Multiple Domain Names Point To One Site
-
I spoke with a potential client yesterday and for legitimate reasons they have multiple domain names, all very closely related in name to each other pointing to one site. His main site. So for example this is how things look,
mainsiteva.com, mainsitedc.com, mainsitepa.com, mainsiteca.com, mainsitega.com, mainsitela.com ALL forward to mainsite.com
This is being done because they used to have different sites for different geographies. Will google look at this as some form of manipulation?
-
Can't see a problem with this at all. In fact, it's fairly common practice.
Many companies buy domain names that feature their brand + a destination. Some companies even buy the misspellings of the brand. For example, GTMetrix has bought http://www.gtmetrics.com, which 301 redirects straight to http://www.gtmetrix.com.
Provided these are redirects and nothing more, it shouldn't be a problem. A problem would occur if your client started building manipulative and spammy links to one of these other domains, hoping that the 301 redirect would mask the suspiciousness and passed on the PageRank. Just like all bad quality link building, this could cause problems.
Buying the domains and just redirecting them, however, shouldn't be a problem as it wouldn't be interpreted as trying to manipulate PageRank or pass any strength. It's simply being done to protect the brand, which we know Google loves, if anything. Should your client warrant an individual site for these locations in the future, you can then reverse the redirect and go for it.
The last thing you would want, in my opinion, would be thin content on these sites or the main site that only serves to attract local search terms and drive traffic to the site, without offering any real value to the user. I think your potential client would be fine with what he's doing.
-
In my experience with multiple domains forwarding to 1 mothership - I have seen issues with rankings and overall organic nature of all sites.
It would be best to at least place a few pages, >5 on the sister sites with authentic content - referencing the mothership with jpeg logos etc - to eliminate an un-healthy back link profile.
Your pal,
Chenzo
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
-
When domain a buys domain b (whose links direct to c), does domain a has links redirecting to domain c ?
Hi, I really need to know what happens when a company or domain (a) acquires another company with domain (b) with its links pointing to yet another location (c). Does company a then have redirects to c?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Yeshourun0 -
Legal Client Wants to Change Domain Name... What's the best way to pass authority from old domain?
Hey Mozzers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhiteboardCreations
I received a call on Friday from a 6 attorney law office who have been my client for a long time. They have an established brand/domain in their market which isn't very big, but has a lot of competition. 2 of the attorneys are leaving to start their own firm and they want to remove a letter from their name abbreviation, thus their domain name as well. So, the other partners want to change the domain to reflect this. They want to buy a EMD [city]lawyers.com for about $1,600 along with some others to protect their new brand and name. I have a good idea as to what I need to do, BUT would love to hear advice from the community for this type of drastic change. 301 redirects? New Google Analytics code or same just different profile? Webmasters verifications? Content from old site? Old domain forwarding or keep active for a little bit? Is not the time to get them an SSL? Also, what should I prepare them for in terms of website traffic expectations and Google authority drops or remains the same? I know their Moz DA/PA will drop to 1/1, but anything else to look out for? Thank you in advance!
Fellow Pro Member - Patrick1 -
Merging 4 websites into one for a new site release (301 question)
Hi guys and girls, I have a client that has 4 very outdated websites with about 50 pages on each. They are made up like: 1 brand group and 3 for each individual key service they offer, so let's call them: brand.com (A) brand-service-1.com (B) brand-service-2.com (C) brand-service-3.com (D) We've rebuilt the main site and aggregated all the content from the others (99% re-written). Am I correct in thinking the process for the new lauch would be: 1. Launch the new site on brand.com (A) and 301 all the old brand.com (A) pages to the related pages on the new site. 2. Redirect the other websites (B,C,D) on a domain level to the new site on the brand.com (A) domain. 3. Clean up the old URL's, sitemaps, errors in Google WMT Is this right? Anything I missed/better practices? I was also wondering if I should redirect B,C,D in stages, or use page level redirects.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shloy23-2945840 -
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!0 -
How To Detect Primary Site With Duplicate Domains?
I'm working with some backlink data, and I've run into different domains that host the same exact content on the same IP. They're not redirecting to each other, just looks like they're hosting the same content on differnet virtual hostnames. One example is: borealcanada.ca borealcanada.com borealcanada.org www.borealcanada.ca www.borealcanada.com www.borealcanada.org www.borealecanada.ca I'm trying to consolidate this data and choose which is the primary domain. In this example, it appears www.borealcanada.ca has a high number of indexed pages and also ranks first for "boreal canada". However, I'm trying to think of a metric I can use to definitively/systematically handle this (using SEO Tools or something like it). Anyone have ideas on which metric might help me determine this for a large number of sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brettgus0 -
Microsite as a stand-alone site under one domain and sub-domained under another: duplicate content penalty?
We developed and maintain a microsite (example: www.coolprograms.org) for a non-profit that lives outside their main domain name (www.nonprofit-mainsite.org) and features content related to a particular offering of theirs. They are utilizing a Google Grant to run AdWords campaigns related to awareness. They currently drive traffic from the AdWords campaigns to both the microsite (www.coolprograms.org) and their main site (www.nonprofit-mainsite.org). Google recently announced a change in their policy regarding what domains a Google Grant recipient can send traffic to via AdWords: https://support.google.com/nonprofits/answer/1657899?hl=en. The ads must all resolve to one root domain name (nonprofit-mainsite.org). If we were to subdomain the microsite (example: coolprograms.nonprofit-mainsite.org) and keep serving the same content via the microsite domain (www.coolprograms.org) is there a risk of being penalized for duplicate content? Are there other things we should be considering?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marketing-iq0 -
WordPress site and Forum in Sub domain
I have a web site www.mydirectoyzzz.com (Eg site) instaled wordpress and directory theme on that. i wanna add forum to this web site phpbb or similar .so how can i use forum in main domain .wanna know how it works best for SEO www.mydirectoyzzz.com/forum or www.forum.mydirectoyzzz.com ? Adding forum to main site .is that harmful to main web site ? Looking for SEO Expert help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Does a page on a site with high domain authority build page authority easier? i.e. less inbound links?
Is this also why people build backlinks to their BBB profiles, Yellowpages Profiles, etc. i.e. why do people build backlinks to other pages that link to them? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to just build that backlink directly to your target?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0