Domain reputation of links has become quite a concern for those looking to market their business. Between Google changing its ranking system repeatedly and emails being filtered based on domain trustworthiness, it’s harming how businesses communicate with their target audience. However, there are ways to ensure domain authority and increase domain rank.
What is Domain Reputation
Domain reputation is a term used to describe domain respectability, which affects whether or not emails from a website are sent to a person’s inbox. Sites without a strong link domain reputation may find that clients aren’t receiving emails from the site because they are going to spam.
Although the reputation of the IP where your mailings are coming from still plays a role, it is not the sole factor anymore. In 2009, domain reputation became part of whether an email was sent to spam or not. Nowadays, you can have an IP address that has a positive reputation, but your emails will still go to spam due to the domain’s reputation.
How Domain Reputation Affects Links and Emails
Unfortunately for many legitimate businesses who are just trying to advertise or keep customers in the loop regarding sales and upcoming events are being blacklisted. This ultimately hurts their business tremendously, even though they are not spammers. A blacklisted domain gets added to a list of sites that are deemed as unsafe or just basically wastes of email space in a person’s inbox. Basically, it discredits the site and a person’s business as well. There is not one universal blacklist that is recognized by every email service provider. In fact, each blacklist is slightly different. However, there are popular ones that are the main ones used. These are the ones that hold the most weight when it comes to determining if your emails are flagged as spam. Once you are added to one or more blacklists, your emails will not reach a majority of individuals.
Email is not the only area that may be affected when your site makes a blacklist. Your Facebook posts may not go through as a result. This means you will lose even more of your advertising as a result. At this point, it will be very difficult to keep in touch with your clients.
Sometimes, your site might be considered so bad that the entire website might be blacklisted by Google. Being added to Google’s blacklist is probably one of the worst, if not the worst, fates a site can have. Basically, the site is doomed at this point since every visitor will see a red warning page that asks if visitors are willing to take the risk to access your site. Since most individuals aren’t going to agree due to the risks, your site will more than likely lose a majority of its traffic.
What Makes Your Domain Reputable
The first step you need to take is to scan your site for malware or viruses. Oftentimes, your site is being blacklisted as a result. You might have a problem with the operating system, so make sure you repair any issues. Always perform updates as needed. Make sure you are not blacklisted by checking at one of the sites listed in the paragraph below. Remember, no matter to what extent your site is blacklisted, you must act quickly. The longer you take, the more customers you are going to lose.
Do not use purchase lists to send emails from. These users are not interested in your business, and you are putting yourself at risk of being blacklisted. If you used a purchased list in the past, stop. Create a page on your site where visitors may sign up for your newsletter or receive deals or emails from your site. Clearly state what users are signing up for such as sales or updates. Use a system that requires them to respond to an email once they complete the initial signup form. This guarantees they want to be on the list.
Check the spelling of the emails you are sending to and be leery about how many people you send to at one time. Limit the number of emails you send in bulk. When you send mail to many people who do not want your emails or send too frequently, it causes people to mark your messages as spam. The more times people do this, the more likely your site will be to get blacklisted.
Keep your list up-to-date. Remove addresses from the list once you receive a hard bounce, which is when an email is sent back due to an invalid address. Have a place on your site or on the emails you send where people on your list may request to remove themselves.
Make sure your Whois data is visible. This information identifies who the administrator is and their contact information. Without it, your site will look sketchy.
Do not use major ISP domains to send emails from including AOL, Gmail and Yahoo. Yahoo and AOL published a DMARC record that informs servers to reject mail that is not from their domain on their server. Always use a private domain that belongs to you for sending out emails to your mailing list.
Domain Reputation and Search Ranking (SEO)
If you own a website and even if you do not use email to contact your clients, your domain’s reputation matters because it can affect your search engine results page’s (SERP) rank. In search engine optimization (SEO), Domain Reputation is a score assigned to your domain by applying a mathematical algorithm that takes into account (1) Traffic (2) Spam complaints / Email volume changes (3) Domain age / expiration, and (4) Incoming / Outgoing links. More info about domain reputation and SEO in this article.
Useful to know:
Type “site://yourdomain.com” on Google to see how many pages containing your domain have been indexed by Google and which of them has the best rank.
Age Affects Domain Trustworthiness
The age of a page affects its domain rank. Not only the registration date but also the first time the website is indexed by Google (or other search engines). Make sure you register or purchase the domain you want as soon as possible for this reason.
Useful to know:
- Registration date can be discovered with WhoIs services like ICANN WHOIS
- To discover the history of the website you can search it on WayBackMachine
You Can Check Domain Reputation Here
Written by Rebrandly on 8 June 2017
This article originally appeared on Rebrandly Blog