Parking page for domain names
-
Hi all,
I represent a hosting company which has thousands of domain names that is parked for the clients until they start using them. Currently we are presenting the client and visitors information about the situation in the top of the pages and we have placed information about all the main products in the last part of the page. You can see an example here:
http://prodesign.no/Would you recommend utilizing these pages in a better way than how we are doing today (SEO wise towards our own website)? We have the ability to instantly change all of these pages at once and we are also able to present different pages for every single parked domain name if we want to.
Best regards,
Jon -
Even though there are thousands of domain names involved, I wouldn't expect for this to have any positive effect on your site's SEO (or rankings). The problem is that these domain names aren't trusted--they aren't going to have any Domain Authority, they're hosted most likely on the same server (or class C block of IPs), and the content isn't unique to each site. For SEO and ranking purposes, unfortunately you have all of those things counting against you.
In order for a site or a domain to help, it needs unique content, higher Domain Authority, and links to it.
This shouldn't stop you from using those domains to your benefit, though. I would, however, either put up an ad that contains a link, or put a text link on the pages. I would also make sure those are "nofollow" links. Suddenly if you have 20,000 sitewide links to your site from "low quality", thin content domains, that could actually throw up a red flag and hurt your site's current rankings.
-
Ok, so, here is how I understand it.
Google knows if domains are parked, and don't index, and, may be, don't pay any attention to those pages whatsoever (at least it would make sense). Here is a link to Matt Cutts video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF8i6rKojXQ
So, there is a good chance that those parked websites do not have any influence in any way. However, if, for whatever reason, google doesn't recognize some of them as parked (let's say 1%, which will equal to 200+ websites), and "assigns" duplicate content "tag" to those, you might get hit by correlation. Somewhat "friend of my enemy is my enemy" system. Therefore, if unique content is not possible, nofollowing all those links might be not too bad of an idea.
I would recommend sample testing. Unfollow links on large enough amount of those domains, see how it affects rankings etc., in a month or so, put those links back to follow, wait, see how it affects, then do the same with another sample. This will allow to figure it out pretty accurately within couple months for sure.
If you do do that, write a case study, post it here, it will be interesting case to look at
Cheers:)
-
Hi Dimitrii,
There is around 20 000 domains with the same content at the moment and this number is constantly growing. There is only random variations in title and meta description currently. Each time the pages is loaded those data are changing.
We need to have the visible content on these pages more or less the same as they are now as they give useful information to clients at the same time as they market our products. We can change all content that is not visible and make those permanent on each domain (if desirable).
Given those requirements and that information, would you recommend me to put no follow on the links to our website? Is the current setup hurting our SEO efforts since it is guaranteed that extremely many of the domains has duplicate content?
Thank you so far for valuable tips.
Best regards,
Jon -
Hi there.
Well, since it's just one page websites without really any content, you won't be able to get much out of them. So, the only way you might utilize them is with backlinks. So, I'd have 2 follow backlinks, one with company name, one with matched anchor text. Also make sure that you have unique content on those one-page websites - so you don't have duplicate content issues. Other than that, unless you will be creating full content one-page websites for each of those parked domains, i don't really see much benefit.
Hope this helps.
P.S. Do make sure that you are not using exactly the same pages for those.
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
-
SEO - Use pages on main site or set up outside keyword rich domains and websites
I have a client who is wanting to target searches for competitors products. His idea was to purchase domains related to the searches he's targeting (for example, people looking for another company's app) and to build out one page websites addressing the search query and why a customer would choose his app solution over a competitor. I know he'd have to build a handful of links to each site for any chance of success but I wanted to ask the following.. Would doing this be better than just building pages addressing the searches on his main website domain? Is there an SEO risk to doing this? Potential for a penalty? Anything we need to do to structure these in a way that won't violate Google's SEO guidelines? Any other thoughts on pros and cons of each strategy? Thank you! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Redirecting main www. subdomain to new domain. Can you then create a new subdomain on the old domain?
Hi there, The scenario is this: We have been working on a rebrand and have changed the company name So, we want to redirect www.old-name.com to www.new-name.com However, the parent company is retaining the old brand name for corporate purposes So, in an ideal world, we'd be able to keep www.old-name.com active - but clearly that would sacrifice all of the authority built up over the years, so we do have to redirect the main www. subdomain in it's entirity. However - one suggested solution is to redirect www.old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com... but then create a new corporate subdomain: for example, business.old-domain.com business.old-domain.com will not be competing with the new site on any service/product related terms; it will only need to appear in SERPs for the company name I'd appreciate some thoughts on this, as I've not done this before or found any examples of anyone that has. Is that a massive risk in terms of sending a confusing message to Google? Thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edlondon0 -
What to do when your home page an index for a series of pages.
I have created an index stack. My home page is http://www.southernwhitewater.com The home page is the index itself and the 1st page http://www.southernwhitewater.com/nz-adventure-tours-whitewater-river-rafting-hunting-fishing My home page (if your look at it through moz bat for chrome bar} incorporates all the pages in the index. Is this Bad? I would prefer to index each page separately. As per my site index in the footer What is the best way to optimize all these pages individually and still have the customers arrive at the top to a picture. rel= canonical? Any help would be great!! http://www.southernwhitewater.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VelocityWebsites0 -
What has a better chance of ranking alongside my main site for my company name, a subdomain or new domain?
Hi Moz, Do search engines really treat subdomains as separate domains in this regard? Or are we more likely to get more real estate on the first page with a new domain? Our goal is to have our main site and this new subdomain or domain ranking in positions 1 and 2 for our company name. This is going to be a careers site/portal. Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Combining two exact match domains under brand name
I run two websites that sell basically the same product which we make ourselves but to two separate audiences. I've made my living off them for the past 6 years or so. I used emd's in both cases to rank for my main search terms. We dropped a few places last October but not too bad. I was thinking of combining the sites under one brand name hoping that they would rank better combined. Both sites have similar link profiles but with some links unique to each. For instance, I buy a yahoo directory listing for each site but each site has some unique product reviews on blogs. Is this a good idea or am I better off leaving them separate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDP0 -
Two Pages with the Same Name Different URL's
I was hoping someone could give me some insight into a perplexing issue that I am having with my website. I run an 20K product ecommerce website and I am finding it necessary to have two pages for my content: 1 for content category pages about wigets one for shop pages for wigets 1st page would be .com/shop/wiget/ 2nd page would be .com/content/wiget/ The 1st page would be a catalogue of all the products with filters for the customer to narrow down wigets. So ultimately the URL for the shop page could look like this when the customer filters down... .com/shop/wiget/color/shape/ The second page would be content all about the Wigets. This would be types of wigets colors of wigets, how wigets are used, links to articles about wigets etc. Here are my questions. 1. Is it bad to have two pages about wigets on the site, one for shopping and one for information. The issue here is when I combine my content wiget with my shop wiget page, no one buys anything. But I want to be able to provide Google the best experience for rankings. What is the best approach for Google and the customer? 2. Should I rel canonical all of my .com/shop/wiget/ + .com/wiget/color/ etc. pages to the .com/content/wiget/ page? Or, Should I be canonicalizing all of my .com/shop/wiget/color/etc pages to .com/shop/wiget/ page? 3. Ranking issues. As it is right now, I rank #1 for wiget color. This page on my site would be .com/shop/wiget/color/ . If I rel canonicalize all of my pages to .com/content/wiget/ I am going to loose my rankings because all of my shop/wiget/xxx/xxx/ pages will then point to .com/content/wiget/ page. I am just finding with these massive ecommerce sites that there is WAY to much potential for duplicate content, not enough room to allow Google the ability to rank long tail phrases all the while making it completely complicated to offer people pages that promote buying. As I said before, when I combine my content + shop pages together into one page, my sales hit the floor (like 0 - 15 dollars a day), when i just make a shop page my sales are like (1k+ a day). But I have noticed that ever since Penguin and Panda my rankings have fallen from #1 across the board to #15 and lower for a lot of my phrase with the exception of the one mentioned above. This is why I want to make an information page about wigets and a shop page for people to buy wigets. Please advise if you would. Thanks so much for any insight you can give me!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SKP0 -
How can I tell which website pages are hosted on the root domain vs the www subdomain?
One of the SEOmoz help desk professionals told me this today regarding some of my website pages. "it looks like you have pages hosted as separate pages on both the root domain and the www subdomain, which means that these pages are competing for rankings and authority. You may want to consider a 301 redirect or the use of rel=canonical tags.". Can anyone help me understand this? How can I tell which pages are which?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Multiple Domain names pointing at one website
Hello, A collegue has asked if we can buy multiple domain names which contain keywords and point them at our website. Is this good practise or will it be seen as spam? Will these domains actually get ranked? I'm sure I'm not the first person to raise this but can't seem to find any questions and answers about this. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markc-1971830