So, You Thought YOU Owned Your Website?
As part of being an SEO consultant, I’m frequently asked to conduct SEO Audits on potential client’s websites. Amongst sundry other tasks, I always check to see who the legal owner of the site is. With surprising regularity, it turns out NOT to be the guy who commissioned the report, and who mistakenly thinks HE (or she) is the rightful owner! There is more than one aspect to this…
Domain Registrant
Each country has rules governing ownership and transfer of domain names. These rules are clear, unequivocal and rigorously enforced. In all instances, the “registrant” is defined as the legal owner.
Frequently, domains are registered by the website designer on the client’s behalf. Sometimes they may have been initially registered by the office junior, the wife, girlfriend, business partner, the accountant… Time passes. Things change. Maybe now, the registrant is the ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, ex-business partner…
If your name is not listed as the registrant, you do not own the website! Best you get this sorted BEFORE the excrement hits the fan, and some one is holding knife to the throat of your valuable corporate website, demanding a 6-figure ransom!
Website Software
If you are using a licensed copy of a proprietary website software application, you certainly don’t own the software. However, if it is on your own domain, under your control, then you’ve got some security of tenure at least, should any differences of opinion arise with your website designers.
If you are using non-proprietary, Open Source software, on your own domain, hosted on an independent server, you’re in far better shape in the sense of having control over your assets.
If you’re using proprietary software owned by your website design company, hosted on their servers… you have a massive risk exposure in the event of a difference of opinion over when (or if) you should pay your accounts. If they are also listed as the registrant of the domain, you have placed yourself in an unenviable, vulnerable and potentially devastating position. Silly you… Oh dear, how sad, never mind!
Hosting
Hosting is a vexed question, and its damned hard to establish if the hosting company is a real hosting company, or an affiliate reseller of another company’s hosting services. Sometimes, there are multiple tiers… That said, do you know who to call if something bad happens to your website? The worst aspect of website designer’s hosting service is, its usually in a reseller sub-account, and you cannot have access to the nitty-gritty parts of the site. Things like FTP access, root-level file editing, messing with email accounts, installing other software, or direct access to stats data are usually off-limits. At best, that’s a pain in the bottom… at worst, it prevents you from having a full site backup in the event services are terminated for any reason!
And unrelated bad stuff happens! Last month, my hosting company’s US-based Data Centre operators got locked out of their premises, presumably over a rent or maintenance dispute with the building’s owner. Is your website designer smart enough, and well enough connected in the data centre world, to seamlessly relocate ALL client sites to safe environment within a couple of hours?
Website Designers
Al l website designers are not created equal. Most are honest, reliable and decent business people. However, some website designers are control freaks who like to keep cash-cow clients screwed down and locked into systems they cannot easily escape from, and ruthlessly milk them of every possible dollar. All the while, they deliver a minimum of service, and maximum of awkwardness, and make it as difficult as possible for a client to escape their clutches.
Impartial Advice
A decade of dealing with the aftermath of the cowboys, control freaks, the bloody-minded and the plain ignorant has taught me (and some of my clients) some valuable lessons.
- Ensure you are the domain registrant, and have access to your domain registration account.
- Ensure your hosting account is independent of your website designer, and you have the account access details
- Ensure you keep a written copy of your domain and hosting account details with your lawyer or bank
- Ensure you have a full site software back up, including all configurations, modules and plugins
- Ensure you have a full database backup every month.
- Don’t rely totally on the hosting company’s server backup processes…
- An oldie but a still-relevant goody – don’t put all your eggs in one basket!
This is rudimentary business risk management. Taking responsibility for your businesses activities is in integral part of management. When things go wrong, as they sometimes do, make sure you have a contingency plan.
Location, Location, Location – Site vs. Customers
Another thing the web hosting company forgot to tell you… An aspect overlooked by many site owners, and one that gets minimal coverage in web design or SEO articles etc, is the importance of server location to your site rankings, traffic and consequent success. Most articles are written by web design & SEO practitioners in the USA, and are therefore written from “The Inside, Looking Out.” However, if you happen to be like many site owners in the world, “On The Outside, Looking In,” the view is slightly different!
Location, Localisation & SEO
The problem here is the “decentralisation” of search – the way in which the major search engines have split their indexes up into country-specific search opportunities. Google (and other SE’s) know whereyou are because of the IP address allocated to your PC. They know this because IP addresses are allocated in numeric blocks or ranges, by country. There are significant impacts on both searchers, and on businesses, of this search decentralisation process. This is both a blessing and a curse, depending on where you are, where your site is, what you offer, where your customers are, and whether you are a searcher, or a site owner.
Location & Searchers
For a searcher in United Kingdom, Australia, or New Zealand, you will have noticed a while back that your Google sessions automatically default to Google.co.uk, Google.com.au, or Google.co.nz, depending on the respective country in which you reside. Searchers in the USA are blissfully unaware of this phenomenon… The results of your search will also be biased towards sites physically located within your geographic area. Therefore, if you were to do the same search on the different country-specific versions of Google, you would usually get different results – sometimes substantially different, depending on the competitiveness of the particular search within those countries, and globally.
Location, Site Owners & SEO
For a business located in the United Kingdom, Australia, or New Zealand, you are effectively competing on far more even terms with sites from your own geographic “web space” than previously. However, if you have a focus on delivering products or services within your own specific geographic region, but use a .COM domain name (or .info, .net etc) it is essential that your website’s IP address be within the specific Country’s IP Address Range. This means that your site should be physically located in a server in the UK, AU or NZ web space. If you’ve opted for cheap hosting on a server located in the USA, or Asia etc, you have effectively shot yourself in the foot, and severely prejudiced your chances of attaining top search engine rankings in your preferred web space.
Conversely, for a business located in the United Kingdom, Australia, or New Zealand, with a focus on delivering products or services in another specific geographic region, you should have your web site physically located on a server in that country to gain the most traction in your search engine rankings. In so doing, you should also ensure that your offshore site adheres to local language conventions, spellings and usage. E.g. if you are selling paint into the USA, you should use the Americanized”color” and not the Queens English “colour” as would be done in the UK or NZ.
NB: If you have a .co.nz (or .co.uk, .com.au) Domain – you can host it anywhere and it will remain associated with your country’s search data-set!
The effect of this for a New Zealand business with a .com domain, hosted in the USA, is that you are EXCLUDED from Search Engine Results Pages if the searcher specifies “Search: pages from New Zealand”
How to Win The Global Localisation Game
If you are a business who has a significant actual or potential client base in more than one country, it makes sound business sense to also register www.yourbiz.co.uk and www.yourbiz.com.au – and other country variants you might require. You can then build a global network of mini-sites customised specifically for those markets. By careful linking between those sites, and making them complementary by ensuring that the content is not simply duplicated (and therefore in breach of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines) you should be able to generate significant additional traffic and business.
Yet Another SEO Article by;
Ben Kemp, aka The SEO Guy (nz)
Web: www.comauth.co.nz
Email: SEO
