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
-
Mobile-First Indexing New Site monetized with Adsense AMP or not?
I am considering developing a new site monetized with Adsense. I am wondering if it's still worth bothering with AMP, it will take some work to get the functionality I have in mind working on these pages due to the inherent limitations. Has anyone got any insights in terms of current and future benefits of AMP in terms of ranking benefits and Adsense earning potential?
Web Design | | GrouchyKids0 -
Does having too many wordpress portfolio pages with little content hurt a site's SEO?
I have a site that is for a service company, not image based like a photographer or artist. We utilize the Portfolio feature to create a gallery of floor coating finishes (images of all the flooring finish options available) but this solution has created /portfolio/file-name pages for each image. These pages have no other content besides the image. I've run SEMrush audits on this site which shows a high percentage of pages with low text/code ratio and duplicate content (a lot of the finishes have very similar names). This site has been extremely slow to improve any visibility online (more than 9 months) and I'm wondering if this is a factor by possibly having a negative effect on our site. We initially chose the portfolio option because it was the best-looking solution for our users but we can certainly change it to another format if that is better. Thanks!
Web Design | | WillGMG0 -
Address On Every page for e-Commerce site?
For a primarily e-commerce site, should you have your address on every page (in the footer, for example)? Or is it enough to just have it on the contact page? Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
When Site:Domain Search Run on Google, SSL Error Appears on One URL, Will this Harm Ranking
Greetings MOZ Community: When a site:domain search is run on Google, a very strange URL appears in the search results. The URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com:2082/ The page displays a "the site's security certificate is not trusted." This only appears for one URL out of 400. Could this indicate a wider problem with the server's configuration? Is this something that needs to be corrected, and if so how? Our ranking has dropped a lot in the last few months. Thanks,
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
404's and a drop in Rank - Site maps? Data Highlighter?
I managed an old (2006 design) ticket site that was hosted and run by the same company that handled our point of sale. (Think, really crappy, customer had to click through three pages to get to the tickets, etc.) In Mid February, we migrated that old site to a new, more powerful site, built by a company that handles sites exclusively for ticket brokers. (My site: TheTicketKing. - dot - com) Before migration, I set up 301's for all the pages that we had currently ranked for, and had inbound links pointing to, etc. The CMS allowed me to set every one of those landing pages up with fresh content, so I created unique content for all of them, ran them through the Moz grader before launch, etc. We launched the site in Mid February, and it seemed like Google responded well. All the pages that we had 301's set up for stayed up fairly well in rank, and some even reached higher positions, while some took a few weeks to get back up to where they were before. Google was also giving us an average of 8-10K impressions per day, compared to 3000 per day with the old site. I started to notice a slow drop in impressions in mid April (after two months of love from Google,) and we lost rank on all our non branded pages around 4/23. Our branded terms are still fine, we didn't get a message from Google, and I reached out to the company that manages our site, asking if they had any issues with their other clients. They suggested that I resubmit our sitemaps. I did, and saw everything bump back up (impressions and rank) for just one week. Now we're back in the basement with all the non branded terms once again. I realize that Google could have penalized us without giving us a message, but what got me somewhat optimistic was the fact that resubmitting our sitemaps did bring us back up for around a week. One other thing that I was working on with the site just before the drop was Google's data highlighter. I submitted a set of pages that now come back with errors, after Google seemed to be fine with the data set before I submitted it. So now I'm looking at over 300 data highlighter errors when I'm in WMT. I deleted that set, but I still get the error listings in WMT, as if Google is still trying to understand those pages. Would that have an effect on our rank? Finally I do see that our 404's have risen steadily since the migration, to over 1000 now, and the people who manage the CMS tell me that it would have no effect on rank overall. And we're going to continue to get 404's as the nature of a ticket site would dictate? (Not sure on that, but that's what I was told.) Would anyone care to chime in on these thoughts, or any other clues as to my drop?
Web Design | | Ticket_King0 -
Footer link back to developers domain
I have read a lot about where it is suggested to either not put an attribute link in the footer of a clients site or to no follow it. But I have a little bit different take on the question. How does this work on a large scale? Are these manual penalties, or are they automatic? By large scale, I am talking about big cms programs such as Wordpress, Joomla, and the likes of those. They all have links back to their site in the footer of the default templates. Is this bad? Does it not rally matter on the scale of companies such as this?
Web Design | | LesleyPaone0 -
Site Change / CMS Change
Hi Guys I have a very good client with whom we have been working with for over 2 years. When we 1st arrived, their website was built in Wordpress. During our SEO, the dleted the site and changed it to Drupal over night. Youc an imagin i went balistic and its been a horrid year in getting all the rrors down and redirects etc. Finally done I have just been informed that they will be deleting the website from Drupal to Joomla again! This is crazy as we have finally fix all the rrors and are driving quality traffic to the site. Now its back to square one... What do i do? ps the change from Drupal to Joomla is due to MYSQL issues
Web Design | | stefanok0 -
Whats the most effective way of targeting regional visitors, is it really just adding your city name at the end of your keywords?
Whats the most effective may of targeting regional visitors, is it really just adding your city name at the end of your keywords? The website i'm trying to optimize is f1plus.co.uk and the target city is aberdeen. I'm new to seo so any views or tips welcome. Thanks
Web Design | | jpc10040