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
-
Is it good idea to use special characters in Meta Tags?
Hello Experts, Is it good idea to add special characters while writing meta title and descriptions? Characters such as $ # Check Marks % If yes, will it help increase the CTR of page? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | jhakasseo0 -
Can lost pages be redirected with a 301 in order to do not lost keyword rankings?
Hi, I have got a website and some posts rank well, but I am not so interested in keep them for branding reasons. So I planned to do 301 redirects to home and remove those contents. Is it ok? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | patrizia_h0 -
How can I redirect anything after the article url to main article?
Hello everyone, When someone visits my websites article like http://www.website.com/article-title/lol , it give to 404 page error. But when someone http://www.website.com/article-title/ , it shows the article. The word "lol" can be changed to anything. I would like that to be redirected to the main article. Example: Someone visits website.com/article-title/lol, they should be redirected to website.com/article-title/ Is it possible to do so? If yes, please tell me how. Note: I'm using WordPress Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | hakhan2011 -
Redirects for new site new urls?
If redoing a site and updating some of the url's for SEO should you do permanent redirects for the old sites url's ? Using WordPress. I saw that the Yoast Pro plugin allows you to do this inside WordPress , is this the best way? Suggestions.? I know there are old articles written out on the web pointing back to the what will be soon old url's so just wondering what's the best way to go about this. Thanks Scott
On-Page Optimization | | scott3150 -
Duplicate content on domains we own
Hello! We are new to SEO and have a problem we have caused ourselves. We own two domains GoCentrix.com (old domain) and CallRingTalk.com (new domain that we want to SEO). The content was updated on both domains at about the same time. Both are identical with a few exceptions. Now that we are getting into SEO we now understand this to be a big issue. Is this a resolvable matter? At this point what is the best approach to handle this? So far we have considered a couple of options. 1. Change the copy, but on which site? Is one flagged as the original and the other duplicate? 2. Robots.txt noindex, nofollow on the old one. Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | CallRingTalk0 -
Looking for a few hours of consult from an on-page/redirection SEO guru.
Hi! I could post our question here, but I think we will need an hour or so of questions and answers. Anyone consider themselves an on-page guru or redirection strategy guru? Here is the breakdown: 1. We sell digital media. 2. Most of the pages that return for us in the serps are indexed Search Results pages. From the research we have done, these are our highest trafficked results, but also our lowest converters. We have hundreds of thousands of indexed and dynamic Search Result pages we need to deal with. 3. We are concerned about Panda eventually giving us issues with these indexed Search Pages. 4. We would like to 301 re-direct these indexed Search Results pages to applicable product pages. 5. Looking for advice on a strategy to do so which would include the best way to locate the pages we need to 301 in the SERPS, being careful that the 301 will help and not harm us, etc. Note, we are just looking for a couple of hours of discussion and guidance. We don't need a massive SEO analysis or anything. Just looking for input and guidance on this one particular issue. If you just want to answer here for free, hey, we won't complain, but are happy to pay for quality advice. PM if interested. Thanks! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
How can I make google display rich snippets when searching for my domain?
My domain is www.phraseexpander.com If I search for phraseexpander in google, I'm in the first position (as it should be) but google is not giving extra space to my result as it happens, for example, if you search for "fogbugz". Is there any way I can hep google index my contents (I currently have a site index that is created by Yoast SEO). Thanks a lot. Andrea
On-Page Optimization | | nagar0 -
Footers... Good or Bad?
I know in the past footers have been seen as a bad idea. I need to get up to date. Does having footer links that point to your own site with anchor texts keywords create problems? or is it safe to have? Will it do anything to our google rankings? Is it going to penalize us? As well, how many is acceptable, do I want all 77 links or have 15 with sub-categories?
On-Page Optimization | | HCGDiet0