Redirecting to an exact match root domain: good, bad, or neutral?
-
We have a client who wants to secure an exact match domain for their new website, but it's very long.
They're wondering about securing an additional domain that is much shorter for marketing purposes (business cards, email addresses, etc).
We would then 301 redirect the short domain to the main domain. Are we going to see negative SEO implications from that?
-
You're welcome, glad to be able to help
-
An excellent point.
Again, thanks so much for the feedback.
-
You're welcome Mackenzie.
I can see the logic in your thoughts around a lot of the links being the web address (which a lot of them will be) which would help search as the keywords would then be in the links, though isn't as straight forward as that unfortunately.
Those links would, I believe, be classed as brand links, so most of the benefit would be based around brand searches which you're likely to rank top for anyway.
All the main search engines love a variety of anchor text in links, covering both generic and longtail phrases. So as a part of the link management, I'd suggest that when you find a good quality inbound link that is the web address, if appropriate to do so, approach them and kindly ask if they'd be willing to change the link text from the website address to some relevant anchor text of your choosing. Some will oblige, some won't.
Hope that makes sense, not always easy to describe,
Simon
-
Thanks, Simon, that's really helpful, actually.
I appreciate the prompt response.
We were also considering the fact that a lot of links will contain simply the web address, so although using keywords in the domain doesn't give us the "exact match power", it may give us some keywords in our anchor text.
How would you recommend we weight this possibility in our decision?
-
Hi Mackenzie
That's a great question.
The main potential drawback with this is:
- If the short domain that's on a 301 redirect is used for marketing purposes, chances are this domain will acquire a lot of the inbound links. Some of that link juice will be lost through the redirects, it's better for Search if all the links go straight to the domain that's hosting the website (homepage and internal pages).
Also, it's not advisable for usability to market & promote a domain that's redirected, doesn't give a great first impression.
Exact** match domains**don't have the SEO weight that they used to (that's the general consensus, especially with regards to Google), so it's not a real must to have an exact match domain.
Suggestion: Perhaps the short domain would be suitable as the actual website address, or perhaps one in-between with a 'partial match' on the keywords, which is both short enough for Usability and short enough to market & promote effectively, whilst still incorporating the main single keyword or two for Search (mainly 'result to click conversion' from the search result snippet that is).
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
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
-
Ranking over someone else who has your branded domain name
Hello! I have a client who has been in business for a long time, but was very late to the game online. As a result, the branded domain for his business (for explanation purposes I'll call it "Houston Tan"*) was already taken when he decided he needed a website, however it was not being used. He approached the company that owned "houstontan.com" and they refused to sell it to him. Not only that, they turned around and opened a company and developed the website using his trademarked company name as one word instead of two, "HoustonTan." It was brought to court and the judge determined that since they created a new name by combining the two words, there was nothing that he could do. Still having to create a website for his company, he chose the domain "HoustonSunTan.com." Not sure who was advising him on that one. So now he has a domain name with only a partial match to his company name. As you would imagine, when you search Houston Tan, HoustonTan.com is number 1, 2 & 3, and HoustonSunTan.com is #4. My question is, do you think it is even possible for his company to overtake the top spot of Google? Or have you ever come across a situation like this and if so what worked for you? FYI: Even though it says Houston, the company is a global company in over 500 cities (with one 800 number unfortunately), so local SEO strategies wouldn't necessarily apply. *Names are made up to protect both parties 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | American.Made0 -
Same UI, different domain
Hello there. I would like to ask for your opinions. I have DomainA.com/blog and want to move /blog to its own domain. As of now, the blog section has the exact same UI as the rest of the site, its just a section on our site. Will it have any negative impact with respect to SEO if DomainA.com and DomainB.com have the exact same UI and are interlinking each other? Thanks in advanced.
On-Page Optimization | | mike_sif0 -
Branded keyword domain not appearing in Google
Hi, I have a site called www.emv-cards.com but the site has a very poor showing on Google for the search term 'emv cards' and this does not make sense to me. It has position #6 on Bing but is not in Google's top 50. Any assistance would be appreciated. regards, George.
On-Page Optimization | | sirgeorge0 -
Which is better, a directory 301 redirect or each page in the directory?
A customer of mine has a site with lots of articles and they are all quite spammy. They have not been affected by penguin yet so they asked what to do. I suggested losing the articles directory and 301 redirect to either the home page or another important page. Would a 301 redirect on the entire directory to a single page be the way to go or add redirects from each page within the directory and spread out redirects to various pages in website? Or do you have a better suggestion?
On-Page Optimization | | anthonytjm0 -
SEOMOZ crawler ignoring redirect?
My crawl report for www.poker-coaching.net show a number of duplicate content warnings.
On-Page Optimization | | CatfishTPA
First, it shows a warning for www.poker-coaching.net and www.poker-coaching.net/, although there is a redirect in place for this, and for non-www. to www. as well. So IMO there is no duplicate content here, so why the error message?
Next, it shows a duplicate content warning for a number of pages, but when I click the number on the right, there is no info an which pages contain the duplicate content. Will this info be there later when the crawl is completed? My problem is that this is my oldest site, but since over one year it seems to have a penalty which I can't get rid of - I cannot identify the reason for the penalty. I already rebuilt the site from scratch once, but I still do not see results. If a membership at SEOMOZ would be able to help me bring this site back on track, that would already be worth one years membership fees, so I'd really be very thankful if someone could take a look at the site and give me an idea about what needs to be done here.0 -
How do I do a 301 Redirect in IIS 7 from http://www.freightmonster.com/index.html to http://freightmonster.com/index.html when I don't have a physical page to redirect?
I'm trying to get rid of my Rel Canonical links and use the 301 Redirect instead.
On-Page Optimization | | FreightBoy0 -
SEO Domain Values
I always thought that there was no difference in value between a .com and .net, also that hyphens have the same value as the keyphrase without the hyphen. But I have heard Rand lately saying hyphens are spammy - whats the go? Is CarParts.com better than Car-Parts.com or Car-Parts.net etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Ventura0 -
Domain Extension
I am creating a website in canada to target a specific region in my city and was wondering if i should USE a .com, .ca, .org or a .info extension? i can purchaes all, but which should be used? I noticed some other websites have .org or .info instead of .com.....what is the preferred extension for Google?
On-Page Optimization | | Souk0