Is pointing multiple domains to a single website beneficial for SEO or not?
-
A client has purchased many domains with keywords in each. They want to have us point each domain to their site for better SEO. Is this a good or bad thing to do?
-
The information provided here has been helpful.
What is the best use for NEW DOMAIN EXTENSIONS? I have built a website around "####.online" and have now purchased many more domains with new extensions. Examples = "####.taxi", "####.services", "####.tours", "####.community", "####.restaurant", "####.villas", "####.business", "####.cafe", "####.energy", "####.solar", "####.cruises", "####.events", "####.fish", "####.news", etc etc etc...I have several more.
The "####" is a specific place, a touristic destination.
What is the best way to bring these domains together in a whitelist approach in order to improve ranking around searches related to "####"???
-
I also have a question regarding the practice of multiple domains pointed towards one site.
I have a relatively new domain (www.goodies.no) but the services provided through that site will be very varied (think web design, app development, marketing and SEO services etc)
So my theory was that in addition to creating www.goodies.no/webdesign folders for the webdesign service, I should also set up a www.goodies-webdesign.no domain pointing towards that same folder.
Does that make any sense at all, I though maybe having a vital keyword in the domain name would be beneficial to my SEO as long as the contents of the www.goodies.no/webdesign site it links to is highly relevant to the domain name
-
As you will have read in this thread, their is advice here that no benefit will come from purchasing a domain for sale which indicates it has (as in your case) a DA of 30 an ranking for many keywords.
This suggests to me that the domain you are looking to purchase is currently live and if that is the case then what you are considering is a feasible plan. But which way to go?
Do you make use of this domain you purchase and turn this site into becoming your primary site? Or, do you carefully redirect this newly purchased domain and all its related to pages to the website you have?
Certainly the 18 year old domain sounds like it has a lot of good back history and it is ranking for ( I am assuming) keywords in your niche. Longevity and being in possession of a live domain and it doing as well as you say it is - then I might be inclined to take your Old domain and redirect it and its associated pages to the 18 year old website.
If your 18 year old website has an ABOUT US Page then massage the content carefully here to say you company has inherited this website. 301 redirect your own current domain and have it point to this ABOUT US page, so that people who know you right now will identify that your business has taken over this other site.
In addition to this I would take the INSIDE URL pages of your own current site and redirect them also to any relevant pages in your acquired 18 year old site.
What not to do if you can avoid it, is for now make too many changes to the content on the HOME PAGE of this 18 year old site. Just carefully massage that for now, maybe just be adding where appropriate some content that again reflects you have inherited this site.
But my plan here is for two sites that are currently live. If you said the domain you have purchased is laying dormant somewhere and no pages having been attached to it for a long time and your decision is just going on some sales blurb telling you what the domain used to achieve - then you are not going to gain any real benefit from the domain then.
However, if it is per the scenario I think you are telling us all about then having a live site to inherit that is relevant to your business and with a DA30 which is higher than what you possess - well - this exercise could be worthwhile for you.
-
I have a question related to this and I hope it's ok to keep this conversation going with it.
I have a 5 year old site with DA of 25 (I only really started developing it a year ago). Today, an opportunity opened up to buy an old domain in my subject area with a DA of only 30 but ranking for many keywords. I'm wondering if it would be worth it to buy this old (18 years) domain and use it in some way to benefit my site. Either building it with content and monetizing it while adding a few links to my site on it.
Thanks for you input.
Jo-Ann
-
Issuetrak, I guess you may have found the answer to your question by now since this is now March 2016.
But I ended up here today just to seek reassurance in my thinking about pointing a domain name at an already established website. What I am looking at doing is using a domain that my client has purchased and simply had parked for a while and going to point that domain into the website. And the decision taken is to 301 redirect that domain so it points at a specific landing deeper page inside the website. Why do I want to do this. Well my client has currently quite a LONG domain name.
Currently when I am doing ADWORDS for this client I can just get his current site .co.uk domain to fit into the fixed URL box but only bvy chopping off the WWW DOT on the front of the domain, but I cannot add anything else onto the fixed domain which I know marketers tend to use (including myself) - for example I might want to use a fixed URL that is www.clientdomain.co.uk/treesurgeon should my Ad be focused around that topic.
But, Issuetrak, you talked about buying domains with a history and I was intrigued by that. My understanding is if the domain you were purchasing was already operating with a website attached to it right now, and through some acquisition you had taken over the company but absorbing everything into your business and so this purchased domain already very much in the face of the search engines who sees it has lots of pages associated with it, and there is some relevance towards you having it being redirected to further support, your already established brand site you are growing, then I am of the opinion this exercise might (and has been suggested by some authority voices in the industry) give a 'little' lift/boost to your current site.
However, if that domain you are purchasing was ONCE a well developed domain, but let's say it has been PARKED for some time and NOT ACTIVE for some time, no current flurry of activity around it. I would imagine that the domain then is already would be DYING or DEAD with no power behind it because it had been neglected for so long.
Your point 2 if I have interpreted your statement correctly is what my intention is for my clients new SHORT domain so I can use it more effectively purely for ADWORDS. So I create an AD, use this domain to help drive traffic to the main website by setting up a very specific campaign. I am taking guidance from this Google Article https://support.google.com/a/answer/4352075
For point 3 where would you stop? In the UK this is like having an obsession for private number plates and trying to own all that you think is relevant to you. But if you keep snapping up domains will you ever use them all? Highly unlikely. You could end up spending a small fortune in just trying to buy all the variations and for a small business this is just not practical. I remember a long time ago reading an article somewhere about HEWLETT PACKARD trying to manage all these different domains and in the end they simply got down to have just their PRIMARY and SECONDARY domains to support the brand from what I understand.
Domains and Domain management I find an interesting topic. Like, where should you host your domain. if I am in the UK targeting a UK audience, do I really want my domain to be hosted in Germany for example. I have sparked many a lively debate with this one, and everyone involved having very mixed views, especially when you bring into the equation Google's GEO Targeting tool. But I was once told this tool is fine if for example I am HOSTED in the UK and looking to take part of my website at www.mydomain.com/germany/ and using the GEO tool effectively that way, but not really to use it for the whole website being pointed from one country to the other. Appreciate anybody's view on that one.
Hope this helps keep this thread open.
-
I realize this an old post however a coworker who has a home-based business asked me about this practice. She heard about it at a recent workshop. The take, which is different than what I've read here, is that buying expired domains is a good strategy due to their age which is valued in search. I was intrigued which is what brought me here.
- Is there value in buying domains with a history
- Instead of redirecting, use the domain to generate traffic with fresh content and link back to your original domain
- And how much value is there in keeping domains out of competitors' hands if there isn't any value in owning the domains
Thanks,
-
Hi mszeer,
This resource might help: http://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
-
Hi there...
excuse me for getting into this discussion... we are from brazil and we currently have .com and .com.br (brazil) tLD's. We currently have only Portuguese version but have plans to soon have english language as well.... so, .com we would use for english and .com.br for portuguese (brazil)... is this approach correct, then ? or would it be better to use only .com and forward the other variations to it ?
-
Some questions to ask:
Is there any reasonable expectation of traffic by redirecting the domains? i.e. do the domains receive traffic now? If so, a redirect may be in order.
Is there a chance you'll want to use the domains in the future, or do you want to keep the domains out of your competitor's hands? If so, you may want to hold onto them.
Otherwise, if you're redirecting unused domains simply for link equity, there's likely very little value in that strategy.
-
I just wanted to see if I could get an update on this tactic, post-Hummingbird. I'm assuming it's even less recommended to redirect URL traffic to another URL now? Do the exceptions Cyrus mentioned still hold?
If my client already owns other similar name domains, but never did anything with them (either building or 301 redirecting), should I recommend they continue to hold onto them, or just let the license expire?
-
Lots of good answers here.
Generally, there's not much benefit to doing this, especially if the domains are new as Streamline Metrics pointed out.
The risk however, is if the domains have a negative history associated with them. If bad links were pointed at the old domain, then those links will now point at your main site when you redirect them. If an algorithmic action like Penguin or an over-optimization filter was applied to the old site, your risk carrying that baggage to the new site.
Sometimes it makes sense to redirect domains.
- SEOmoz.com redirects to seomoz.org. Lots of folks type seomoz.com, so this makes sense.
- You migrate an old domain.
In general, however, there's virtually no SEO benefit to buying a previously unestablished keyword rich domain and redirecting it for traffic, rankings boost (unless on those rare occasions it's a very popular domain name to begin with)
-
I appreciate the response.
-
I might have said there would be no harm normally, but after a client came to me to find out why a .co.uk was appearing above the .com, which was his main site, I would say it can do harm. The .co.uk was simply being pointed to the .com. First time I have seen this happen so just tread carefully. Either way, it's a too grey hat for my liking - to try and get more search traffic by trying to mis-lead people from one domain to another is a no-no. Just tell them that with all of the algo changes going on, they are best scratching that idea and focusing their efforts on great content. If that got found out (and it can very easily if someone reports it) then all domains will be penalised.
-
Thank you for your response!
-
Thanks for your response!
-
There is no SEO benefit to doing this, there is also no harm
There can be other benefits, if there is a short URL that redirects that can be used on the phone to tell people to visit rather than the longer or hard to spell URL
I hope this helps
Sean
-
I get this question a lot from my clients. If the domains are brand new and they've never resolved to a site before, then there won't be any kind of impact for SEO, positive or negative. Just make sure the domain names 301 redirect to the primary URL instead of pointing them/setting them up as aliases.
The only time there could be a positive impact is if a domain name used to resolve to a website and that site ranked in the search engines and links were pointed to it. Then you could 301 redirect those domain names to a new URL to transfer at least some of the link juice.
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
-
I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links, will it hurt SEO?
Hi, My website has a few SaaS products, to make my website simple i want to move my website some pages to its specific folder structure , so eg website.com/product1/features
Technical SEO | | webbeemoz
website.com/product1/pricing
website.com/product1/information and same for product2 and so on, the website.com/product1/.. menu will only show the links of product1 and only one link to homepage (possibly in footer). Please share your opinion will it be a good idea, from UI perspective it will be simple , but i am not sure about SEO perspective, please help thanks0 -
Brushing up on my SEO skills - how do I check my website to see if Javascript is blocking search engines from crawling the links within a javascript-enabled drop down menu?
I set my user agent in my Chrome browser to Googlebot and I disable javascript within my Chrome settings, but then what?
Technical SEO | | MagnitudeSEO0 -
Switchboard Tags - Multiple desktop pages pointing to one mobile page
I have recently started to implement switchboard tags to connect our mobile and desktop pages, and to ensure that our mobile pages show up in rankings for mobile users. Because our desktop site is much deeper in content than our mobile site, there are a number of desktop pages we would like to have point to one mobile page. However, with the switchboard tags, this poses a problem because it requires multiple rel=canonical tags to be placed on the one mobile page. I'm assuming this will either confuse the search engines, or they will choose to ignore the rel=canonical tag altogether. Any ideas on how to approach this situation other than creating an equivalent mobile version of every desktop page or implementing a user agent detection redirect?
Technical SEO | | JBlank0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
SEO for mobile
Hey everyone! I had just finished building my first mobile website and i wanna focus on SEO for mobile search. Now, since there is a redirection once a visitor enter to the web domain to the mobile site automatically (e.g. sample.com to m.sample.com). Question is: Where should i refer my back links to to improve my ranking on mobile result page? Would love for some help..
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Google , 301 redirects, and multiple domains pointing to the same content.
Google, 301 redirects, and multiple domains pointing to the same content. This is my first post here. I would like to begin by thanking anyone in advance for their help. It is much appreciated. Secondly, I'm posting in the wrong place or something please forgive me simply point me in the right direction I'm a quick learner. I think I'm battling a redirect problem but I want to be sure before I make changes. In order to accurately assess the situation a little background is necessary. I have had a site called tx-laws.com for about 15 years. It was a site that was used primarily by private resource and as such was never SEO'd. The site itself was in fact quite Seo unfriendly. despite a complete lack of marketing or SEO efforts, over time, SEO aside, this domain eventually made it to page one of Google Yahoo and Bing under the keywords Texas laws. About six months ago I decided to revamp the site and create a new resource aimed at a public market. A good deal of effort was made to re-work the SEO. The new site was developed at a different domain name: easylawlook up.com. Within a few months this domain name surpassed tx-laws in Google and was holding its place in position number eight out of 190 million results. Note that at this point no marketing has been done, that is to say there has been no social networking, no e-mail campaigns, no blogs, -- nothing but content. All was well until a few weeks ago I decided to upgrade our network and our servers. During this period there was some downtime unfortunately. When the upgrade was complete everything seemed fine until a week or so later when our primary domain easy law look up vanished off Google. At first I thought it was downtime but now I'm not so sure. The current configuration reroutes traffic from tx-laws to easylawlookup in IIS by pointing both domains to the same root directory. Everything else was handled through scripting. As far as I know this is how it was always set up. At present there is no 301 Redirect in place for tx-laws (as I'm sure there probably should be). Interestingly enough the back links to easylaw also went away. Even more telling however is that now when I visit link: easylawlookup.com there is only one link, and that link is to a domain which references tx-laws not easy law. So it would appear that I have confused Google with regards to my actual intentions. My question is this. Right now my rankings for tx-laws remain unchanged. The last thing I want to have happen is to see those disappear as well. If easy law has somehow been penalized and I redirect tx-laws to easy through a 301 will I screw up my rankings for this domain as well? Any comments or input on the situation are welcome. I just want to think it through before I start making more changes which might make things worse instead of better. Ultimately though, there is no reason that the old domain can't be redirected to the new domain at this point unless it would mean that I run the risk of losing my listings for tx-laws, ending up with nothing instead of transferring any link juice and traffic to easy law. With regards to the down time, it was substantial over a couple of weeks with many hours off-line. However this downtime would have affected both domains the only difference being that the one domain had been in existence for 15 years as opposed to six months for the other. So is my problem downtime, lack of proper 301 redirect, or something else? and if I implement a 301 at this point do I risk damaging the remaining domain which is operational? Thanks again for any help.
Technical SEO | | Steviebone0 -
What is SEO impact of redirecting from domain to https appspot domain ?
Our site is hosted on google and is fully https. But since google's limitation is that all https needs to be on the appspot domain, we are redirecting users from our website to the appspot domain. What is the impact of this on SEO?
Technical SEO | | incandescent0 -
Removing pages from website
Hello all, I am fairly new to the SEOmoz community. But i am working for a company which organizes exhibitons, events and training in Holland. A lot of these events are only given ones ore twice and then we do not organise them any more because they are no longer relevant. Every event has its own few webpages which provide information about the event and are being indexed by Google. In the past we did not remove any of these events. I was looking in the CMS and saw a lot of events of 2008 and older which are being indexed. To clean the website and the CMS i am thinking of removing these pages of old events. The risk is that these pages have some links to them and are getting some traffic, so if i remove them there is a risk of losing traffic and rankings. What would be the wise thing to do? Make a folder with archive or something? Regards, Ruud
Technical SEO | | RuudHeijnen0