Is purchasing domain names still relevant?
-
Our MD is requesting that we continue to renew a long list of domains that we purchased many years ago. Is this practice still relevant or is there more to be gained from SEO and keyword strategy on our own site? All of the domains are redirected to our main site, but the main reason for purchasing was to stop others using them.
Can someone please advise? Don't want to be spending money on this if it is of no benefit to us at all.
-
LOL,
I like the last line
"Good luck convincing the good doctor to change his/her opinion."
I can relate!!!!!!!
-
Hi Donald,
From an SEO standpoint, if you're just buying exact-match domains and redirecting them to your main website, there is absolutely no benefit. You'd need to build up each website with unique and high-quality content to get an SEO boost.
Here is an article from Matt McGee, Executive News Editor at SearchEngineLand.com & MarketingLand.com, with some more insight on the matter:
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/sbs-mailbag-should-i-buy-multiple-domains-for-seo/3165/
That said, if the concern that your competitors might snatch up the domains and actually start using them as their primary website (rather than just as redirects) is real, that may be enough of a reason to keep renewing the domains.
-
Donald,
As a former RN, I feel you
Today, with any client we have, they either already have a bunch of domain names or they want us to purchase a bunch for them. The issue becomes one of proportion. If, you are in a very narrowly defined area of medicine like a cardiologist who only does caths, you might be able to buy up 20 to 40 domains around a given location and make it more difficult on someone to use that as an exact match domain. Given that exact match still matters on some level, but probably a lot less than we think, you could justify it at some level.
But where do you stop with that worry? For me, and for our clients I believe you have to stop at the point where you are protecting a specific domain name: Houston Heart Cath Specialist.com, .net, .org, etc. And then do the same with hyphenated version: Houston-Heart-Cath-Specialist.com, .etc.
To then want to own and redirect: Best Houston Heart Doc, Houston Special Heart doc, etc. is just a waste of money IMO. It is great for the registrars like the one with G and D in the name, but it really does not benefit your MD.
If you give most of those who frequent the Q and A your doctor's domain and five minutes, they will come up with at least 20 domains they could use to easily compete with you if that were the only measure to be used.
I would suggest to the doc that they allow you to focus on more important SEO matters like how to include Google +, the need for Schema going forward, maximizing keywords in site architecture, (let me know if you need more.)
Good luck convincing the good doctor to change his/her opinion.
-
It won't work when you just redirect a lot different domains to your website from a seo point-of-view. So for that reason you can skipp them.
But when the domain are strong (short, older, relevant keywords without "-") you can use them for nice sites and (later on) link to you main website. That sort of domains shouldn't expire or become available for you compititors. (Or when they bring you a lot type-in traffic, you also shoud keep them of course..)
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
-
White Label Subdomain Competing with Top Level Domain?
Hi All, We have a top level domain that is a comparison site for companies in our industry. We also manage a white label website for a specific company in the same industry, which was originally set up as a subdomain. In other words we have: "example.com" and "companyname.example.com." The sites are treated as separate websites--the subdomain site isn't filling a role like a subfolder would. It has it's own branding, navigation/url structure, etc. Since these sites are in the same industry, there is obviously a huge overlap in the keywords we want each to rank for. In fact 100% of the keywords for the subdomain, are targets for the top level domain. My question is, are we hurting ourselves in google rankings by having two sites under the same top level domain competing for the same keywords? We want both sites to be as successful as possible. Would we be better served by kicking the subdomain out into a new top level domain? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Rodrigo-DC0 -
Can a page be 100% topically relevant to a search query?
Today's YouMoz post, Accidental SEO Tests: When On-Page Optimization Ceases to Matter, explores the theory that there is an on-page optimization saturation point, "beyond which further on-page optimization no longer improves your ability to rank" for the keywords/keyword topics you are targeting. In other words, you can optimize your page for search to the point that it is 100% topically relevant to query and intent. Do you believe there exists such a thing as a page that is 100% topically relevant? What are your thoughts regarding there being an on-page optimization saturation point, beyond which further on-page optimization no longer improves your ability to rank? Let's discuss!
Algorithm Updates | | Christy-Correll1 -
Traffic drop only affecting google country domains
Hello, I have noticed that our our traffic is down by 15% (last 30 days to the 30 days before it) and I dug deeper to figure out whats going on and I am not sure I understand what is happening. Traffic from google country domains( for example google.com.sa) dropped by 90% on the 18th of September, same applies to other country specific domains. Now my other stats (visits organic keywords, search queries in WMT) seem to be normal and have seem some decrease (~5%) but nothing as drastic as the traffic drop from the google country domains. Is this an https thing that is masking the source of the traffic that came into effect on that date? Is the traffic that is now missing from google country domains being reported from other sources? Can anyone shed some light on what is going on? qk0CS7X
Algorithm Updates | | omarfk0 -
Using the canonical tag across multiple domains...
Hi guys I am looking for some help in regards to using canonical tags in other domains that have similar content to our main site. Would this be the right way to go about it? For example www.main.com is the website i would like to achieve best ranking with, but i also have other websites, www.secondary.com and www.somethingelse.com which have similar content and all link back to www.main.com So in order to make sure the google bot knows these other pages are a reference to the main.com page can i put a canonical tag in secondary.com that goes like this: rel="canonical" href="www.main.com" /> and put that same tag in somethingelse.com Would i achieve a better ranking for doing so on main.com or am i on the wrong track and will doing so not change a thing? I hope I'm making sense 😉 Best regards, Manny
Algorithm Updates | | Manny20000 -
Site name appended to page title in google search
Hi there, I have a strange problem concerning how the search results for my site appears in Google. The site is Texaspoker.dk and for some strange reason that name is appended at the end of the page title when I search for it in Google. The site name is not added to the page titles on the site. If I search in Google.dk (the relevant search engine for the country I am targeting) for "Unibet Fast Poker" I get the following page title displayed in the search results: Unibet Fast Poker starter i dag - få €10 og prøv ... - Texaspoker.dk If you visit the actual page you can see that there is no site name added to the page title: http://www.texaspoker.dk/unibet-fast-poker It looks like it is only being appended to the pages that contains rich snippets markup and not he forum threads where the rich snippets for some reason doesn't work. If I do a search for "Afstemning: Foretrukne TOPS Events" the title appears as it should without the site name being added: Afstemning: Foretrukne TOPS Events Anybody have any experience regarding this or an idea to why this is happening? Maybe the rich snippets are automatically pulling the publisher name from my Google+ account... edited: It doesn't seem to have anything to do with rich snippets, if I search for "Billeder og stuff v.2" the site name is also appended and if I search for "bedste poker bonus" the site name is not.
Algorithm Updates | | MPO0 -
Another Domain ranking instead of my Domain
Hi My Domain name is Replicahause.net, 2 weeks ago my server had an outage for 3 days and my rankings dissappeared in google entirely, however i also noticed that when i typed in my domain name "replicahause" or "replicahause.net" , i would see abhishekyadav.com appearing on #1 in google which does a 301 into Replicahause.net I was able to convince the owner of Abhishekyadav to remove the 301 but my site Replicahause.net's Rankings still does not appear to have come back to google, is there something i'm missing here ? We were ranked #1 to #10 for at least 40 keywords, they've just seemed to dissappeard after the server downtime we had and the 301 from AbhishekYadav.com Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jansimon0 -
Redirected old domain to new, how long before seeing the external links under the new domain?
Before contracting SEO services, my client decided to change his established root domain to one more customer-friendly. Since he had no expertise on board, no redirects were set up until 6 months later. I ran stats right before the old domain was redirected and have a report showing that he had roughly 750 external links from 300 root domains. We redirected the old domain to the new domain in mid Jan 2012. Those external links are still not showing in Open Site Explorer for the new domain. I've tested it a dozen times, and the old domain definitely points to the new domain. How long should it take before the new domain picks up those external links? Should I do anything else to help the process along?
Algorithm Updates | | smsinc0 -
Was Panda applied at sub-domain or root-domain level?
Does anyone have any case studies or examples of sites where a specific sub-domain was hit by Panda while other sub-domains were fine? What's the general consensus on whether this was applied at the sub-domain or root-domain level? My thinking is that Google already knows broadly whether a "site" is a root-domain (e.g. SEOmoz) or a sub-domain (e.g. tumblr) and that they use this logic when rolling out Panda. I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions though?
Algorithm Updates | | TomCritchlow1