Domain Masking with New Keyword-Rich Domains
-
Hello, friends. We have an ecommerce site and we also own several keyword-rich domains but haven't done anything with them yet. Is there any value in using domain masking to point them to either product pages or special landing pages on our primary ecommerce site? Here's an example:
Primary site is widgetzone.com
Keyword rich URL is acmewidget.com (which is totally blank and isn't indexed)
It could point to our category page for Acme Widgets: widgetzone.com/category/acme-widgets
or it could point to a new landing page: widgetzone.com/acme-widgets
My concern is that because the keyword-rich URL hasn't been utilized at all there's really no point in redirecting it. I'm of the mind that it's either going to be ineffective at best or a duplicate content issue at worst. What do you guys think?
As a follow-up, if we don't redirect these domains, what should we do with them? Just try to sell them off rather than create totally new sites?
-
The biggest concern is duplicate content.
If the domain acmewidget.com points to widgetzone.com/acme-widgets and that directory is accessible from the widgetzone.com website then the search engines will see acmewidget.com as a duplication of widgetzone.com/acme-widgets and almost certainly exclude it from the search engines.
I'd recommend setting up microsites under your keyword rich domains that sell a small range of products - the work load is manageable and as long as you provide some unique descriptions and content will work alongside your main website.
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
-
Transferring website onto a new domain and it has disappeared in the rankings
Hi, First time posting! Our website was page 1 for just about all local searches (legal related). Due to a rebrand we took the site over onto a new domain name and it has totally dropped - on average pages 8-9, even for local searches. The transfer was done back in May, I did expect a hit but I assumed it would recover fairly quickly but it doesn't seem to be the case. Any ideas/advice/tips would be greatly appreciated 🙂 Jamie
Technical SEO | | jamiericey0 -
Domain not ranking in Google
https://www.buitenspeelgoed.nl/ is a domain acquired by our client. Previously this website was on http://www.buitenspeelgoed-keupink.nl. With the old domain they were ranking top 30 on 'buitenspeelgoed' in google.nl. Now with the new exact match domain they aren't ranking any more (for months). However, the website is indexed, as you can see on http://1l1.be/nz I don't know what to do anymore. Need some advise. What we allready have done the last months: made adjustments to the 301-redirects (this was originaly setup wrong by the webdesigner (de) optimized the homepage on 'buitenspeelgoed' (strange is the fact that the Moz robot can't access the site). Checked the robots.txt to see if the website was blocked for Google Checked the meta robots to see if the website was blocked for Google Disavowed some spammy (old) links which linked to the old domain Checked Search console > Fetch as Google if there isn't any Malware of some kind (and to see if Google can access the site) Checked Search consol to see if there manual spam actions (isn't the case) Checked for duplicate content by copy/paste some texts in Google and see if any other results are showing up (isn't the case for most of the texts) Please let me know what we can do.
Technical SEO | | InventusOnline0 -
Migrating to new subdomain with new site and new content.
Our marketing department has decided that a new site with new content is needed to launch new products and support our existing ones. We cannot use the same subdomain(www = old subdomain and ww1 = new subdomain)as there is a technically clash between the windows server currently used, and the lamp stack required to run the new wordpress based CMS and site. We also have an aging piece of SAAS software on the www domain which is makes moving it to it's own subdomain far too risky. 301's have been floated as a way of managing the transition. I'm not too keen on that idea due to the double effect of new subdomain and content, and the SEO impact it might have. I've suggested uploading the new site to the new subdomain while leaving the old site in place. Then gradually migrating sections over before turning parts of the old site off and using a 301 at that point to finalise the move. The old site would inform user's there is a new version and it would then convert them to the new site(along with a cookie to auto redirect them in future.) while still leaving the old content in place for existing search traffic, bookmarks and visitors via static URLs. Before turning off sections on the old site we would create rel canonicals to redirect to the new pages based on a a mapped set of URLs(this in itself concerns me as the rel canonical is essentially linking to different content). Would be grateful for any advice on whether this strategy is flawed or whether another strategy might be more suitable?
Technical SEO | | Rezza0 -
What do you think about my new site?
Hi everyone, I'm looking for a review for my new site www.interlive.it Could you please let me know what do you think about the work that I did for my site. I'll be very happy to receive your suggestions. Regards, Mike
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
Domain Forwarding / Multiple Domain Names / or Rebuild Blogs on them
I am considering forwarding 3 very aged and valuable domain names to my main site. There were once over 100 blog posts on each blog and each one has a page authority of 45 and domain authority of 37. My question is should i put up three blogs on the domains and link them to my site or should i just forward the domains to my main site? Which will provide me with more value. I have the capability to have some one blog on them every day. However, i do not have access to any of the old blog posts. I guess i could scrape it of archive.org. Any advice would be appreciated. Scott
Technical SEO | | WindshieldGuy-2762210 -
Parking Domains
I currently have a website domain.com.au, an American branch of the company who own domain.com are currently having their site built and want to forward there domain.com to domain.com.au while construction is taking place. Are there any negative effects to parking the domain.com on my domain.com.au? What is the best method to do this without causing any problems for my domain.com.au?
Technical SEO | | Pork0 -
301 redirect domain to page on another domain
Hi, If I wanted to do a 301 permanent redirect on a domain to a page on another domain will this cause any problems? Lets say I have 4 domains (all indexed with content), I decide to create a new domain with 4 pages, one for each domain. I copy the content from the old domains to the relevant page on the new domain and set it live. At the same time as setting the new site live I do a 301 permanent redirect on the 4 domains to the relevant pages on the new domain. What happens if Google indexes the new site before visiting the redirected domains, could this cause a duplicate content penalty? Cheers
Technical SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Domain Relocation
My client is running a online news website, which is running for 4 years. He's now looking to change the site into a new domain. I would like to know what are the factors to look out for when changing the site into new domain (In SEO point of view)
Technical SEO | | augmoz110