Is purchasing domain names still relevant?
-
Our MD is requesting that we continue to renew a long list of domains that we purchased many years ago. Is this practice still relevant or is there more to be gained from SEO and keyword strategy on our own site? All of the domains are redirected to our main site, but the main reason for purchasing was to stop others using them.
Can someone please advise? Don't want to be spending money on this if it is of no benefit to us at all.
-
LOL,
I like the last line
"Good luck convincing the good doctor to change his/her opinion."
I can relate!!!!!!!
-
Hi Donald,
From an SEO standpoint, if you're just buying exact-match domains and redirecting them to your main website, there is absolutely no benefit. You'd need to build up each website with unique and high-quality content to get an SEO boost.
Here is an article from Matt McGee, Executive News Editor at SearchEngineLand.com & MarketingLand.com, with some more insight on the matter:
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/sbs-mailbag-should-i-buy-multiple-domains-for-seo/3165/
That said, if the concern that your competitors might snatch up the domains and actually start using them as their primary website (rather than just as redirects) is real, that may be enough of a reason to keep renewing the domains.
-
Donald,
As a former RN, I feel you
Today, with any client we have, they either already have a bunch of domain names or they want us to purchase a bunch for them. The issue becomes one of proportion. If, you are in a very narrowly defined area of medicine like a cardiologist who only does caths, you might be able to buy up 20 to 40 domains around a given location and make it more difficult on someone to use that as an exact match domain. Given that exact match still matters on some level, but probably a lot less than we think, you could justify it at some level.
But where do you stop with that worry? For me, and for our clients I believe you have to stop at the point where you are protecting a specific domain name: Houston Heart Cath Specialist.com, .net, .org, etc. And then do the same with hyphenated version: Houston-Heart-Cath-Specialist.com, .etc.
To then want to own and redirect: Best Houston Heart Doc, Houston Special Heart doc, etc. is just a waste of money IMO. It is great for the registrars like the one with G and D in the name, but it really does not benefit your MD.
If you give most of those who frequent the Q and A your doctor's domain and five minutes, they will come up with at least 20 domains they could use to easily compete with you if that were the only measure to be used.
I would suggest to the doc that they allow you to focus on more important SEO matters like how to include Google +, the need for Schema going forward, maximizing keywords in site architecture, (let me know if you need more.)
Good luck convincing the good doctor to change his/her opinion.
-
It won't work when you just redirect a lot different domains to your website from a seo point-of-view. So for that reason you can skipp them.
But when the domain are strong (short, older, relevant keywords without "-") you can use them for nice sites and (later on) link to you main website. That sort of domains shouldn't expire or become available for you compititors. (Or when they bring you a lot type-in traffic, you also shoud keep them of course..)
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
-
301'ing old (2000), high PR, high pages indexed domain
Hi, I have an old (2000), very high PR, 20M+ pages indexed by goog domain which... got adsense banned. The domain has taken a few hits over the years from penguin/panda, but come out pretty well compared to many competitors. The problem is it was adsense banned in the big adsense acct ban of 2012 for invalid activity. No, I still have no idea what the issue was. I'd like to start using a new domain if I can safely get goog to pass the PR & indexing love so I can run adsense & Adx. What are your initial thoughts? Am I out of my mind to try?
Algorithm Updates | | comfortsteve1 -
Will Parked Domain hurt My SEO as Duplicate Content?
Hello, I have one website (Migration Lawyers) and I have an extra 8 domains Parked so they are basically cloning the content of the site. so if the main site is: migrationlawyers.co.za and I have an addon domain migration-lawyers.com is that good or bad? is there a proper way to redirect the sites, will redirecting (301) subdomains be more effective? Thanks for your Input 🙂 0i8VXqr.png
Algorithm Updates | | thealika0 -
Google Algorithm change? - Brand name now overwriting title tag?
Anyone else noticing this happening? In Google search results, many of my sites are now showing up in the following fashion... "Site name: page title" I read a few articles in the past few days that state that Google may be playing with the algo but have not read anything from Google directly. I should add that I first noticed this on Feb. 21 and have seen it rolling out more and more since. I have only noticed it on a few competitor websites thus far. Edit:Some links talking about the subject http://www.seroundtable.com/google-brand-title-appending-16432.html http://semandseo.blogspot.ca/2013/03/google-brand-title-in-search.html http://www.designbigger.com/blog/seo/google-rewrites-page-titles-to-push-brand-over-keywords/
Algorithm Updates | | mattylac0 -
Google Panda - large domain benefits
Hi, A bit of a general question, but has anyone noticed a improvement in rankings for large domains - ie well known, large sites such as Tesco, Amazon? From what I've seen, the latest Panda update seems to favour the larger sites, as opposed to smaller, niche sites. Just wondered if anyone else has noticed this too?Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Digirank0 -
Since authorship markup requires a domain email, how can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile?
It seems that Google now requires authors to have a valid email on the domain. This is easy for the traditional web publication. But what about community websites like SEOmoz? How can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile? Will community websites like SEOmoz be required to 1. Give all users a domain email 2. Ask users to validate the email address with Google? Seems overly complicated.
Algorithm Updates | | designquotes0 -
Which is the better option in 2012, sub-domains or sub-directories?
Pinnion offers online software for surveys and trivia games. Information about our product is at www.pinnion.com and then interested users create their accounts at secure.pinnion.com. The surveys that they create link back to secure.pinnion.com, so we would obviously like to gain whatever SEO benefits we can from that structure. We've been advised that moving from secure.pinnion.com to www.pinnion.com/secure would be the best way to accomplish this. A 2009 post by Rand seems to support that POV, but then a 2011 post over SEObook claims that everything has changed 100% since then. There was a little conversation here and here in Q&A last Fall that touched on this subject, but nothing really definitive. Would love to get thoughts on this subject based on the collective wisdom today. Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | yahuie0 -
Is a slash just as good as buying a country specific domain? .com/de vs .de
I guess this question comes in a few parts: 1. Would Google read a 2-letter country code that is after the domain name (after the slash) and recognize it as a location (targeting that country)? Or does is just read it as it would a word. eg. www.marketing.com/de for a microsite for the Germans www.marketing.com/fr for a microsite for the French Or would it read the de and fr as words (not locations) in the url. In which case, would it have worse SEO (as people would tend to search "marketing france" not "marketing fr")? 2. Which is better for SEO and rankings? Separate country specific domains: www.marketing.de and www.marketing.fr OR the use of subfolders in the url: www.marketing.com/de and www.marketing.com/fr
Algorithm Updates | | richardstrange0 -
.Co Domains - Any thoughts?
Hi Guys I'm not sure which section this one belongs in as I didn't see a section for domains/tlds. I wanted an opinion on the future of .co domains. We own a gift company (www.xperiencedays.com), as well as a gift recommendation site (www.uniquegifts.net), and invested in a few gift occasion .co domains (www.birthdaygifts.co, christmasgifts.co etc). This was partly because they were cheap and easy to come by, but also with a hope that they soon gain some public recognition. My question therefore is whether anyone within SEOMOZ has an opinion on whether .co will be widely accepted, whether they will (as google claims) be treated as a non-country specific url, and early success stories you know of, and finally whether the recent news from Overstock to rebrand as O.co (http://www.overstock.com/guides/faqs-about-o-co) is the kick start that .co need. I realize that is more than one question
Algorithm Updates | | bigtimeseo2