Purchase second-level gTLDs?
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So, I've been asked if it makes SEO sense for our company to grab a bunch of second-level gTLD (which we were earlier calling gTLD subdomains incorrectly) so that we can capitalize on redirecting them to our relevant pages that might not be ranking as well (if Google treats them like EMDs).
For instance, buy something analogous to red.shoes, blue.shoes, purple.shoes and so on and then redirect them to our relevant pages for that product. Someone owns the .shoes domain but is happy to sell us second-level domains like red.shoes for $20-30.
The question is, if we scoop up 100 or so of these relevant to our product, will it matter? I guess it depends on how Google is going to treat these. Anyone know?
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Here's some info I found on second and third-level domains. ICANN does call third-level domains subdomains, and that's where I got confused before.
http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en
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Great answer, thanks - yea, I'm late to the dance on these, so thanks for the terminology tip too. Dealing with a huge CMS migration...and this came across my desk today, ugh.
So, when you said "thin content emds are" an issue...did you mean that the main issue with EMDs is when you don't have the content to back it up? That it could be a liability?
Not that I would ever deal with that. Just curious. Thanks.
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Google will probably treat them like any other domain name. Emds aren't a real issue. Thin content emds are. Personally I won't be getting any of these gtlds unless its a really great name and really works for my business. Not to mention that you'll need to build the domains authority to help you at all. Unless you can magically get direct traffic (which I highly doubt) your efforts and time are better used on your main domain.
Also, just for terminology purposes, these new gTLDs are not sub domains. A sub domain is something like blog.example.com or pro.moz.com. red.shoes is an actual domain name.
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