Artist Website And Google Search

Jessica,

Keeping the AW but forwarding your domain generally drops your domain in the search.

Forwarded domains are redundant and dropped by Google.

Still if you hand out cards or tweet your new domain name it looks a lot better, JMO,
than the AW..etc...The new domain name as you know is easier for people to recognize
and type in the URL.

Now in my case because my name is so rare my forwarded domain name had a bit of ranking
even in Google searches.

The next topic is your own website with its own domain. It is worth doing. If you want to know more
about what I did we can get into that. Note I took my totally new proper domain name, my name, as
my website domain, I pointed the domain name I had prior pointed to my AW to my new website. That
pointed or forwarded old AW domain name was just my last name. Easy to type in the URL.

So now I have the AW, my full name as a Domain name for my website and the forwarded last name as a domain name for
my site. I also edited my FAA website button to take viewers back to my actually website.

There are very long term benefits invovled with all of this. The cost is $48 per year, three years up
front at Bluehost.com. I got in for $3.49 per month. Usually it is $3.95 per month. I used Wordpress .org
to create a free standing website. WP .com is not free standing.

Dave

David, I have my own website with my domain name through Smugmug, though its more of a portfolio. I don't sell there. That website is at the top in Google. and for some reason the AW is nowhere to be found, but in Bing and Yahoo it's near the top. How do you explain that?

My AW with my own domain is at the top of Bing on a search for my name. On Google it's around #40. The AWS was previously nowhere to be found. FAA still out ranks my AWS on Google by a long shot.

More links to the AWS and time should bump the AWS up in the rankings of Google.

kathy-mcclellan.artistwebsite.com did not come up in three pages of a Google search. However, when I typed that in the first listing was my pages on FAA, then an FAA discussion that Cathy Jourdan announced my Weebly feature, followed by the link for the Weebly feature. then my pixels page then my KeppenArt facebook page.

Just my name brings up FAA, facebook, a couple of real estate pages, then pixels.
My URL (keppenart.com) is listed first on the Google search (takes you to my AW), then facebook fan page then several FAA and/or Pixel pages with a few whois links inbetween those.

Personally, I'm glad I directed and framed my personal URL to my AW site since it came up first on Google.

Kathy K. McClellan
KeppenArt

Kathy, I'm using my own domain name and I don't understand this: You have to point your CNAME Record to the following URL:

What do I enter instead of custom?

i'm not sure. i think it's the content for one that affects it. but because it's a subdomain and all the links go back to FAA anyway, google can tell it's a shill account and it won't be fooled. plus the artist site doesn't really show up in google unless you force it too. it will however come up in other searches, just not google. pixels doesn't come up at all unless you force the search.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

i think you enter your new name in the custom part.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com