SEO in S. A.

I know it sounds too good to be true, but I discovered a way to get FREE top level domains and free hosting. In other words 100% free websites!

I hesitated for a while before making this post because I wanted to keep this to myself, but even though it isn’t well known it’s hardly a secret – so in the interests of “paying it forward”  – here it is. If you find this useful I only ask for a link or 2 back to this site. Thanks in advance

Domains generally cost in the region of $10 per year and hosting is from around $10 per month (Yes – I know there are cheaper and more expensive options…these are just broad, ball park figures) so even the most basic site will need you to invest at least some money because even though you can get “free sites” through places like geocities (are they still around?) and blogger.com, these sites are on parasite subdomains and are practically worthless. Now I have discovered how to get real URLs with real value for free and have them hosted for free! Gotta love it!

Whether you are a professional webmaster, SEO, internet marketer, AdSense player or what ever it’s always a good idea to have a decent sized domain portfolio. It’s always nice to have a couple of domains ready to roll if you have a bright idea in the middle of the night and anyway… very few people are content with  making a  living with just one site.

Before I let the cat out of the bag, I’m going to ask you not to abuse this. Don’t go and register thousands of domains that you have no intention of ever using or (even worse) roll out thousands of worthless scraper sites.

Here are a couple of valid uses of these free sites:

1) Get a couple of keyword rich domain names that are related to your niche and then 301 them to your existing site. This makes great URLs for you to use in marketing campaigns and you can easily track your advertising without using those horrible shortening services.
2) If you are an affiliate marketer, you can 301 your free domains to the various offers that you promote and never have to worry about link cloaking or lost commissions ever again.
3) If  you are a SEO, you can develop a couple of small sites, build some link juice and page rank for them for a while and then 301 them to your main site.
4) I have always maintained that if you are an SEO and you have never had a domain banned by Google, you’re not trying hard enough. Use these free sites to experiment with some of the more risky SEO practices so that your money sites and clients sites are never in danger.
5) Never ming the risky SEO practices – just use the free sites and free domains to experiment. Period! The best way to get good at SEO is to experiment to find out exactly what works and what doesn’t, rather than asking questions on public forums.
6) Put up a few one page websites – just a “coming soon” notice and a few paragraphs of useful keyword rich content. Get these pages spidered and indexed so that when you develop your real content the domains are well seasoned and you are a lot less likely to get sandboxed.
7) If you are an AdSense  (or other PPC sevice) player…. duh…. free sites don’t even have to make a dollar a day…they can make a dollar a year and still be profitable!
If you market your own products or services, and the .com and .net version of your company name was taken – here’s another chance to get your company name as a domain.
9) Same thing for keyword rich domains – get ‘em while you can!
10) Get you’re own name as a domain – just use it for you@yourname emails
11) I could go on – there are hundreds of valid uses for your own TLD domains…. even more when you get them for free!

Okay, okay – so how do I get these free domains???

Step1 is to sign up for a free hosting account that allows domain hosting and doesn’t force deliver third party ads.  A couple I am experimenting with are http://www.1free.ws , http://www.agilityhoster.com and http://www.50webs.com but there are a lot more if you just search.

Step2 is to go to http://www.co.cc and register your free domain. You need to complete the process right away which is why you need to have your hosting in place first.

That’s it!

Yes – a paid for hosting account would be better. Back up and support from the free companies is hardly stellar but ya know… free is free .

For your more important sites I suggest getting a reseller account from www.hostgator.com or www.micfo.com which will allow you to host virtually unlimited domains, for a very reasonable cost, and give you maximum control over each individual site.

Like I said earlier, if you found this useful I only ask for a link or 2 back to this site.