.net to .com. Is This Legal?

[apsadmin]

A friend of mine is in a pickle at the .com he works for. The owners want to improve their search engine ranking (naturally), but are reluctant to let him SEO their pages as they are afraid the backing body text, and sprinkling of relevant keywords will negatively affect the slick look of their people pleasing .com.
Someone has suggested to him to purchase the .net domain, SEO it, and submit it to the engines instead, with product links from the spider friendly .net going back to the people pleasing .com as a technique to improve traffic to the .com without altering it. Essentially using the .net to attract traffic to the .com .
Hmmmmmm. My question to you guys in the know is, is this a legal strategy, or will this technique blow up in his face. He has asked me, but I don't know.
Any advise here would be greatly appreciated.

[cbp]

Its not illegal - Google don't like these 'doorway pages', but has trouble detecting them. Its just largely a waste of time.

For the .net to get listed and ranked well in search engines, it will need a lot of links to it .... might as well spend that energy on links to the .com and get it ranking better that way.

On-page SEO (ie keyword density, keywords in H1) is not all that important - its helps, but not as much as in the past ---- better of focusing on the off-page stuff ie keywords in anchor text of links; links from sites on similar theme etc

CBP

[Mel]

I agree with CBP and in addition there is a lot of onpage SEO you can do that need not be at all apparent to the viewer:

• Your page title
  Using section headers in H tags set with css to match whatever text in use currently.
  Keyword rich Alt tags and title attributes on all graphics.
  Adding a line of anchor text links across the bottom of each page in matching text.

Without looking at the site, its hard to know about the menu system but if its one of those using javascript or area maps on graphics there is often a lot that can be done in that area without changing the appearance materially.

[apsadmin]

I guess I should have included the site when I first posted this. My apologies, folks. http://www.kashross.com
The problem is this is a tailor, and the owner is afraid that SEO'ing the site with a lot of text and H1 headings will make him look cheap, to his corporate clients. If you folks check this site out and post suggestions, i'll notify the sites admin that the pros have evaluated it and left invaluable advise here for him to read. I'll get him to join up too to this forum. He will find your help invaluable, I am sure.

Thanks everyone,
apsadmin

[Mel]

That was the point of my post aps, the SEO additions do not have to even be visible (alt tags etc) or make any visible changes to the page (Format the H1 to appear exactly the same as other on page text), but if the addition of a line of link text at the bottom of the page is more important than getting more customers, then that is the site owners decision. There is more to SEO than copywriting.

The most powerful tool is the gaining of inbound anchor text links and that of course has no impact whatever on the appearance of the site.

Bottom line many beautiful sites are fully optimized and that fact is not apparent to the viewers.

[janeth]

The title could also be better and a lot of the meta tags removed and move the title tag to the top of the page and cut the key words more then half. These are all things that would not change the look of the site. This is in addition to what Mel was saying.


<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">

<meta name="Description" content="Hong Kong Tailors and Custom Clothiers - Kash Ross Master tailor - The finest in custom hand tailored clothing">

<meta name="Keywords" content="kash ross, hong kong tailors, custom clothiers, tailors, tailor, custom tailors, hongkong custom tailors, hong kong custom tailors, made to measure, custom made suits, custom tailored suits, custom made shirts, custom tailored shirts, custom tailoring, custom clothing, made to measure, suit, suits, shirt, shirts, jacket, jackets, blazer, blazers, tuxedo, tuxedos, formal wear, slacks, pant, pants, trouser, trousers, vest, vests, topcoat, topcoats, top coat, uniforms, dress, dresses, blouse, blouses, skirt, skirts, savile row tailoring, wool, wools, woolen, business suits, casual clothing, casual friday, bespoke tailoring, cottons, cotton, sea island cotton, egyptian cotton, pinpoint cotton, fine clothing, dress for success, fit well, shirts, custom, fabrics, personal shopping, ties, linen, tailoring, silk, suits, blouse, tailored, wardrobe">

<meta name="Owner" content="Hong Kong Tailors and Custom Clothiers - Kash Ross">

<meta name="rating" content="general">

<meta name="Robots" content="index,follow">

<meta name="revisit-after" content="20 days">

<meta name="ObjectType" content="Homepage">

<meta name="resource-type" content="document">

<meta name="distribution" content="global">

<meta name="classification" content="Hong Kong Custom Tailors - Suits and Shirts">

<meta name="language" content="EN-US">

<meta name="doc-type" content="public">

<meta name="doc-class" content="published">

<meta name="doc-rights" content="public">

<meta name="copyright" content="© 2002 Kash Ross - Hong Kong Tailors and Custom Clothiers">

<meta name="author" content="james - james@gibsolutions.com">

<meta name="reply-to" content="info@kashross.com">

<meta name="generator" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0">

<meta name="progid" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">



<title>Hong Kong Tailors, Tailor and Custom Clothiers - Kash Ross - The Finest
in Custom Hand Tailoring </title>

[Conficio]

Hi,
I think you can do a lot to improve your page.

• put the JavaScripts into a separate file and link to it (like the *.css) - loads faster for the visitor
• why do you use external CSS, if you define in many places <font> tags and style="..." attributes. Go full CSS with css="..." and style hierarchy - loads faster for the visitor
• as others said you can format your <Hx> tags as you want with CSS
• use alt="..." and title="..." attributes on the images
• get more focused pages. the front page is overloaded with information (and keywords). Remember SE list pages, not sites. Not all visitors must come through your home page, but better get to a page that has focused info about what they were looking for.
• The image map for navigation can be done with a table of images more flexible, but w/o a difference in rendering (looks the same). I believe Google can handle image maps, but not all search engines can (does the new Yahoo?)!

Also, test your site with a relatively small screen (800x600), the text will be cut off - you must scroll side wise and down. That looses visitors, even if they find you on the search engine.

I'm also not convinced, that the design is that sleek. It does not align the elements and is quite broken into pieces. Also the design is concentrated at the top of the page. Once you scroll down, the graphics disappear.

Your client needs to invest into a designer, that can produce a corporate design, consistent over paper, web site, letter head, advertisement. Judging by the logo, there was a person with some artistic talent involved. Either tab into this talent again, or if this person did the web-design, move on to a more talented (less specialized on logo development) source.

Good luck

K<o>

[apsadmin]

Thanks guys,

I've notified the site admin, who is a great friend of mine to get his but over here. He and I are in your debt.
You guys rock.

Best regards,
apsadmin