Buying a domain vs. renting a domain
-
I am considering buying and redirecting a domain that has a pretty strong, relevant link profile. However, it's very expensive. There is another option to rent the domain on a month-to-month basis. I am interested in doing this for at least a month just to see what SEO benefits are to be had and if it would ultimately be worth buying or not. Can renting a domain have any negative impacts on my primary site? Would the search engines know if I did this? Is there any harm in having those redirects appear and then disappear?
-
Great to hear Andrew
Have a great weekend.
-Andy
-
Thanks for talking me out of this one Andy. It's just too risky.
-
If you follow some of the links in there, you will find lots of info on what is a correctly acquired link. You won't find what you are suggesting in there anywhere.
If by off base you mean, do I agree with them? Nope. It's a black-hat technique, but like many black hat techniques, you can get gains - mostly short-lived as Google finds ways to clamp down on them.
I can only give you my opinions on what this is Andrew. Just be aware that these things can come back and bite you hard and then you can end up with an exclusion, never mind a penalty.
-Andy
-
On second thought, it definitely isn't a white hat technique. But the google links guide you sent is actually google link schemes, and it doesn't mention buying whole domains in there. It mentions buying individual links, but not entire domains. (Maybe I'm nitpicking here?)
I'm curious as to what you think of this recent Moz thread: http://moz.com/community/q/buying-expired-domains-with-decent-da-pa-for-seo-purposes. Do you feel that these people are totally off base?
-
It certainly isn't a white-hat (ethical) technique Andrew. If it were, it would appear in the Google links guide, which it doesn't. What that article above says is just how you do it - no mention of it being an ethical way to gain links. What you are saying there is just because one site is similar to another, it is OK to just forward people there - it isn't. At least, it isn't if you want to stay white-hat about it.
If this were you moving a site, then that is a different matter altogether.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for your response. I don't believe setting up a redirect would be classified as "misleading / deceiving" visitors because the domain is very relevant to our site and we would be able to provide appropriate redirected landing pages for all of its existing links. The research I have done suggests that this practice of "domaining" is still a white-hat, effective way of acquiring links. Here is one resource I used: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2328577/Domaining-for-Links
I don't have enough time to focus on two individual domains. I want to strengthen my primary domain.
-
Hi Andrew,
If all you are planning on doing is buying / renting a domain, only for it to be redirected to another domain, this is something that will definitely pick up a penalty off Google. This would fall into the category of 'misleading / deceiving visitors'.
If you have a domain with such a strong link profile, why would you not want to have a site on that domain and use it, but don't go down the route of automatic redirects to other sites. This will cause you untold headaches.
-Andy
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
-
Buying a blog that already has links and authority
Hello, I hope all are well and keeping safe. I am about to launch a brand new website and am looking to get a slight boost of links to get started. I looked on Fiverr, but realise that this may not be the best option. I have found a blog for sale that matches with a section of my niche. SO have a couple of questions: 1. Is it still worth buying blogs and doing a 301? 2. If yes, would it still work if i 301 these to a category of my main blog? 3. According the moz tool, it has a spam score of 2%, I am attaching an image of the spam score from moz. I am a bit lost and would appreciate any feedback on best practice or if anyone has tried something similar. Many thanks Shehzad O92dqn7
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shehzad0 -
Buying quality domainname with juice
I run the SEO side for our company and the MOZ tools have been quite helpfull to track keywords and bump the rankings of certain pages by filtering the errors and filling missing tags like H1, H3 , meta etc. However, the website is an webshop which sells niche products, this makes getting quality backlinks quite a challenge and besides some forums and directories there is little I think I can do to get more quality backlinks without entering grey hat or even blackhat practices. There is not even blogs related to this niche in relevant language, otherwise we would send them samples of products so they would write about it. Recently ( 6 months ago, in SEO time this is ages I think) one of the competitors went bust and their domain name has become available for purchase. It's domainauthority ranks at 21/100 while our own stands at 20/100. now comes my question: If we would to purchase this domain, and do a 301 redirect, would it pass on the juice to our site? what else can I do to improve the ranking except the usual part like: titletags, H1, metatags, img alt, valuable text etc. what other ways are there to get quality backlinks in nichemarkets, I don't want to buy backlinks as I consider that as a shortterm solution and blackhat, and since 80% of our traffic comes organic from google, last thing I want is a penalty from our lord google
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sami800 -
Should you include keywords in your domain name to rank well on Google Places?
Is it okay to include keywords in your domain name (as well as business name) to rank well on Google Places? In my opinion, this is very spammy and the sites using this technique will be slapped by Google sooner or later.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | thegoatman1 -
Goddady's Domain Masking and 301's
I have a client who's 7 domains and single website (instantpages®) exists within the clutches of GoDaddy. They own 6 kewyord rich domain names that 301 redirect with masking to the main branded domain. In effect, what this provides is the ability to add a title tag and meta description for a keyword rich domain name that displays content through an iframe. So really it's not duplicate content but this practice sets off my spidey sense that this is not a best practice regarding SEO. I want to suggest for the client to drop the idea of masking and do a straight 301 redirect to main branded domain. I'm sure that is fine but these domains are Not similar variations but actually vary widely: massage-city.com, city-massage.com, city-acupuncture.com, acupuncture-city.com, city-chiropractic.com, chiropractic-city.com etc ---- Doesn't Google frown on redirecting 6 domains to a single domain if they vary widely? Words of wisdom appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | superZj0 -
Navigation for Users vs Spiders
We're creating a new global site nav that provides a great user experience, but may be less than ideal for the search engines. The user selects an item from category A, and is then presented options to choose from in category B, and then chooses a specific product. The user does not encounter any actual "links" until they choose the specific product. The search engines won't see this navigation path due to the way that the navigation is coded. They're unable to choose an item from A, so they can't get to B, and therefore cannot get to C, which is the actual product page. We'd like to create an alternative nav for the browsers, so that they can crawl the category pages for A and B, as well as the specific product pages (C). This alternative nav would be displayed if the user does not have javascript enabled. Otherwise, the navigation described above will be shown to the user. Moving forward, the navigation that the user sees may be different from what is shown to the search engine, based on user preferences (ie they may only see some of the categories in the nav, while the search engines will see links to all category/product pages). I know that, as a general rule, it's important that the search engines see the same thing that the user sees. Does the strategy outlined above put us at risk for penalties?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edmundsseo0 -
Is our sub-domain messing up our seo for our root?
We have a website (mysite.com) that we control and a subdomain (affiliate.mysite.com) that is 3rd-Party Content completely out of our control. I've found that nearly all or our Crawl Errors are coming from this subdomain. Same deal with 95% of our warnings: they all come from the subdomain. The two website are very much interlinked, as the subdomain serves up the header and footer of the root domain through iFrames and the 3rd-party content in the middle-section. On the root domain there are countless links pointing at this 3rd-party subdomain. How do these errors affect the root domain, and how do you propose we address the issue?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | opusbyseo0 -
How Fast Can You Rank a New Domain?
How long would it take to get a 1 page ranking for a new site after Penguin? Thinking about starting fresh. New site would have fresh content and keyword in the domain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | veed230 -
Buying Links
Hello, I have talked to many SEO companies about their services and rates. I noticed that all of them will buy thousands and thousands of links once you first join. That is why they always want a start-up fee, so they can purchase the links. I know the best method is doing it the ethical hard way of asking sites to link to them, but I dont have time to do that. I mainly want to know where the SEO companies buy their links from. I am figuring that them buying the links are not negatively affecting the sites or they would lose their clients if they got into black hat links. It must be good inorder for them to keep their clients. I was interested in buying links, but do not know who to trust. Does anyone have a recommendation?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | neeper670