero results, so returning a page without content, under the original URL. This could not only create hundreds of pages with no content, there would be duplicates of those zero content pages as well. Usability - The "Sort by" option in the drop down (upper right of the page) doesn't work in conjunction with the left Nav filters. In other words if you filter down to 5 items and then try to arrange them by price high to low, the "Sort" will take precedence, remove the filter and serve up a result that is all products in that category sorted high to low (and the filter options completely disapper), AND the URL changes to this: http://wwwdev.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/IAFDispatcher regardless of what sort was chosen...(this is a whole separate problem, I realize and not specifically what I'm trying to address here). Aside from these two big problems, are there any other issues you see that arise out of trying to use CSS to create product filters in this way? I am trying to build a case for why I believe it should not be implemented this way. Conversely, if you see this as a possible implementation that could work if tweaked a bit, and advice you are willing to share would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Thank you to Travis for pointing out the the link wasn't accessible. For anyone willing to take a closer look we can unblock the URL based on your IP address. If you'd be kind enough to send me your IP via private message I can have my IT director unblock it so you can view the page. Thanks!
Web Design | | danatanseo0 -
Too Many Outbound Links on the Home Page - Bad for SEO?
Hello Again Moz community, This is my last Q of the day: I have a LOT of outbound links on the home page of www.web3.ca Some are to clients projects, most are to other pages on the website. Can reducing this to the core pages have a positive impact on SEO? Thanks, Anton
Web Design | | Web3Marketing870 -
Having a new website build, what happens to my SEO work?
Hi, We are in the process of having a new website developed by a web agency. New domain, new business name etc... What is the best process to transfer from old domain to the new one? What happens to all my ranked URLs? What can re-directs do to help me? Will I loose all my link juice on highly ranked keyword domains? I ranked 1st for a brand now, wil lthis go? Any advice, help or hints would be great. Thanks Will
Web Design | | YNWA0 -
SEO for product dimensions
I am taking over a new project that offers high price large products. I am trying to decide on the best way to do some SEO on the product titles, etc. for best practices what do ya'll recommend right now we're doing: 10' H x 10' W x 12' D product name blah blah blah and other thoughts on how to be more efficient in this?
Web Design | | malachiii0 -
Drop Down Menus & SEO?
Do these typically have a negative impact on SEO? I know this is kind of a vague question, does it make it harder to spider? Are there SEO friendly ways of coding these? There are so many sites out there that have these, so I've got to assume it's different on a case by case basis.
Web Design | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Can SEO Moz perform a full site crawl and provide a report showing all URLs within an existing domain?
We are conducting a site redesign and need to get an idea of all pages that are out there on our domain (in some report fashion). This would help for discovery and cleanup as we re-work the site and move to a new CMS. Thanks
Web Design | | DCondon0 -
Flash and SEO
When I search the seomoz site for "flash and seo" I only see older articles, 2008. Is there anything newer you can point me to for a current discussion on the impact on SEO of flash sites?
Web Design | | panderson3210