Single domain or Multiple Keyword Domains
-
I do a lot of affiliate marketing for aftermarket truck parts and I also run a lot of community/forum type websites for trucks. On the affiliate marketing side of things, I usually will find a very good keyword rich domain name for a product, and build a site around that product. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't, but I typically feel like I have an advantage because of the very keyword rich domain names.
Lately it's become a lot of work setting up these individual sites and promoting them. I try to do a good job, and provide quality content. I've considered moving these sites to one central site, like, one of my more popular truck community/forums and maybe start using sub-domains or sub-folders instead. They are all truck related, but they are all completely different parts. Some for performance, others being accessories.
Does anyone have an opinion on this? I've read on here multiple times about the advantage in focusing all your link power in one place, but I feel at the same time that I would be missing out on the power of the great keyword phrase domains I've been using. If I combined all of these sites into a single community site, the site's content wouldn't be as targeted, right?
I would appreciate any advice I can get. Thanks,
Andy
-
Definitely go for the one domain approach in a bid to create a larger digital footprint, I too used to have multiple single domains targeting a keyword or two and now after the last Google Panda update these keyword rich domains aren't as effective as they once were.
-
Just wondering, did you post this question as a new question as I'd be interested in the answers? (I did a search but could not seem to find it)
-
Will do
-
that's a very good question. You may want to post it as a new question so we can get fresh eyes on it. Personally I haven't ever done so many sites at once so I too am curious to find out if others have this specific experience.
If not, you may very well end up being the guinea pig. In that case, I would suggest not doing more than one or two a week.
-
that's a very good question. You may want to post it as a new question so we can get fresh eyes on it. Personally I haven't ever done so many sites at once so I too am curious to find out if others have this specific experience.
If not, you may very well end up being the gunea pig. In that case, I would suggest not doing more than one or two a week.
-
Will Google freak out, or will there be any other issues if all of the sudden I'm doing all these 301 Redirects from 20 sites to a single website?
Thank you,
Andy
-
Thank you, that's what I was wondering. Ok, I'll start working on a central site in the meantime.
-
While consolidation is good, too many 301 Redirects in too short a period of time can be a hassle. I'd suggest building out other content initially, and letting the floor mats site build up some value over several months before considering a migration of that. Jumping too soon on a recently redirected site could cause too much loss of original site value as it passes through two hops.
-
Thanks everyone! I really appreciate the help!
For the last few years I've had a website called husky-floor-liners.com. It was dedicated to specific brand of floor liner. Earlier this year, I decided to make the site bigger to incorporate further brands of floor liners and mats, so I turned it into floormatsandliners.com, and redirected all the old URL's to the new ones. Would it be bad to move that site, yet again, to a subfolder on a site of mine like truckprofile.com? Then have the content of floormatsandliners.com moved to truckprofile.com/floor-mats-liners?
And then should I have the brands and parts structure be like: truckprofile.com/floor-mats-liners/husky/floor-liners?
Thanks!
-
Thank you everyone! This is really helpful.
-
You have been lead to ask this question because of the workload of keeping many sites current and dealing with their shopping carts. SEOs would complain about this for entirely different reasons.
I used to run lots of little "hotdog stand" websites. They did OK.
But then I built a big site and it defeated all of the hotdog stands and all of their competitors.
A big site can become an authority in many niches. A big site creates lots of opportunities for cross-selling.
Why not build mytruckparts.com and sell everything there. Redirect all of the hotdog stands to the big site.
-
Keyword rich domains are not as powerful as they once were. Check out Matt Cutts video on whether or not it is important to have keywords in a domain (linked to below).
If these niches are somewhat related then I would have one main site and do folders for each part. So, I'd have:
This way, when you build links back (or if someone links to) a parts folder then the whole domain benefits.
-
Single keyword domains or microsites are really difficult to keep up to date.
I would advise focusing your energy on one domain building up the authority and managing it well. Look at well developed life style blogs or news sites, these cover a variety of subjects however still perform well for a variety of very different keywords.
-
I agree with wildner-akademie - become THE authority site on all things related to truck parts. With proper content organization (sub-folders), the long-term value will be worth the effort.
One great example of how this works so well - Real Estate - for nearly every city in the country, Trulia and Zillow consistently come up in the top five results. It's all in sub-folders. And neither one has "real estate" in the domain name.
-
Well, this is not so easy to clarify. Google will make more changes in the future about those keyword-domains. One one side, you have important words in the domain, but on the other hand you have users that need to remember the domain. Here is an example: instead of "great-social-media-network" it's called "facebook". Get the picture?
Google likes brands - so be one.
Take all in one place in subfolders - not subdomains.
Mmake it big. Concentrate in one place.
Take a short domain (see mytrucks.com)
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
-
Increase Domain Authority
Hey experts, I hope you are doing great, I'm really sorry if its off-topic, I have bought a brand new domain name. What are the most recommended ways by Moz to increase its authority and standing in Google ,fast? Page for reference: cleanthese.com Kind regards
Affiliate Marketing | | ndjkiu770 -
Guilty of keyword cannibalization. What's the best way to fix it without losing link juice?
Hi guys, I'm new here but I already spent hours reading the forums. I didn't post before because I didn't feel the need to, but today it's different. I don't want to take fixing steps that are not optimal for my website situation. So here's the problem : I am working on an affiliate website that is growing day after day and is already profitable. It is not by any mean a thin affiliate site. It's a french language website with product reviews on it. Right now there is 1 main page (hero page) per review in which I describe the products, put affiliate links, present useful information, etc. These pages have a good word count and I am targeting 1-2 main keywords on them which I consider a good practice. Couple of months ago I decided to add a product page for each one (normally it's 5 products per review) so I added 5 more page per review, targeting product names as new keywords. Problem is that : Product names are very similar to the main keywords (keyword cannibalization problem) There is very little added information on the product page when you compare it to the hero page (too thin) A lot of information is repeated on each of the product pages. I think this is bad. So I decided to keep only the hero pages to keep more link juice, avoid keyword cannibalization, improve page authority and get more content on one single page (only information that was not repeated have been added to hero page). I removed ALL THE LINKS to product pages (from the hero page). So now for my questions : Is it better to keep the product pages in my sitemap or to delete them right away? Is it better to let the product pages die by themselves over time or to 301 redirect all the product pages to hero page to keep link juice? The next question is a bit more complicated. Hope you guys understand what I mean. Considering that product pages are now gone, this will for sure weaken my bounce rate % because only hero page with good/deep information will be accessible to visitors (there is not a lot of internal links in each review, except to other, RELATED reviews). Is setting up goals in google analytics + telling google that it should consider a click on an affiliate link as a NEW PAGE VIEW (like it would act for a click on a link of a product on my own domain) will help for SERPs and SEO?? Or it will just help ME to see a lower bounce rate and setting goals? In other words, is tracking these links and let google see them as new pages clicks will help for the page rankings or not? Because from what I am understanding, a good bounce rate helps for rankings. If the changes made to avoid keyword cannibalization work, when could I potentially see the effects/benefits in the SERPs and trafic?
Affiliate Marketing | | benoit_20181 -
What's the best way to go about making Duplicate Content Pages on my domain for affiliates?
Hello, I would like to make a bunch of duplicate pages of my site's Home Page, that way affiliates of mine can have a page of their own with links specialized to themselves littered throughout the page. What's the best practice going about this without jeopardizing domain authority from tons of duplicate content signals firing off?
Affiliate Marketing | | Benavest0 -
Does Google look at Domain Registrar owner information when counting links into a site?
Question: If the domain registrar owner info is the same on two websites, will Google/other search engines discredit any linking between the two sites when calculating page rank? We have two company sites. One is our main ecommerce domain which we have been linking into from information domains in the past. We recently cut ties with the company that hosted them for us and wish to host them ourselves to preserve the inbound traffic. We are worried, however, that the traffic will be discredited now that we own both domains. Thanks for looking!
Affiliate Marketing | | tennisexpress0 -
What is the negative effect of getting affiliate links to your domain?
Are the negative effects of affiliate links to your domain bigger than the positive effects? Is it better to use a subdomain for your affiliate campaigns? (Because of linkprofile no follow links or time on page effects?) Thanks for responce!
Affiliate Marketing | | ltom0 -
Sub domains or micro sites
Hi All I am setting up a series of affiliate sites; each site will focus on 1 category of product and there will be no cross over (i.e. no 2 sites will promote the same type of product). I'm setting up approximately 40 and they will all share the same domain: product followed by brand name.co.uk. Because of the numbers I intend to get a dedicated server and create a 'parent' website which I was going to use as a blog to promote the individual sites. My question is: should I set them up as micro sites, or should I set them up as sub domains? Wanted to know which is the best method from an SEO point of view as all sites will be hosted and owned collectively so I appreciate that the link building between each site will be limited. Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | danielparry0 -
What's an inexpensive way to maintain domain registration privacy?
Other than using a paid service like 'Domains by Proxy', is there a clever way to maintain my privacy with a domain registration w/o incurring the added annual cost of privacy service fees for every domain I own?
Affiliate Marketing | | Fly4Fun0
