Question about SEO and domains

[samgold]

Hello,

Over time we have purchased many domain names that relate to our business.

Let us say we sell chairs of type A, chairs of type B, Tables of Type C etc. We also have a main web site (main domain) which has been functioning for many years and is ranked well but not great.

Since we have domain chairtypeA.com and chairtypeB.com I was thinking of putting them to good use as follows.

STRATEGY A

a) Create the domain as a parallel domain but is mainly informational - it talks about chair type A, its history, what to look for etc. It has the same IP address as main domain

b) Have all the links on the page be directly linked to the MAIN site- so if you are on page for ChairtypeA and want to see it in a set you just click a link and it takes you to the main site.

c) The look and feel of the ChairtypeA site is exactly the same as the main site - in fact except for the Heading, title and content the whole framework is from the main site.

My hope is that if people are looking for chairtypeA, we would rank and attract customers. Plus it would use up some of the domain names we have purchased.

THE OTHER ALTERNATIVE (Strategy B)  is

a) Create a domain for chairtypeA parallel to main domain (same IP address)

b) redirect it to subfolder in main domain

c) refer to the pages also as maindomain/chairtypeA (here is where it is no longer purely parallel)

I have 3 objectives

a) Use my purchased domain names

b) Focus on certain products (liek ChairtypeA)

c) Overall increase visibility and ranking

Please give me any feedback which indicates whether  Strategy A or Strategy B is more effective, or if any has negative consequences.  Or you could suggest Strategy C - a completely new approach.

Thanks

Sam

[Caro-O]

Personally, I wouldn't try get 'serious value' out of them. If there are just a couple of these domain names, redirect them to your main site. But focus on getting serious value out of your main site instead. If you have great content for ChairtypeA it should be on your ChairtypeA page, not on a micorsite.

If you gain inbound links, best they point to your main site pages. Not to microsites. You're diluting the potential of ChairtypeA by spreading its content over 2 sites.

[samgold]

So If I have two domains

MAINSITE  and SPECIALIZED-SITE

And MAINSITE has a page that goes MAINSITE/SPECIALIZED-PRODUCT

How do I redirect SPECIALIZED-SITE to a particular page on MAINSITE?

Do I just point to a special page for the subdomain (like MAINSITE/SPECIALIZED-PRODUCT/index.html) in cpanel? We use cpanel

Thanks very much

Sam

[EGOL]

I allowed some of mine to expire and used the savings to buy beer.   Got immediate value from the beer and some of my competitors are now spending their time building hotdog stands on them - none of which have challenged me anywhere yet.

I am still sitting on a few of those domains.  They will probably be allowed to expire after my funeral.

[GlobeRunner]

What we recommend is that you concentrate on one domain name to build up that site's domain authority. The other domain names should be 301 redirected to that main site.  If you have domain names that are related to certain products or categories, you may want to redirect those to an internal page on your site.

What we have seen in the past is that if you have too many domain names pointing and redirecting to your main site you can run into ranking problems, even incur penalties from Google. So, I would limit the number of domains that you redirect to your main site.

If you decide to set up "micro sites" on those domains, keep in mind that they are going to need a lot of attention such as link building and social media marketing--it may end up hurting your main site if you were to have low quality or "think" content sites pointing to your main site.

[DannyHoodless]

You could use the specific domain names as redirects to the relevant pages if you really want to use them in some way.

The thing is Apple wouldn't use a new domain for one product. Ranking for search term Chair type A isn't going to be any easier at domain chairtypeA.com than it would be at chairtypes.com/chairtypeA

In fact, as EGOL said, having all your links  going to the main domain is going to create a nice high authoritative page that tells Google you sell all types of chairs. Let's say your main domain authority has a domain authority of 30 because it has 20 links or something. Those 20 links are related to both chair type A and chair type B. If you split those into two domains, you are then left with two domains with half the authority. You would then have two less authoritative sites with 10 links each (It's not that literal) thus ranking lower on both sites than you would have originally using the higher authoritative page.

This is the better idea as the chair types combined create a stronger campaign where you can develop more links, more traffic and more trust.

Danny

[samgold]

Further comment - I am not trying to fool google. But trying to make the case that if you are looking for ChairtypeA - you would probably look for a website by that name. In a sense it would be like creating a website for iphone5s and another one for iphone6 but both in some way relate to apple.

Sam

[samgold]

Thank you for your answer.

In your opinion - how would I get serious value out of the very specific domain names we have that are related to sub categories or specific products (that are all available on the main site)?

Thanks

[EGOL]

I would make one big furniture site.   By doing that, all of the content and links and mentions and shares, etc. will contribute to the authority of a single domain.

In all types of battle "divide and conquer" is a primary way to victory.   Making a lot of hot dog stands does this for your competitors.

People have been trying to fool Google by making hot dog stands and linking them to their main domain for nearly 20 years.  Google has recognized them as "manufactured links" for much of that time.