Importance of having a tightly themed sight and domain for ranking and SEO
-
I started the site 10 years ago as www.islesurfboards.com selling mainly surfboards and ranking mainly for surfboards, paddle boards came along and now paddle boards make up for 95% of all the business and we are missing alot of ranking in the paddle board related keywords so what is the best course of action?
my plans:
keep www.islesurfboards.com and keep it surfboards focused, create a new domain www.islepaddleboards.com and move all paddle board related content products etc over to this domain with redirects to transfer the link juice.
Doing this will still keep my surfboard site and all its long term domain credibility and i can offer a link over the the www.islepaddleboards.com site for people looking to buy paddle boards and vice versa on the new paddle board site for people looking to shop surfboards.
Would this be the best course of action or does can anyone offer any better suggestions. I know google supposodly has taken off much ranking emphasis of the domain but as i pick apart the competition who rank welll in the paddle board space they all have "paddleboards" in the domains and a paddle board specific site to keep it tightly themed which pays off across the board in content, ppc campaigns, and overall ease of use as surfboards and paddle boards are two seperate products and paddle boards is very hot right now so i dont want to stay commited to www.islesurfboards.com domain if its going to create confusion or not help me rank well for paddle boards leading into the future.
Any ideas? Thoughts on the best route to take?
-
Billy and Dan are spot on. Not only is it feasible to have a new section on the site, you are doing what Google loves and introducing new informative content, growing your site and raising its overall value/authority. Google will have absolutely no issue with tightly relating any kind of surfing/board activity. Only consider if the new content is way off track - cake decoration classes or something.
I would just ensure the structure of your site is such that you have something like -
www.islesurfboards. com/paddle-boards/
rather than
www.islesurfboards. com/blah/blah/paddle-boards/
Another way of looking at this - if you have a successful site then where better to test the market, rather than investing time and money in a new site.
-
i agree with Billy
the 2 topic/genres are so closely related i think you will do best by developing out the current site rather than start a new site
-
Although I am certainly not saying that your proposed method is 'wrong' in the slightest... I would be more inclined to take advantage of the year's worth of authority on your old domain.
Surfboards and Paddle boards are certainly similar enough - it isn't like you are branching out in to game systems or lawn mowers.
I would create a paddle board section on the current website and optimize that section for the paddle board terms.
That is just me, though. I see no issue with your proposed method except for having a new domain with no links and no time under its belt.
Cheers.
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
-
Planning to transition to a new website domain - should I press pause on SEO initiatives?
Hello - my company is planning to transition to a new website domain sometime this year, probably about six months from now. Our current website does not currently get much organic traffic from unbranded search terms. I would really like to fix that by publishing lots of new blog posts and trying to get more backlinks. But with the website transition on the horizon, I'm wondering if I should hold off on posting new pages and getting backlinks for the time being. Then once the new website is live, I can start to ramp things up. What would you do in this situation? Also, does anyone know of any thorough guides or walk-throughs that cover all of the best practices (re: SEO) when migrating to a new website domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | collinburkewg0 -
Is there a difference in SEO ranking value between a single backlink from a domain and multiple backlinks
Hi all I see that Moz gives data on Linking Domains and also External Links. The former being the number of domains which have one or more links pointing at your site and the latter the total number of links, including multiple links on the same domain. Apart from the potential benefit of people clicking the links and coming to your site and so increasing traffic, is there any SEO ranking benefit from multiple links? The only one I can think of is that you MAY get benefit from different anchor text for each link...? I'd be interested to hear any comment or experience on this. Bob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobBawden10 -
Putting my content under domain.com/content, or under related categories: domain.com/bikes/content ?
Hello This questions plays on what Joe Hall talked about during this years' MozCon: Rethinking Information Architecture for SEO and Content Marketing. My Case:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
So.. we're working out guidelines and templates for a costumer (sporting goods store) on how to publish content (articles, videos, guides) on their category pages, product pages, and other pages. At this moment I have 2 choices:
1. Use a url-structure/information architecture where all the content is placed in one subfolder, for example domain.com/content. Although it's placed here, there's gonna be extensive internal linking from /content to the related category pages, so the content about bikes (even if it's placed under domain.com/bikes) will be just as visible on the pages related to bikes. 2. Place the content about bikes on a subdirectory under the bike category, **for example domain.com/bikes/content. ** The UX/interface for these two scenarios will be identical, but the directories/folder-hierarchy/url structure will be different. According to Joe Hall, the latter scenario will build up more topical authority and relevance towards the category/topic, and should be the overall most ideal setup. Any thoughts on which of the two solutions is the most ideal? PS: There is one critical caveat her: my costumer uses many url-slugs subdirectories for their categories, for example domain.com/activity/summer/bikes/, which means the content in the first scenario will be 4 steps away from the home page. Is this gonna be a problem? Looking forward to your thoughts 🙂 Sigurd, INEVO0 -
SEO time
I wanto to be in the top of the google search. I am usiing a lot of SEO tools but... I have done it during one month. Do I have to wait more?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarlosZambrana0 -
Negative SEO and big decrease in main keyword ranking
Hi about 4 months ago, I had ranking #1 to #4 for "SEO" in Persian in my country; but someone made about 1000 spam links to my site and some other industry sites. I disavowed the links when I see (after 2-3 days of OSE detection). But now I'm in the page 2 of rankings for the most important keyword I ever had. The point is, My visits increased in this months, but I lost my rankings for this keyword not others. The spammy links targeted my main keyword. Whats you idea to get my ranking back? I'm writing content about SEO, Marketing and blogging for about 4 years and I don't have any bad resume in buying links or stuffing keywords or ... All natural.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masoudfatemi0 -
How do i redirect www.domain.com/ to www.domain.com/index.php
I keep getting in my analytics www.domain.com/ and www.domain.com/index.php how do i make it consistently redirect to one version and not to both. I know about htaccess redirect and am already using this so am puzzle to which is the best one to use. below is the example .htaccess file im using. Options +FollowSymlinks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattmillen
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.co.uk [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.co.uk/index.php$1 [r=301,nc] which is better for SEO should i forward to www.domain.com/ or www.domain.com/index.php0 -
Could ranking problem be caused by Parked Domain?
I've been investigating a serious Google ranking drop for a small website in the UK. They used to rank top 5 for about 10 main keywords and overnight on 24/3/12 they lost rankings. They have not ranked in top100 since. Their pages are still indexed and they can still be found for their brand/domain name so they have not been removed completely. I've coverered all the normal issues you would expect to look for and no serious errors exist that would lead to what in effect looks like a penalty. The investigation has led to a an issue about their domain registration setup. The whois record (at domaintools) shows the status as "Registered and Parked or Redirected" which seems a bit unusual. Checking the registration details they had DNS settings pointing correctly to the webhost but also had web forwarding to the domain registrar's standard parked domain page. The domain registrar has suggested that this duplication could have caused ranking problems. What do you think? Is this a realistic reason for their ranking loss? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjalc20110 -
SEO - Product Related MiniSites: Hosting & Domains
Hey Mozzers, I would first like to thank everyone in advance for replying to my question 😉 Actually, my question is 2-part: Hosting & Domains 1) We are currently researching product-related domains and would like to build-out review style mini-sites on WordPress that link back to our main site product pages. We're using X-Cart platform and X-Cart offers a WordPress module. My Dev. recommends installing a main WordPress mini-site template on my server and replicating this template under different domains/unique content, obviously ;-). -My questions is; For backlink purposes, would it be better to host these WordPress pages in a different location/server? 2) Domains (which domain extensions are the best): I have read mixed reviews on this subject ... a) Do dashes (i,e. brand-model.com) have an impact as well?? I read a post regarding this; http://www.commonsensemarketing.net/do-domain-name-extensions-matter/ - and the general feeling was that .com and .net ranked higher, faster but that .info wasn't a bad runner up. I was a bit excited to hear that .info wasn't a bad choice as they are actually "available" and cheap as well (under 3 bucks) until a comment was posted about a "Market Samurai" study. They reported testing 4 domain names (below) with the same article, date & time post . 1. domainname.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | k9byron
2. domainname.org
3. domainname.net
4. domain-name.com -My question is: Can anyone give any advise on which domain extensions work better/rank higher faster? com / .net / .org / .info / ect? Also, is it better to have more product related keywords in the domain? Example, one of my products is the "Dogtra 280ncp Platinum". WordStream exact match tells me that "dogtra 280ncp" gets 210 searches per month and that "dogtra 280ncp platinum" gets another 91 searches per month. I'm guessing that its better to buy www.Dogtra280ncpPlatinum.com instead of www.Dogtra280ncp.com as we would pick up the searches for the "platinum" term as well? Question Summary: Is it better to host these mini-sites on another server than my main site? Which domain extensions work better? Is it better to use as many product related keywords in the domain as possible and maybe even throw modifiers in there as well such as "buy" or "review"? Thanks Again!
Byron-0