A chiropractor e-mailed me the other night with a really great question regarding domains. He mentioned that he owned a number of domains related to the field of chiropractic and he had questions regarding setting up multiple websites for one’s chiropractic office. After purchasing the domains he stated “I’ve never really been sure what to do with them besides use domain-forwarding to pipe them straight to my website.” He then asked the question… “When you purchase alternate domains for your office, do you copy the content from your main site and replicate it onto the new domain? Or do you domain-forward them all?” It came to light that this is a very important topic to be discussed amongst chiropractors (and other small-business owners working with more than one website). Two very important topics to discuss: domain-forwarding & replicating content (a.k.a. duplicate content).

Your chiropractic office, your fashion designer shoe boutique, your electronics website, your NFL football offshore gambling blog, your local community parks and recreation center, why do people come to you? Sometimes it seems so obvious doesn’t it? One goes to the chiropractor for an adjustment, the fashion shoe store for shoes, and so on. We know that that’s not always the case. Maybe someone’s coming to a chiropractic office for a radiographic study of their wrist or nutritional counseling, never planning to have their spine touched. It’s one thing to know what people are seeking when they walk into your bricks and mortar business, it’s another to discover what people seek when visiting your website.

Chances are you have a web site, but do you take the time to regularly check log files and statistics to see what kinds of terms are being searched that bring people to your website? For a site about chiropractic you may expect searches like back pain, headaches, scoliosis, and even spinal decompression to be popular. Over the years I found that’s not always the case, and sometimes the most popular searches are for terms that may appear to have nothing to do with your primary topic. If you’re not checking your log files, you may never know if that’s the case for your site or blog.

Keyword research appears so 20/20 in hindsight that it can leave any news webmaster wondering why they didn’t use particular terms and phrases when creating their content in the first place. Politically related search traffic will undoubtedly reach an all-time high during the next 96 hours, and aside from the obvious searches for Obama polls and McCain polls, the potential combination of key phrases leading up to Tuesday’s election, is simply mind boggling.