Opinion on this domain name

I bought the domain GraphicsForum (co uk) a while ago. Setup a forum, got it running and then I was hit (like most new sites especially forums) with lots of spam accounts trying to register. I had plugins stopping most and manually removed those that made it in but eventually Google blacklisted it and forums just shut down because of it.

With both the default spam protection the forum software (IP Board) offered and additional plugins, they still managed to end up forcing my site to be detected as 'bad' by google and blacklisted.

I like the domain, great for seo and the forum related directly to graphics and web design etc. I could eventually get off the blacklist but, just wondered if I should try the forum again or sell domain and what you may think it's worth?

Jordan

 

If your domain has been blacklisted by Google, there are some steps you can take to restore your search rankings and have your site appear in Google search results. Google provides a simple 3-step process for this which is described in the wiki article Reconsideration requests. According to Google the steps are:

1. Sign in to Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
2. Make sure you have added and verified the site you want reconsidered.
3. Request reconsideration of your site.

Now before you rush over to Google and request reconsideration, take some time to think about your approach. You don't want to rush into this process because if your request is objected, it may be even more difficult to gain further reconsideration for the domain in the future. So before you request reconsideration of your site, try to determine the root cause of the blacklisting by Google. For most sites the reason is some form of blackhat SEO methods such as participating in a link farm. In other cases it can caused by having too much duplicate content, so much so that Google may consider your entire site a sort of clone. Carefully review the Google Webmaster Guidelines to determine if there is some aspect of your site or site marketing that violates their best practices. You can double-check if your site really is banned from results, or if it simply has low rankings both by testing PageRank (0-2 indicates a problem) and searching Google for long strings of text from any of your sites pages. With a long string of text, or your company name, you should be able to find a result. If you cannot, then it is likely your site has been entirely banished from the Google results. Once you identify a list of any mistakes made that could cause blacklisting, start implementing changes and wait to see if that causes a recovery. If it does not, then ask Google to reconsider the site for indexing. That will work and worth for your domain.

 

Yeah, I was about to suggest something similar. I don't know if you've done this already, but if you make an account with Google Webmaster Tools it will tell you exactly whether or not your domain name was blacklisted and if it was then why. I, personally, do not think that they blacklist sites because of spammy accounts. Usually, there's something else going on. Maybe some of your users tried to offer malware downloads or maybe it was saturated with illegal content. Those are the biggies.

In any case I hope you will keep the domain name and make it work.

 

Buying domain names that have a keyword in theme is really an amateur strategy and a crap shoot. Think about all the valuable websites you use everyday, take this forum for example, did digitalpoint.com what to rank high for Online Marketing Forums by naming their domain name digitalpoint.com? Did Google try to rank high in the SERPS by naming their domain name Google.com?

Use a keyword that you've created from your imagination, naming your domain name DingoMint.com (Yes I just created this domain name and it's available for purchase) is a better idea than literally describing what your website will do.

Keyword domain names should all be dead. The real reason that keywords domain names even rank at all is the niche is so specific and you and the other keyword hoarders are making the term show up in Google.

If you really have a passion for Graphics and you want to make a forum around the subject you're going to need to do more than buy some forum software and setup some ads. Forums take time to grow and they need core members that establish the ground rules. Your core group should be friends and you should have a well throughout plan that you all agree to and stick to for many years in the future.

Spending one year on a website that has a keyword in the domain name doesn't mean you deserve to have great traffic. You'll deserve traffic when the forum is valuable and graphic designers decide that you're where they want to congregate.

How to do this the right way

The best way to start out would be to give away your genius graphic design skills (assuming you have them) away for free in the form of a tutorial and get email subscribers. Once you're able to create and deliver original tutorials that web has never seen and post them consistently you can then ask your grateful subscribers do you think I should start a forum on Graphic Design?

If you have more than 100 subscribers responding positively you would then ask them for feedback about how the forum should be organized, what software you should use and how to keep spammers away from the site.

The real problem with your keyword is the Graphic Forums keyword has already shipped, like Daniel Plainview told Eli Sunday in the epic movie There Will Be Blood, "That land's been had Eli." You're not going to get to the first page of Google... unless you're a world renowned graphic designer and you actually keep the site running and vibrant for many, many years.

I'm not sure how much you pay for domain names but I pay 7 bucks, so if it's black listed dump it and buy a new one.

References:

• http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/how-to-make-money-with-seo.html
• http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm
• http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/12/how-to-create-real-value/