Purchasing local domains for SEO

[BenchPrepCourtney]

Hi,

I'm considering buying domains to help build our SEO traffic. But, I'm looking for some advice on whether or not this can hurt us.

For example, if our site is www.brandname.com and the site is all about online education, would it beneficial for us to purchase a local domain like education.boston.com and optimize with unique content so we can point back to our own site (if "education boston" is a high volume keyword)?

Thanks!

[BenchPrepCourtney]

Great, this is super helpful. Thank you both for the information as well as your suggestions.

[BedeFahey]

As Takeshi mentioned, doing this in a sustainable and long-term way is very resource intensive.

I'm generalizing, but I would personally look at  building out subpages, whole site sections, and resources on your existing site, rather than new domains. You're much more likely to get links to a subpage or section that has killer resources and information than you are to get them to a new small-ish site. The coverage you're going to get from external efforts, such as writing top-notch articles and getting them placed on respected sites might also be worth exploring as an alternative.

If you can do all of this as well as build out new sites with unique content, then go for it.

[TakeshiYoung]

Building out a second or third site is a resource intensive task. Not only will you have to generate content & links for your main site, you will also have to create content & links for your secondary site for them to have any value. You are effectively doubling your work.

If you have the resources for it, it can be a good strategy for taking up multiple slots in the search results, as well as creating a source of links that your competitors cannot duplicate. However, be aware of the effort it will take you and weigh the costs & benefits.