Should I create mini-sites with keyword rich domain names pointing to my main site?
-
Hi, I'm new to seomoz (and seo in general) and loving it so far.
My main domain name is more of a brandname than a search engine friendly list of keywords. I rank well for some keywords I optimized for, and less so for the more competitive keywords. I was wondering if making one page minisites hosted on keyword rich domain names could help in this respect?
What I want to do is just have a single page with a few paragraphs of content and links to the main site. I am not looking for links to boost the main site, just for the minisites to do better for several keywords.
Will this help? Is this ok, or against some Google policy? Can this hurt the main site rankings?
Thank you!
**Edit: **I noticed that sites ranking above me on the first page for some keywords have much less on-page elements than my page, have about the same domain trust and also very little inbound links. The only factor I can see is the exact match of keywords in the domain name.
-
I had previously learned the deeper a keyword was in the URL, the better it was for ranking in SERPs. I am uncomfortable now because I can't remember where I learned that information or from whom. I spent about 90 minutes today watching all of Matt Cutt's videos discussing the topic. I also read numerous articles.
In short, I could not locate any conclusive information on this topic. Everyone agrees it is good to have keywords in the URL, but no one shares if there is any higher value at various positions within the URL. I began a Q&A topic to seek more information on this topic. http://www.seomoz.org/q/keywords-in-urls-looking-for-consensus
-
Hi Elad. In my mind the concept is still the same - whether you are building keyword rich domains for attempting to increase PR or for attracting the traffic for those keywords they are not going to be terribly effective.
A keyword rich domain may get you some traffic if it's a low competition keyword. But then, it wouldn't take much else to get the same result (i.e. building one or two links to that page).
Check out this video by Matt Cutts:
-
Noted. Thank you.
-
Thanks for the reply.
The link you provided talks about using the minisites as a link building tool in order to boost pagerank. I already know this si close to useless for PR.
About the folders, are you sure having keywords in the folder structure is as effective as having them in the domain name itself? My experience (very short, but observant) shows otherwise.
-
I'd be more inclined to put the time and resources into optimizing your main site. Build some links, make sure your on page is flawless.
-
@Dunamis, the link you offered focused on using other sites as a link building strategy. That Q&A is focused on the value of the links. I believe Elad's inquiry is focused on the value of improving ranking for a particular term.
@Theo, your concerns are valid, but I didn't get that feel from Elad's question.
Please allow me to clarify the response I offered.
The best practice is clearly to optimize pages on your existing site for the keyword search traffic. This can be achieved through good SEO strategies and offering great content.
I could have offered this answer and ended the post, but I prefer to always include a direct response to the original question. I even qualified my answer twice with "what you describe is ok" and "as long as you don't violate any rules or offer spam". I wrote those phrases specifically to ensure the advice I was offering could not be manipulated into taking the doorway page path.
-
Check out the replies in this post - it's a very similar question: http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-are-the-good-strategies-using-satellite-sites-in-seo
Keywords in the url are being devalued. Spending time on a bunch of microsites is not going to benefit you much. While you may get some small benefit from having a keyword rich domain, there are a lot of other factors to help you rank. So, if you're going to spend time building links to these little domains, your time would better be spent building links to your main domain.
I would agree that you should have folders on your site so instead of creating the domain best-sunglasses.com have www.mydomain.com/best-sunglasses/
-
"What you describe is ok, no policies are violated."
I strongly disagree on this one. What he describes sounds an awful lot like Google's description of a 'doorway page', which are explicitly against Google Webmaster Guidelines:
"Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination." (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355)
In light of the above I would advice against the practice your describing. Instead I would optimize (sections) of the main site for such keywords or set up independent (complete and value adding) domains for these keywords you'd like to rank for.
-
Will this help?
It can, but the better approach would be creating pages on your existing site optimized for your key phrase. If you wish to purchase the domain "best-sunglasses.com" why not just creating a page on your existing domain? http://mydomain.com/best-sunglasses
Is this ok, or against some Google policy?
What you describe is ok, no policies are violated.
Can this hurt the main site rankings?
As long as you don't do violate any rules or offer spam, then no.
I noticed that sites ranking above me on the first page for some keywords...
There are over 200 factors considered in determining a search result's location. If the pages which outrank you appear as you describe, then you should be easily able to outrank them if you optimize your site better.
In short, learn more about SEO. Improve your site and you will outrank the others easily, and without purchasing exact match domain names. An excellent place to start is this guide: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Good Luck
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
-
Redirect multiple domains to 1 domain or not?
Hi there, I have client who has multiple domains that already have some PA and DA. Problem is that most websites have the same content and rank better on different keywords.
Technical SEO | | Leaf-a-mark
I want to redirect all the websites to 1 domain because it’s easier to manage and it removes any duplicate content. Question is if I redirect domain x to domain y do the rankings of domain x increase on domain y? Or is it better to keep domain x separately to generate more referral traffic to domain y? Thanks in advance! Cheers0 -
Use keywords that has another keyword in it for another link
Hi, I have these two links: A1 & A2 and the keywords for them are these: Pest control for A1 Pest control service for A2 is google smart enough to differentiate these two & rank the exact page for them accordingly? or does google guess pest control keyword in A2 link as well? please help me with this issue. & the same with these : termite inspection & termite inspections Arizona!! many thanks Shervin
Technical SEO | | Shervin0 -
Local site under generic domain
Howdy Mozers, We have main website on .com domain and local websites for each language like .es, .fr, .in etc. We decided to move all local sites under main domain .com using subdirectories with gTLDs. One of the local sites has a manual penalty. Right now we are redirecting local site which have penalty using 302 redirect. So my question is. Will 302 redirect hurt our main site? Is there any other way to redirect visitors from local site without passing penalty? We have few thousands monthly users who are still using local domain links to get to our site, so we can't remove redirect at all. Best Regards,
Technical SEO | | juris_l
Juris0 -
Linking shallow sites to flagship sites
We have hundreds of domains that we are either doing nothing with, or they are very shallow. We do not have the time to build enough quality content on them since they are ancillary to our flagship sites that are already in need of attention and good content. My question is...should we redirect them to the flagship site? If yes, is it ok to do this from root domain to root domain or should we link the root domain to a matching/similar page (gymfranchises.com to http://www.franchisesolutions.com/health_services_franchise_opportunities.cfm)? Or should we do something different altogether? Since we have many to redirect (if this is the route we go), should we redirect gradually?
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions0 -
301 Multiple Sites to Main Site
Over the past couple years I had 3 sites that sold basically the same products and content. I later realized this had no value to my customers or Google so I 301 redirected Site 2 and Site 3 to my main site (Site 1). Of course this pushed a lot of page rank over to Site 1 and the site has been ranking great. About a week ago I moved my main site to a new eCommerce platform which required me to 301 redirect all the url's to the new platform url's which I did for all the main site links (Site 1). During this time I decided it was probably better off if I DID NOT 301 redirect all the links from the other 2 sites as well. I just didn't see the need as I figured Google realized at this point those sites were gone and I started fearing Google would get me for Page Rank munipulation for 301 redirecting 2 whole sites to my main site. Now I am getting over 1,000 404 crawl errors in GWT as Google can no longer find the URL's for Site 2 and Site 3. Plus my rankings have dropped substantially over the past week, part of which I know is from switching platforms. Question, did I make a mistake not 301 redirecting the url's from the old sites (Site 2 and Site 3) to my new ecommerce url's at Site 1?
Technical SEO | | SLINC0 -
Will Links to one Sub-Domain on a Site hurt a different Sub-Domain on the same site by affecting the Quality of the Root Domain?
Hi, I work for a SaaS company which uses two different subdomains on our site. A public for our main site (which we want to rank in SERPs for), and a secure subdomain, which is the portal for our customers to access our services (which we don't want to rank for) . Recently I realized that by using our product, our customers are creating large amounts of low quality links to our secure subdomain and I'm concerned that this might affect our public subdomain by bringing down the overall Authority of our root domain. Is this a legitimate concern? Has anyone ever worked through a similar situation? any help is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | ifbyphone0 -
301 for old domain to new domain - Joomla plugin or cpanel?
A client changed domains and both are being indexed. There are thousands of content pages. I can install a 301 redirect Joomla plugin and configure it so that each page redirects to the new domain. I have a feeling I will need to manual set every page. OR I can create a domain level redirect setting in cpanel using wildcards. I think this will automatically pass every old URL to the new URL. Which is the better approach? The cpanel option sounds like less work.
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
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