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
-
International SEO | Question about Hreflang
Hi, I have an International SEO question and would like to get some help from Moz forum: Our company has a Taiwan office for a few years already, but never had any Traditional Chinese (lang code: ZH-TW) webpage publihsed on our site: https://www.abc.com. The regional team recently has built a 50 page ZH-TW microsite based on translations from select pages from abc.com. The site will have it's own navigation. Currently our CMS doesn't have a language directory to support ZH-TW (such as https://www.abc.com/zh-tw) If we do not add a directory, the pages would have to be published as ZH nodes (for Simplified CHINESE) with ZH language tags and canonicals. The only tag we can set for ZH-TW would be the Hreflang tag. Example:
Web Design | | ThinkingPanda0 -
Are photoshelters templates SEO friendly?
trying to figure out if photoshelters templates are SEO friendly. We are debating using photoshelter (already an image hosting partner we're using) and Wordpress. Any input much appreciated!
Web Design | | Majsan0 -
Wow, does a website's hosting company have that much affect on SEO?
As a small SEO agency, we also handle hosting for some of our clients. Our clients' sites are Wordpress. We set them up with a Bluehost account with a dedicated IP address, and spend a lot of time focusing on load times (implementing a CDN, optimizing images, installing W3 Total cache and using recommended settings, etc.). Last month, we had a client inform us that they are bringing their web marketing efforts in-house, so they switched to a new hosting provider and took their (existing) site to the new hosting company. They kept their old Google Analytics code installed, so I can still see how much traffic they're getting. Since switching to a new host, despite the load times taking longer, no CDN, and other errors that came up prior to us spending time "optimizing" the website, their organic traffic has increased by 26%. Same exact website, same inbound link profile. According to Webmaster Tools, their impressions and clicks have also seen dramatic increases. So now, obviously, I'm considering looking into other options for the hosting of our other clients' websites. From your experience, and especially when it comes to Wordpress websites, do you think that a hosting company can make that big of a difference in terms of SEO? I've heard of positive results from people who have used WP-Engine, and other Wordpress-dedicated hosting companies, but I just find it hard to believe that we spent so much time on load-time-specific ranking factors and come to find out, a different hosting company would have made a huge difference. Any thoughts/feedback?
Web Design | | georgetsn1 -
Any alternative techniques to display tabbed content without using Javascript / JSON and be SEO Friendly?
John Mueller's input in the EGWMH hangout suggests that Google MAY ignore expandable content served by Javascript. Are there any alternative techniques to display tabbed content without using Javascript / JSON and be SEO Friendly? I do however view these as good for website interactivity and UX - and see many examples of websites performing well and ranking highly whilst using these techniques - are there any Google friendly ways to serve content on a page so that search bots can recognise and choose to crawl / consume the content as legitimate fodder?
Web Design | | Fergclaw0 -
Question re. crawlable textual content
I have a client who is struggling to fit crawlable textual content on their pages. I'm wondering if we can add a "Learn More..." feature that works as a mouse over pop up. When a page visitor runs their curser over the link or button, a window bubble pops up and textual content about the page will show. Not knowing much about code, can text in this format be crawlable by search engines and count as unique and relevant content? Thanks, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Seo for design webinar ?
I've got no problem using google webfonts on their own, but what about using them over an image; specifically a clickable image? Its easiest to place text over an image if the image is a background image, but then the image isn't easy to make clickable. Am I missing something - this shouldn't be hard, right. Thanks!
Web Design | | saultie0 -
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 -
Which Shopping Cart is best for SEO? Magento vs. X-Cart
Comparing X-Cart and Magento, which do you think is better for SEO and why? I am leaning towards Magento and wanted to get some opinions?
Web Design | | BlinkWeb0