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
-
Index Page Redirect to Home Page? Best Practices...
Hi, I am wondering what the best practice is when a site has an index page and a home page? I have two pages, listed below, and want to know if I should 301 redirect my "index" page to my standard home page. The home page is where I would like all traffic to fall on for our website. Additionally, I used the rel=canonical tag years ago on the index page to indicate that the home page is the main content. Home Page - https://www.1099pro.com/ (PA 45) Home Page Canonical: rel="canonical" href="https://www.1099pro.com/"/> Index Page - https://www.1099pro.com/index.asp (PA - 33) Index Page Canonical: rel="canonical" href="https://www.1099pro.com/"/> It seems to me that there is some extra juice that could be passed to my home page (which is the page that ranks highly for our major keywords) by 301 redirecting the index page. Is there any reason why I should not do that? Really appreciate any help - especially with extra explanations - for the simple minded like me ;)! -Michael
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
Have Your Thoughts Changed Regarding Canonical Tag Best Practice for Pagination? - Google Ignoring rel= Next/Prev Tagging
Hi there, We have a good-sized eCommerce client that is gearing up for a relaunch. At this point, the staging site follows the previous best practice for pagination (self-referencing canonical tags on each page; rel=next & prev tags referencing the last and next page within the category). Knowing that Google does not support rel=next/prev tags, does that change your thoughts for how to set up canonical tags within a paginated product category? We have some categories that have 500-600 products so creating and canonicalizing to a 'view all' page is not ideal for us. That leaves us with the following options (feel it is worth noting that we are leaving rel=next / prev tags in place): Leave canonical tags as-is, page 2 of the product category will have a canonical tag referencing ?page=2 URL Reference Page 1 of product category on all pages within the category series, page 2 of product category would have canonical tag referencing page 1 (/category/) - this is admittedly what I am leaning toward. Any and all thoughts are appreciated! If this were in relation to an existing website that is not experiencing indexing issues, I wouldn't worry about these. Given we are launching a new site, now is the time to make such a change. Thank you! Joe
Web Design | | Joe_Stoffel1 -
A question about title tag when the page has 2 services.
Hi all, Assuming a company has two services: SEO and PPC. Here is the situation: I would like to focus on SEO for now but also don't want to leave my PPC service out of the page. SEO accounts for 60% of the content, while PPC accounts for 40%. Assuming the content (SEO + PPC) of the page will not change, which title tag would you prefer, and why? SEO | brand name (Is it appropriate that the title focus on SEO but the content of the page contains PPC) SEO | PPC | brand name (Will the keywords dilute each other?) SEO | SEM Agency | brand name (The idea behind it is that SEM includes SEO and PPC so I think Google would be OK with the page ranking for SEO and also including PPC in the content. I really appreciate your help and explanation. Thank you!
Web Design | | Raymondlee0 -
Questions in regard to putting 2-3 keywords in a title tag.
Hi all, Here is the situation. There are two services A and B in the page. B is more like a complement to A (they have something in common). C is the umbrella term over A and B. However, our company focuses more on A (70%) than B (30%). Questions: 1. Can I rank the keyword A for the page, while the page has B? (e.g. A | brand name) Will it hurt the seo, with B being in the page? 2. If I write the title tag this way: A | B | brand name . Will A and B dilute each other? 3. How about this: **A | C | brand name **(the idea behind this: We focus on A, but also include C because we have B in the page.) Does this make any sense? I am a newbie to SEO and I realize that could be confusing. Thank you for any support and explanation.
Web Design | | Raymondlee0 -
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 -
SEO downsides to minimalist (copy-light) homepage?
Curious for your thoughts on this - are there any SEO downsides to not having any substantive content on the home page (big background design)? We would obviously have appropriate page titles and link structure, etc. Our guess is that if the home page doesn't have much copy, that odds are that other specific pages will tend to perform better for non-brand search terms, which seems OK. If people DO find the homepage, it would likely be a brand search or an ad referral, in which case the minimalist, non-copy design would be conversion-friendly. Does that theory hold any water? I suppose a middle ground might be a single H1 line unobtrusively on the page. Thanks in advance for any insight, guys! Sincerely, Stephen
Web Design | | PerfectPitchConcepts0 -
SEO list for creating the *perfect* website
If you could build your website from scratch and have your developers do anything you want (within reason), what list of SEO requirements would you send them? Does anyone know of any good articles on the perfect SEO wish list? Happy Holidays!
Web Design | | MirandaP1 -
What can this charity site do to improve SEO?
Hello wise ones, We have been working with the charity Volunteers of America to create a new site for their car donation program at carshelpingpeople.org They are a national charity with extensive local programs run by regional affiliates, so the site is divided into a small national section linked to Regional Affiliate sections. You get to the regional sections either by entering your zip code or clicking on your state in the bottom nav of the national pages. Right now we have developed regional sections for Michigan, Nevada, Maryland, Washington D.C., New Jersey, Delaware and the Philadelphia area. The site is about 2 1/2 months old, and while our conversion rate is pretty good (7%) our organic search ranking isn't improving as quickly as we'd like to see. Car donation is a very competitive space, and we would appreciate any advice on how to improve the SEO of the site. Thanks so much.
Web Design | | Phibnax0
