Value of domain name for domain authority. Please help to figure out!
-
I am doing SEO for an appliance repair company. Their company website's domain doesn't have high authority, and I am going to increase that by link earning and content improving. I think a better domain name might also help me out. The current URL contain the word "appliance" but doesn't have "repair" in it. I am thinking a new domain that would contain both keywords will serve better. Could you please share with me your thought on this? Am I in the right direction, or not at all?
I know Google penalizes mirror sites since this they are considered as duplicated content. I'll upload my content to the new domain and make the old one point to that new URL. I am wondering if canonical might help? Or 301 redirect will be a better solution? Any advise would be highly appreciated! Thank you!
-
Thanks for sharing your experience! I'll look for the blog post on this topic for sure.
-
The new gTLD domain names are, in fact, treated exactly the same as any other TLD such as .COM, .NET, and .ORG by Google. They even wrote a blog post about it. However, we have been seeing very good results when it comes to using keyword rich new gTLD domain names.
-
Thank you for your idea! It haven't even crossed my mind since some time ago I read that .toys, .repair, etc. domains are quite far from competition with .com, .net, and .org.
-
You may want to consider a .REPAIR new gTLD domain name. One of the keywords is in the ending (in the TLD), and we've seen good results when sites have migrated to an appropriate new gTLD domain name. In your case, you may be able to get a really good, short, memorable .REPAIR domain.
If you migrate the old site to the new .REPAIR domain name using 301 redirects and the Google Change of Address Tool, you won't see any negative effects--your rankings may in fact get better.
-
Glad to help!
-
Thank you very much, that helped a lot!
-
Even if you're not linking back and forth, you're still diluting your SEO value over many domains, as opposed to providing one place to demonstrate expertise in your niche. However many domains your spreading your content over, is how many times you'll be duplicating some of your work. Say you have 5 domains, one for each appliance type, then you're reporting and conducting analysis for 5 sites, you're updating 5 XML sitemaps & 5 robots files, 5 different sites to get/monitor reviews for, 5 sites to monitor rank for....you get the point. Additionally, if you get a really good link for _one _of those sites, it only benefits that domain, whereas if you're operating all under one site, that link helps all service lines, not just the one whose domain got that link.
-
But I wouldn't be linking back and forth. All I would do is providing my phone number and service request form. Would that be the reason to penalize me?
-
If they can determine that they're connected (which is highly likely since you'd be linking back and forth), all of them.
-
What do you think Google exactly would penalize in this case? Microsites or my company original website?
-
That's getting a bit into the black-hat realm. I would stay away from any strategy where you have microsites for each service offered. Linking back and forth between microsite domains like you mentioned is going to look very sketchy to search engines. These days, SEO is much more about the quality of your content and how much of an expert you are in your niche, and less about the keywords you can stuff in your site.
-
Thanks for your reply! Would you agree that AirConditioningRepairHouston.com might not have SEO value at the moment, but if it is optimized for the keyword "air conditioning repair" and has my company contact info, my company would benefit overall? Especially if it has stoverepairhouston.com, refrigeratorrepairhouston.com, etc in its disposal? Or it is considered to be a black hat SEO?
-
Hi,
I'd stick with the domain name you're currently using. There is no SEO value to what domain you have. This used to be true ~10 years ago, which is why you see a lot of domains out there like AirConditioningRepairHouston.com, etc.. You may not have much domain authority right now with the current domain, but if you switch, you'll have zero. Additionally, any links you already have will lose about 10% of their value when you redirect them to a new site.
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
-
How to prevent duplicat content issue and indexing sub domain [ CDN sub domain]?
Hello! I wish to use CDN server to optimize my page loading time ( MaxCDN). I have to use a custom CDN sub domain to use these services. If I added a sub domain, then my blog has two URL (http://www.example.com and http://cdn.example.com) for the same content. I have more than 450 blog posts. I think it will cause duplicate content issues. In this situation, what is the best method (rel=canonical or no-indexing) to prevent duplicate content issue and prevent indexing sub domain? And take the optimum service of the CDN. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Client's site dropped completely for all keywords, but not brand name - not manual penalty... help!
We just picked up a new search client a few weeks ago. They've been a customer (we're an automotive dealer website provider) since October of 2011. Their content was very generic (came from the previous provider), so we did a quick once-over as soon as he signed up. Beefed up his page content, made it more unique and relevant... tweaked title tags... wrote meta descriptions (he had none). In just over a week, he went from ranking on page 4 or 5 for his terms to ranking on page 2 or 3. My team was working on getting his social media set up, set up his blog, started competitor research... And then this last weekend, something happened and he dropped completely from the rankings... He still shows up if you do a site: search, or if you search his exact business name, but for everything else, he's nowhere to be found. His URL is www.ohioautowarehouse.com, business name is "Ohio Auto Warehouse" We filed a reconsideration request on Monday, and just got a reply today that there was no manual penalty. They suggested we check our content, but we know we didn't do anything spammy or blackhat. We hadn't even fully optimized his site yet - we were just finishing up his competitor research and were planning on a full site optimization next week... so we're at a complete loss as to what happened. Also, he's not ranking for any of the vehicles in his inventory. Our vehicle pages always rank on page 1 or 2, depending on how big the city is... you can always search "year make model city" and see our customers' sites (whether they're doing SEO or not). This guy's cars aren't showing up... so we know something is going on... Any help would be a lifesaver. We've been doing this for quite some time now, and we've never had a site get penalized. Since the reconsideration request didn't help, we're not sure what to do...
Technical SEO | | Greg_Gifford0 -
Best strategy for redirecting domain authority from an acquired site...?
Hi all, I'm an in-house for a company that made several acquisitions last year prior to my starting. I'm just now hearing about several loose-ends websites that belong to companies that have been absorbed by us. The question is how to best approach the task of utilizing that site's domain authority to our site's benefit. There is already a link to the homepage in the header of the site in question (our logo's right under theirs) so we're already getting some linkjuice. Looks like the whois information never changed. Here are the options I'm considering: 1. Blanket redirect (all of their pages there into our home page) - not ideal. 2. Targeted redirect (try to "connect the dots" between content pages with similar subjects/keyword relevance - better than #1, but is it worth the extra effort? 3. More linking (add more strategically placed and keyword optimized links back to our site) - also more work, but certainly do-able if the consensus is to leave the site up. 4. Any other suggestions? Thanks for your help everyone!
Technical SEO | | TGViaWest0 -
Domain.com and domain.com/ redirect(error)
When I view my campaign report I'm seeing duplicate content/ meta for mydomain.com and mydomain.com/ (with a slash) I already applied a 301 redirect as follows: redirect 301 /index.php/ /index.php Where am I messing up here?
Technical SEO | | cgman0 -
Domain with more Languages
Hey folks! I was wondering what you would do. I do have a Website. The website is provided in 8 other languages. Right now every language has it's own Domain name. The domain name is always the country in the language. I'm thinking about combine everything to one domain and hope to get some great linkjuice from the other 7 domains. So it would be www.example.com/en/ www.example.com/fr/ and so on. How do you handle that. Would this have a big positive impact on that one domain I'm forwarding to?
Technical SEO | | leitpix
I really think so!0 -
Url's don't want to show up in google. Please help?
Hi Mozfans 🙂 I'm doing a sitescan for a new client. http://www.vacatures.tuinbouw.nl/ It's a dutch jobsite. Now the problem is here: The url http://www.vacatures.tuinbouw.nl/vacatures/ is in google.
Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
On the same page there are jobs (scroll down) with a followed link.
To a url like this: http://www.vacatures.tuinbouw.nl/vacatures/722/productie+medewerker+paprika+teelt/ The problem is that the second url don't show up in google. When i try to make a sitemap with Gsitecrawler the second url isn't in de sitemap.. :S What am i doing wrong? Thanks!0 -
How to relate two sites Domain Authority
Hi All I have been looking at advertising on some fashion blogs for our online store. Both sites have decent traffic though A is stronger than the B with more than double the traffic, Therefore given equal relevance to our business sunglasses (www.pretavoir.co.uk) it would be fair to predict that A would result in double the number of conversions.. However another interesting aspect to making a decision on which sites to advertise is their Domain Authority and how much link juice they can pass. Therefore my question is this; Putting aside any potential click through traffic, if site A Domain Authority is 70 (link to be on homepage) and site B Domain Authority is 35 is the value of site A double that of site B or is there a less linear relationship (just as with page rank). Site A are charging 500$ per year for an advertising link and Site B 100$ per year would it better business to take 5 x Site Bs or is the linkjuice passed by one DA 70 site worth more? Your thoughts would be most appreciated..
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0