Would a 301 redirect on a keyword based domain be a worth-while investment?
-
Similar questions have been asked - but I couldn't find a direct answer to my specific question here.
I have the opportunity to purchase our exact keyword phrase domain name for fairly cheap (if I sold red balloons it would be redballoons.com).
If I i set it up to 301 redirect to our main domain - would it provide any short-term or long-term SEO benifits?
ADDITIONAL INFO:
I sell a service to a niche market and in a relatively short amount of time have been able to rank #21 on our main keywords. Our domain is fairly young (about 1.5yrs), but we are WAY behind our main competition in the link building category (they have been at it for 10+ years). I'm looking for an interim solution to drive genuine SEO traffic while we work on our link building over time.
Our main keywords only get about 15,000 global searches per month (google) and some of those are not our market (don't know how many exactly).
The competition for our keyword is classified as "medium" in google adwords.
It's really only worth it to me if I can begin getting page 1 results from this practice.
Thanks in advance!!!
-
Thanks so much everyone - great advice it seams. I will continue to work on my on-page factors and especially my link building efforts.
I felt like it was a long shot and you confirmed my suspicions. Thanks again!!
-
The only value I can think of is if you build a unique content site on redballons.com and then optimize it. You can then link it to the main site and have some SEO value. We see this done often within local link profiles. But I am not sure I would go to all that trouble, instead I would use that energy working on great content to draw traffic.
Redirecting a domain ( as John pointed out) has no SEO value, but may have some marketing or branding value.
-
Hi Aaron.
If I understand correctly, you want an alternative to PPC advertising so you can appear on page one of SERP for a specific keyword. You are viewing the exact name domain match as a possible solution.
I would suggest taking a step back and re-evaluating all aspects on on-page seo. Is your content really the best it can be? Have you maximized all the seo relevant factors on your site? Often there are changes you can make the difference.
I would avoid buying the keyword domain and put your time, focus and $$ into your main site.
-
I don't see how redirecting that domain to your site is going to help your SEO all that much, unless that site had a lot of existing links pointed to it. People aren't going to link to your pages through redballoons.com; they're going to link to your domain now. I would be very surprised this would get your from rank #21 to page 1 on the results pages (unless that domain had a bunch of relevant links pointing to it).
If you're building a brand name at your domain now, buying domains with the keywords you're targeting and redirecting those to your site aren't going to help much. I wouldn't bother.
I can think of one use for buying this domain... if you're doing PPC, you could try using redballoons.com in your display URLs instead of your current domain and see if you get a higher CTR and/or more conversions.
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
-
International SEO - Domains or Folders?
Hi, We have been approached by a potential client. They are a UK company whose website is hosted on a .com domain (the .co.uk forwards to the .com). They also have a German website hosted on a .de domain. Both the .com and the .de are hosted in the UK. We believe that the .de website should be hosted in Germany. You agree? Anyway, they now need to target the US market. They are planning on duplicating the UK (.com) website and creating a US version of the site on a .us domain. They would rewrite the content for the US site to avoid duplications, and add Href Lang attributes etc. They are also debating whether the new US site should be hosted in the US or the UK. We don't think this is the best strategy. Would it not be better to host both the UK and US website on the .com domain. using reginal folders? i.e. example.com/uk, and example.com/us. Obviously we would setup Href Lang accordingly and change the Google Search Console geo targeting options for each of the sub-sites (/uk and /us). Or we could suggest hosting the UK site on the .co.uk domain, and the US on the .com domain. So, what is the best strategy to target the US audience, whilst maintaining UK rankings? Many thanks for your time, hope to hear from you soon 🙂 Lee.
Branding | | Webpresence1 -
Changing domain name and site design while recovering from penguin? Still SEO power in EMDs?
Our website recently suffered from a penguin update courtesy of some black hat techniques used by an SEO company we hired a few years ago. We are working on cleaning up and disavowing the old spammy links, but at the same time this penalty has hit us while we were working on making some major changes to our website. As a law firm we have 2 separate practice websites we are planning to merge under 1 domain to help boost our local results. Our problem is that the domain names for each practice are specific to the type of law they practice, so we will have to move both practices to a branded name domain that works for both practices. I thought since traffic was already affected because of the penguin update this might be an opportune time to change the domain name, but since I am far from an expert at SEO I'm wondering if there are variables I am unaware of that might make this decision a very bad one. Also we currently have exact match domains for our two different sites -- the way I understand it EMDs don't carry the same SEO weight they once did, but the firm is worried that losing the EMDs is going to cause a dramatic drop in traffic. If we keep the EMDs but permanently redirect them to the new site, will it maintain their SEO value? Would google consider that black hat and possibly penalize us for it in the future? Thanks for any advice or insight!!
Branding | | MyOwnSEO0 -
Help me decide between 2 domains! Please!
I want to build an authoritive site on the keyword: "baby hazel games" since I want it to be authoritive and easy to brand and to remember. I dont plan to use EMD-s. I like these 2 domains: 1. PlayHazel.com 2. HazelBox.com Help me decide between them. what sounds better, and have greater chance in ur opinion. Feel free to ad domain names ideas, if u have them. Thank you!
Branding | | Catinas970 -
Having trouble finding the right keywords for an abstract topic
Hello,
Branding | | IamKovacs
My website is about cultural exploration - foreign cultures. (the people, their art, food, music, places, etc.)
By volume, the word culture is referred to other kind of cultures: company culture, city culture, etc. Also, the people who are actually interested in exploring other cultures - be it food, art, music, travel diaries,
etc. usually do not actually type in "Cultural Exploration". How should I target my keyword? Do a bunch of secondary targets that cover specific? Or just use the word and keyword that are naturally related to the content and hope that google figures out who the right people to direct there?0 -
No Domain Link In Press Release, What About Yelp?
Hi Moz, I understand that using a PR for SEO benefit is old-school, black hat, and largely outlawed by Google. We are simply trying to get our name pushed further into the local market, i.e., using a press release for it's natural intention. Our company offers free quotes through our site and the scheduling of jobs with new clients is largely done online. I think it seems silly NOT to have a link to our URL in the press release, but rather than poke Google, we're fine omitting it. However, would linking our Yelp near the end be a big deal? Yelp no-follows their URLs back to the company site so there isn't a risk with pumping up a support link through PR and we can provide SOME clickable link to our information. Thoughts?
Branding | | kirmeliux0 -
International domain query
my client is a financial services company with some ccTLDs for brand name but does not own the .com eg: brandname.ch, brandname.ro etc we need to launch a brand UK site plus a global site. should we go for another name on the .com: brandname_financial.com_, and: brandname_financial.ch_, brandname_financial.ro_ etc or could we go for instead brandname.uk.com and brandname.eu.com? i'm worried the owner of brandname.com will build a site and out rank us.....however the alternative is a longer url but owning the .com hope that makes sense and any advice would be gladly received! Many thanks
Branding | | bisibee10 -
.NET VS .COM VS Keyword Density in the URL, What do you suggest?
I am about to launch an eCom project for a new company. The client has three URL's available. I recognize keyword density is slowly becoming less and less of a factor, but still has significant relevance. I haven't had much experience working on .NET URL's and would like to know anything related to the effects of .NET url's vs. .COM url's. Also, just what you would go with and why? Option 1 "EXACTMATCHKEYWORD.net" (17 total characters) Option 2 "MOSTLYMATCHINGKEYWORDcompany.com" (21 total characters, with company) Option 3 "ABEXACTMATCHKEYWORD.com" -AB represents the company's initials/logo. (19 total characters) USEFUL POINTS 1. 95% of purchases will be one time purchases (so I'm not focused as much on company branding as usual). 2. The company name is actually "exact matching keyword Company" 3. We will be targeting 100's of terms, but the "exact match keyword" represents 1/4 of total search volumes and thus is extremely important.
Branding | | mgordon0 -
Reputation Management and Keyword Choice
I am assisting a company with reputation management. While we know we must use our brand name plus a modifier (or many different modifiers) within our numerous company owned blogs, websites as well as within press releases, blog entries, and article topics - so that we can hopefully get all of our sites to push out the negative ones for the use of our name - the question is whether to simultaneously compete for popular keyword terms to gain more secondary traffic that may not be looking for our company name but product? If getting more hits on our sites helps our rankings, then would it be worth targeting specific key phrases? Or, should we just focus on our brand name only at this point? Thanks, Pamela Ravenwood SEO Essential Solutions
Branding | | seoessentials0