• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
BlogAid Logo

BlogAid

Help for DIY Site Owners and Webmasters - WordPress, SEO, HTTPS, Security, and Performance

  • Home
  • Blog
    • Current Posts
    • Helpful Posts
  • Tips Tuesday
  • Site Services
    • Happy Clients
    • Setup, Backups, Fixes
    • Site Service Requests
    • Site Audits
      • What’s In the Audit
      • Audit Request Form
    • HTTPS Conversion
      • About the Service
      • HTTPS Request Form
  • Resources
    • Plugins
    • Helpful Posts
    • Site Resources
    • Start Here with BlogAid
  • Classes
    • Happy Clients
    • All Classes
    • DIY SEO Course
    • Webmaster Training
  • Videos
  • About
    • About MaAnna
    • Happy Clients
    • Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
  • Contact
    • General Contact
    • Site Service Requests

How You Hurt Your SEO by Getting Hosting and Domain Too Soon

February 14, 2011 by MaAnna Stephenson

TwitterFacebookGoogle+PinterestLinkedinReddit

The first thing most new site owners do is come up with the perfect domain name, then go buy it and a hosting package. What they don’t realize is, that rush to purchase can actually affect them negatively in search engines. I’ll tell you why and how you can lock in your ideal domain name without causing yourself harm.

Understand Page Indexing

The trick to avoid hurting yourself in the search engines, like Google, is by knowing how your site pages are indexed in the first place. There are two primary ways that Google takes notice of your pages. The fastest way is for you to let Google know you have a new page on your site. It’s called a ping. By default, your WordPress site is set up to automatically ping search engines. Normally that’s a good thing, but not if your site is not ready. More on that in a moment.

The second way search engines index the pages of your site is by sending out search robots, called bots and spiders, to crawl the Web in search of new pages. That sort of indexing often takes between two and four months.

How it Harms You

Here’s how you hurt yourself by purchasing a domain and hosting together far in advance of having your site ready to launch. Once your domain name points to a specific location in cyber space, namely a host’s server, a page is automatically created for it by the host. It will generally say something like “Under Construction.”

Eventually, that page will get indexed by the search engine bots and spiders. So, when someone types a search phrase in Google that matches something close to your domain name, one of the results they may see will be your domain name, followed by the only other text info on the page. It will look something like this:

www.YourSite.com
Under Construction

Once you do have a site in place, it could take you another two to four months to get your real pages indexed by search engines by moving the old “under construction” listing down in the rankings.

Keep in mind that the process of taking a site from idea to publication could be up to six months or more, depending mainly on how sure you are of what you want to do and how much of your core content you have created. That’s plenty of time for search engines to index your “under construction” page before you get a real page in place.

Park It for Now

So, if you’re in a hurry to snatch the perfect domain name, you can. Just don’t purchase hosting yet. You can get your domain through a variety of registrars, like GoDaddy, and simply park the domain. In other words, you will own the domain, it just won’t point to anywhere in cyber space. If there’s no page associated with it, the domain won’t be indexed by search engines.

Research with a Pro

The very best advice is to contact a marketing guru or site design specialist before you purchase anything, and let them give you pointers on domain name choices that works best for the keywords on which you want to rank highest. There may be a lot of marketing angles you had not considered. Plus, they can probably recommend a good domain and hosting company for you to use, as well as the proper site platform that best meets your needs.

See What I Mean

If you want to see another way to goof up your SEO, go to Google and type in “skip intro” to see how a Flash page really messes up the search engine rankings of your home page too.

TwitterFacebookGoogle+PinterestLinkedinReddit

Filed Under: Hosting and Domains, SEO Tagged With: SEO

About MaAnna Stephenson

MaAnna is a geek who can still speak in plain English. She helps DIY site owners plus webmasters and designers create sites that are secure, perform well, and get noticed by search engines and readers.

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

This book could save you hundreds of dollars and months of frustration. Get it free with your subscription to BlogAid News plus my blog posts.
Privacy Policy



Reader Interactions

Primary Sidebar

This book could save you hundreds of dollars and months of frustration. Get it free with your subscription to BlogAid News plus my blog posts.
Privacy Policy

Hi! I'm MaAnna, and a geek who can still speak in plain English. I help DIY site owners plus webmasters and designers create sites that are secure, perform well, and get noticed by search engines and readers. How May I Help You?

Let’s Connect

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Looking for Something?

Search by Category

Footer

BlogAid News

This book could save you hundreds of dollars and months of frustration.

Get it free with your subscription to BlogAid News plus my blog posts. Privacy Policy

From the Blog

  • Tips Tuesday – Video is Huge, 2 Free Webinars, Social Share and Pinterest Case Study Update
  • Tips Tuesday – Sticky Bar Plugins, Gutenberg Phase 2, Safely Update Plugins
  • Tips Tuesday – Site Speed, Protect Images, Google and PDFs, WP 5.1 Security
  • Tips Tuesday – Site Security, MediaVine Research, Genesis 2.8, Gutenberg Phase 2
  • Collection #1 Data Breach and Your Site Security
  • Genesis 2.8 Promises a New Theme Experience
  • Tips Tuesday – Site Speed Up, WordPress 5.1 Beta, Survey Results, TinyMCE Advanced Update
  • Tips Tuesday – Surveys, Genesis 2.8 Beta, Gutenberg Classes, Share Buttons Study

© 2019   Blog Aid · WordPress for Non-Geeks · All Rights Reserved

Disclosure: Some of the links on this website may be affiliate links. When you make a purchase from these links, I earn a small commission.
While commissions allow me to keep this site 100% free, I only endorse products I trust and use for myself and clients.