Buying mutliple keyword rich domain names and directing them to one site
-
I've noticed some folks buying keyword rich domain names and pointing them to one site to try to rank for those keywords. An example of this is a plumbing business that buys domains like austinplumber.com, localaustinplumbingservice.com, bestplumberinaustin.com and then pointing these domains to their main website. Does this help the site rank for these key phrases? How does google see this?
Thanks mozzers!
Ron
-
Not only did the doorway page lose it's ranking for its keyword, but so did the main site.
This sounds like cloaking.
About those doorway domains and microsites. I used to run a lot of hotdog stand websites. I thought that was the way to go. Then I learned that a big kickass site was a lot easier to run, a lot easier to rank and performed better with visitors. So, now the company that I own works actively on just three websites - each in a different niche.
If I had a company like you describe. I would start putting all future work into a single site in each topic area. And work on that site until it defeats all of the doorways. Stop competing with yourself and diluting your brand.
-
Could you set up these microsites on the same server as your main website? Like, having a separate folder in your public html folder with its own index.htm and pages? This way, you wouldn't have to pay for a new hosting company.
-
Instead of building a site around that specific keyword on a domain like that. Just develop a piece of great content on your website around your keyword string. Its going to help in the longevity of things.
-
They might search like that but if you don't have a website on that domain you will not get the traffic. It is highly unlikely that significant numbers of people are typing in for word domain names for websites that do not exist.
-
What is the different way you're recommending? Thanks...
-
The average search on google is over 4 words long, so people actually search like that. Question is, if you redirect it, is there even a benefit, meaning, does Google associate the initial domain with the target page?
-
That's excactly right, for a domain name to be useful in ranking, it needs to be attached to a unique website with unique content.
It has been a sales trick of many internet companies to sell these high value domains to customers 'in case someone types that into Google'. It's nothing more than a sales trick.
That said, if you are looking to capture a localised search traffic like 'Plumbers Windsor', then maybe a set of microsites would be good for you, although it is usually cheaper to optimise your main site than setup micros.
-
Redirecting these names will bring you nothing more than the type-in traffic for those exact domains.
I am willing to bet a month's pay that very few people type localaustinplumbingservice.com or someotherridiculouslylonglocaldomain.com
-
For some reason on the local level, these domains are powerful. I am not sure about just buying a brand new domain and forwarding them, they will be next to useless. But developing microsites with these domains works quite well, I could see if you build one up and then redirected it, then it would help ranking for one site.
I would recommend doing it a different way as this method is currently on its way out. Its been a declining trend for the last couple of years.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Domain name change
Dear team, If a website with a domain name - example - raisins.com wishes to change to peanuts.com is this a dangerous task or a relatively simple one? I hope that by keeping my Q short, provides ease.
Web Design | | AdrianCGreen0 -
Anybody with a business site using Webflow CMS or another non-WordPress CMS/ sitebuilder?
If you have built your business site using Webflow CMS, kindly share your insights on how good their CMS is for SEO and how easy it is to rank a site. If you are not familiar with Webflow but have had a positive experience with another non-WordPress CMS/ sitebuilder, kindly share your opinions.
Web Design | | Blu_Ocean99.0 -
Large Global Site Structure
Hi, I have a question about the advised structure for a website that I'm currently building. It's a large international brand with it's main office in the UK. The main website is the .com but there is a growing international franchisee network. I've built the .com site on Wordpress but I'm not sure if I the best way forward would be to create each international website on a separate hosted site or just include it in the .com Wordpress structure using the The WordPress Multilingual Plugin. So to sum up... should I build the entire global network on one domain and then use WPML plugin or should I build separate websites for each International franchisee? Hope some one can educate me on the best route to take. Thanks Moz Community
Web Design | | SeoSheikh0 -
Using Multiple links/names for the same product?
I am being asked to change these product links on the home page: Home/Condo
Web Design | | RoxBrock
Watercraft/Boat to Home
Condo
Watercraft
Boat (Along with several other product links) How does this affect the customer experience/usability, and SEO? Is it a good idea or is it confusing? Thank you.0 -
Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers
Hi, Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers on same url. The content of the site will also be different on different browsers. Will it be treated as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site has same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Would iFrames From a Beta3 Help the SEO Value of Domain?
What I understand as of now: Google does crawl iframes, but attributes the SEO value of the content within them to their original site. (Let me know if I'm mistaken.) What I need to know: If I were to iframe a section of a beta3.domainname.com site into a domainname.com site, does this beta3 attribute any SEO value to the domainname.com site? Essentially - Does good content on a from a beta3.domainname.com (which is mainly just a naked piece of content) bring any benefit to the domainname.com version of the site when it is iframed into the domainname.com site?
Web Design | | SmokewagonKen0 -
Google search issue with exact domain
We had a site from Feb-2011 to Nov-2011 at the domain amcoexterminating.com. The site was pure HTML/CSS and the daily unique visitors steadily increased over that time. So all was fine. We then moved the site to a CMS (Joomla) on Dec. 6th. From that day forward, the daily visitors went into the tank. Before the move, if you typed "amcoexterminating.com" or "amco exterminating" into Google search, the site would be the first result (as you'd expect since those are the words that make up the actua domain). But we tried this yesterday and the site did not come up at all. NOT GOOD. It would work in Yahoo or Bing, but not in Google. So obviously, the problem with Google search directly affected the daily visitors. We just checked Webmaster tools yesterday (yes, this should have been done sooner, lesson learned) and it said "Site has severe health issues - Important page blocked by robots.txt". It listed the "important" page URL and it was just a link to an image. Regardless, I wiped out the Joomla created robots.txt file and added a new one and made it just say... User-agent: *Allow: / About 14 hours later, after the new robots.txt file was recognized by Google, the "severe health" message went away. However if I search in Google for "amcoexterminating.com", it still doesn't show up and the client is concerned (as they should be). Do you think the search engines just need more time to refresh? If so, once it refreshes, should the site show up first again right away? Or is it possible the robots.txt file had nothing to do with the issue? If so, what other things could I check into that might cause Google search to not find a site even if you search for exact domain name? Please share any and all things I should look into as I need to get this site showing in Google search again (as it was before moving to the CMS). Thanks!
Web Design | | MarathonMS0 -
Why is site not being indexed by Google, and not showing on a crawl test??
On a site we developed of which .com is forwarded to .net domain, we quit getting crawled by google on about the 20th of Feb. Now when we try to run a crawl test on either url, we get There was an error fetching this page. Error description For some reason the page returned did not describe itself as an html page. It could be possible that the url is serving an image, rss feed, pdf, or xml file of some sort. The crawl tool does not currently report metrics on this type of data. Our other sites are fine and this was up to this date. We took out noodp, noydir today as the only thing we could think of. Site is on WP cms.
Web Design | | RobertFisher0