SEO Redirect
-
If we have several hundred domain names currently using a park page, would we be better served having them redirect to our corporate homepage for SEO purposes?
-
As the others have said, redirecting domains with no backlinks (and even domains with just a few backlinks) will likely not be useful at all in terms of making the destination website rank better.
I dealt with a client a few years ago who literally had thousands of parked domains, all with names somewhat related to their industry (for example, if they were in the sports betting industry, they owned thousands of domains like expertfootballbets.net). We completed a backlink crawl for each of these domains and threw out those with no links or too few links, first checking that there were none with particularly catchy names in the list.
Then, we filtered through to find those that actually had good or passable links and decent names. The remaining list was pretty short. We sought (with budget) to build actual sites on those domains. They were basically affiliate sites for want of a better description: they were not "microsites" in that they didn't take away from the business of the main domain and the content wouldn't have been better off on the main site. From the many thousands we started with, I think our build list was about 30 sites, which was appropriate for the content and industry.
I would imagine that most parked domain lists would end up with far fewer than 30 workable websites.
Obvious misspellings or old company names should be redirected, but for usability purposes.
It's much more work, but actually using the domains is much more useful in the long run, if that's possible, than just redirecting. As altecdesign says above, you're better off reinvesting the hosting / registration elsewhere for domains that have no other noticeable value.
-
I just want to make sure I fully understand the question, so you have several hundred domain names all of which just have a generic Godaddy (or registrar) parked page? If that is the case 1.) that is confusing why you would have so many domain names! and 2.) It sounds like your company is possibly trying to re-sell the domain names so I would think at a minimum you would want to create a custom parked page that had your contact info and an easy way someone could get in touch with you about bidding on the domain.
If you do really just have several hundred domain names your not currently using redirecting them back to your site will have next to no "SEO" value, unless as Richard Mentioned some of them have backlinks. If non of them have backlinks then redirecting them all to your main page is essentially the same as going: 0 + 0 = 0. If I were you I would keep and redirect possibly a few domains that have close mis-spellings of your main website. Then I would tell your boss that you didn't want to renew the remaining 100+ "useless" domains, take that money saved and better invest it somewhere else (a Pro Moz membership, attend a conference ect...)
-
If they don't have links built to them, I don't see any benefit in redirects unless some are typical spelling errors for instance. You might be better off picking a few and making specific product microsites that link back to the homepage.
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
-
Understanding Redirects and Canonical Tags in SEO: A Complex Case
Hi everyone, nothing serious here, i'm just playing around doing my experiments 🙂
Technical SEO | | chueneke
but if any1 of you guys understand this chaos and what was the issue here, i'd appreciate if you try to explain it to me. I had a page "Linkaufbau" on my website at https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau. My .htaccess file contains only basic SEO stuff: # removed ".html" using htaccess RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ (.*)\.html\ HTTP RewriteRule (.*)\.html$ $1 [R=301,L] # internally added .html if necessary RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$ RewriteRule (.*) $1\.html [L] # removed "index" from directory index pages RewriteRule (.*)/index$ $1/ [R=301,L] # removed trailing "/" if not a directory RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$ RewriteRule (.*)/ $1 [R=301,L] # Here’s the first redirect: RedirectPermanent /index / My first three questions: Why do I need this rule? Why must this rule be at the top? Why isn't this handled by mod_rewrite? Now to the interesting part: I moved the Linkaufbau page to the SEO folder: https://chriseo.de/seo/linkaufbau and set up the redirect accordingly: RedirectPermanent /linkaufbau /seo/linkaufbau.html I deleted the old /linkaufbau page. I requested indexing for /seo/linkaufbau in the Google Search Console. Once the page was indexed, I set a canonical to the old URL: <link rel="canonical" href="https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau"> Then I resubmitted the sitemap and requested indexing for /seo/linkaufbau again, even though it was already indexed. Due to the canonical tag, the page quickly disappeared. I then requested indexing for /linkaufbau and /linkaufbau.html in GSC (the old, deleted page). After two days, both URLs were back in the serps:: https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau.html this is the new page /seo/linkaufbau
b14ee095-5c03-40d5-b7fc-57d47cf66e3b-grafik.png This is the old page /linkaufbau
242d5bfd-af7c-4bed-9887-c12a29837d77-grafik.png Both URLs are now in the search results and all rankings are significantly better than before for keywords like: organic linkbuilding linkaufbau kosten linkaufbau service natürlicher linkaufbau hochwertiger linkaufbau organische backlinks linkaufbau strategie linkaufbau agentur Interestingly, both URLs (with and without .html) redirect to the new URL https://chriseo.de/seo/linkaufbau, which in turn has a canonical pointing to https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau (without .html). In the SERPs, when https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau is shown, my new, updated snippet is displayed. When /linkaufbau.html is shown, it displays the old, deleted page that had already disappeared from the index. I have now removed the canonical tag. I don't fully understand the process of what happened and why. If anyone has any ideas, I would be very grateful. Best regards,
Chris0 -
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Subdomain redirect
Hey guys, I was thinking about creating subdomains for one of my websites. I want to divide my website in different subdomains (blog.[site].com / directory.[site].com / etc.) but I'm afraid that this will negatively impact my rankings. My blog for example has a lot of supporting content for my products and services that are primarily hosted on the homepage. Have you guys ever created subdomains at a later stage of your website's existence? What kind of impact did you notice? Would you recommend it? Thanks a million!
Technical SEO | | Nizar.1 -
Global Product Tabs and SEO
I am looking at a site that has global or duplicated content in 4 tabs for things like shipping, quality etc on tabs on each product page. The content is very good for UX and helps conversions but poor for SEO. Each product page has unique and tagged photos, unique title and a unique description. Is there away to specifically tell search engines that individual parts of a page are duplicated for good reason? Linking to the content to a single page decreases conversion dramatically but having it on tabs could effect ranking and quality as it is duplicated. Can anyone offer any advice with this?
Technical SEO | | Ian_W0 -
When Should You Start SEO?
I am launching a new website (related to IT services) on Monday 6th May 2013. What should be my SEO/SMO/PPC strategy for a brand new website with new domain ? I have a blog within the website as well. Is it better to promote internal blog or should i focus on external bogs like wordpress ?
Technical SEO | | afycon0 -
Questionable SEO
Chess Telecom appears first when you search for 'business phone lines' in the UK so I used a campaign to check them out. It seems they've got tons of unrelated links and using comment spamming to increase their ranking. Along with fake twitter accounts and other things. Search for 'jewel jubic chess' and you'll see what i mean. I assumed this wasnt a good idea and been trying to get my link on relevant websites only. Any comments or suggestions? Should I simply trust that google will hopefully punish them eventually? Or should I be fighting fire with fire? Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | DanFromUK0 -
Redirects
If I redirect page A to page B does page A need to exist before Google sees the redirect. Or can I just put up a redirect and delete page A. If the page doesn't need to exist: You have all your redirects in place for a website. You want this website to redirect to another website. You completely delete the website and put up the htaccess, there should be no problem with this, because the redirects are in place correct? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Can I do a redirect to a new domain name only a couple of weeks after having redirected to another domain?
I have a client with two website with very similar content. Both had a lot of inbound links and performed fairly well in SERPS. We recently combined both sites and have redirected one of the domains to the other. The traffic dipped slightly initially, but is recovering nicely. Now the client registered a new domain name he would like to use for the site. Should I wait a few weeks for everything to settle down after the first redirect/consolidation of sites before doing a new redirect to a new domain name, or should I not worry about having any issues with doing it right away?
Technical SEO | | Drewco0