Redirecting location-specific domains
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I am working on a project for a physician who only cares about reaching patients within a specific geographic region. He has a new technique at his practice and wants to get the word out via radio spots. I want to track the effectiveness of the radio campaigns without the use of call-tracking numbers or special promo codes.
Since the physician's primary domain is very long (but well-established), my thought is to register 3-4 short domains referencing the technique and location so they would be easy for listeners to remember and type-in later. 301 these domains to the relevant landing page on the main domain.
As an alternative. Each domain could be a single relevant landing page with a link to the relevant procedure on the main site.
It's not as if there is anything deceptive going on, rather, I would simply be using a domain in place of a call tracking number. I think I should be able to view the type-in traffic in Analytics, but would Google have an issue with this?
Thoughts and suggestions appreciated!
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I think the point of main concern, would be to avoid using the NAP on the landing pages, so as not to cause convolution with the primary domain. Maybe embed the physician's NAP in an image on the landing page...
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I actually like the second option (active landing page) for it's tracking benefits. I'm trying to think through whether it's risky from a search engine perspective. I don't think you'd have any issues with it. And if you're not trying to build it up in the search rankings (i.e. you're really only interested in it for tracking) then even if the search engines don't rank it very well, who cares?
The main thing I'd be concerned about is branding and user experience. In terms of branding, you're radio ads are all telling people one or two or more different domains and all of them are different from the Dr.'s actual domain. That could weaken branding. In terms of user experience, it's always a little suspicious to users when you go to one site and then get taken to a second site. To deal with that, I'd try to make the landing page similar to the main site's appearance and make it clear that the landing page belongs to the Dr.
Whichever way you choose to go, let us know how it works out.
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