Question about SEO and domains
-
Hello,
Over time we have purchased many domain names that relate to our business.
Let us say we sell chairs of type A, chairs of type B, Tables of Type C etc. We also have a main web site (main domain) which has been functioning for many years and is ranked well but not great.
Since we have domain chairtypeA.com and chairtypeB.com I was thinking of putting them to good use as follows.
STRATEGY A
a) Create the domain as a parallel domain but is mainly informational - it talks about chair type A, its history, what to look for etc. It has the same IP address as main domain
b) Have all the links on the page be directly linked to the MAIN site- so if you are on page for ChairtypeA and want to see it in a set you just click a link and it takes you to the main site.
c) The look and feel of the ChairtypeA site is exactly the same as the main site - in fact except for the Heading, title and content the whole framework is from the main site.
My hope is that if people are looking for chairtypeA, we would rank and attract customers. Plus it would use up some of the domain names we have purchased.
THE OTHER ALTERNATIVE (Strategy B) is
a) Create a domain for chairtypeA parallel to main domain (same IP address)
b) redirect it to subfolder in main domain
c) refer to the pages also as maindomain/chairtypeA (here is where it is no longer purely parallel)
I have 3 objectives
a) Use my purchased domain names
b) Focus on certain products (liek ChairtypeA)
c) Overall increase visibility and ranking
Please give me any feedback which indicates whether Strategy A or Strategy B is more effective, or if any has negative consequences. Or you could suggest Strategy C - a completely new approach.
Thanks
Sam
-
Personally, I wouldn't try get 'serious value' out of them. If there are just a couple of these domain names, redirect them to your main site. But focus on getting serious value out of your main site instead. If you have great content for ChairtypeA it should be on your ChairtypeA page, not on a micorsite.
If you gain inbound links, best they point to your main site pages. Not to microsites. You're diluting the potential of ChairtypeA by spreading its content over 2 sites.
-
So If I have two domains
MAINSITE and SPECIALIZED-SITE
And MAINSITE has a page that goes MAINSITE/SPECIALIZED-PRODUCT
How do I redirect SPECIALIZED-SITE to a particular page on MAINSITE?
Do I just point to a special page for the subdomain (like MAINSITE/SPECIALIZED-PRODUCT/index.html) in cpanel? We use cpanel
Thanks very much
Sam
-
I allowed some of mine to expire and used the savings to buy beer. Got immediate value from the beer and some of my competitors are now spending their time building hotdog stands on them - none of which have challenged me anywhere yet.
I am still sitting on a few of those domains. They will probably be allowed to expire after my funeral.
-
What we recommend is that you concentrate on one domain name to build up that site's domain authority. The other domain names should be 301 redirected to that main site. If you have domain names that are related to certain products or categories, you may want to redirect those to an internal page on your site.
What we have seen in the past is that if you have too many domain names pointing and redirecting to your main site you can run into ranking problems, even incur penalties from Google. So, I would limit the number of domains that you redirect to your main site.
If you decide to set up "micro sites" on those domains, keep in mind that they are going to need a lot of attention such as link building and social media marketing--it may end up hurting your main site if you were to have low quality or "think" content sites pointing to your main site.
-
You could use the specific domain names as redirects to the relevant pages if you really want to use them in some way.
The thing is Apple wouldn't use a new domain for one product. Ranking for search term Chair type A isn't going to be any easier at domain chairtypeA.com than it would be at chairtypes.com/chairtypeA
In fact, as EGOL said, having all your links going to the main domain is going to create a nice high authoritative page that tells Google you sell all types of chairs. Let's say your main domain authority has a domain authority of 30 because it has 20 links or something. Those 20 links are related to both chair type A and chair type B. If you split those into two domains, you are then left with two domains with half the authority. You would then have two less authoritative sites with 10 links each (It's not that literal) thus ranking lower on both sites than you would have originally using the higher authoritative page.
This is the better idea as the chair types combined create a stronger campaign where you can develop more links, more traffic and more trust.
Danny
-
Further comment - I am not trying to fool google. But trying to make the case that if you are looking for ChairtypeA - you would probably look for a website by that name. In a sense it would be like creating a website for iphone5s and another one for iphone6 but both in some way relate to apple.
Sam
-
Thank you for your answer.
In your opinion - how would I get serious value out of the very specific domain names we have that are related to sub categories or specific products (that are all available on the main site)?
Thanks
-
I would make one big furniture site. By doing that, all of the content and links and mentions and shares, etc. will contribute to the authority of a single domain.
In all types of battle "divide and conquer" is a primary way to victory. Making a lot of hot dog stands does this for your competitors.
People have been trying to fool Google by making hot dog stands and linking them to their main domain for nearly 20 years. Google has recognized them as "manufactured links" for much of that time.
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
-
Domain Authority dropping for me and rival companies
Hey, I have noticed in the past week/2 weeks that my websites domain authority has dropped by 2 points but what is weird is all the other website which are our main competitors in our industry have also dropped by 2. I was wondering if anyone knows of any changes that have been made to the way the domain authority is calculated or is it just a coincident that we all dropped at one time?
Moz Pro | | Bondara0 -
Using Premium SEO Pack – Wordpress Plugin
Hello Im Using Premium SEO Pack – Wordpress Plugin and the plugin in a way tell me what i need to fix so my website get better ranking in SEO, but here in moz im getting an F when i rate my website Moz ask me to fix things that i already fix with the plugin http://imgur.com/bKdHhWL http://imgur.com/1sP0Jm0,bKdHhWL,0XvEPyY#2 what im doing wrong? 1sP0Jm0
Moz Pro | | dawgroup0 -
Domain authority drop
Hi SEOmoz gurus, The last 2 months I am seeing a drop in the Domain authority for some of my clients. Some of them are old sites. Some are new (less than 6 months old) For the old sites I thought the reason for the drop might be caused by discounting the value of low quality backlinks. But this cannot be the case for the new sites - they have high quality backlinks from newspapers and I can't make any sense of the drop. Has anyone else experienced the same issue? Might this be caused by a change in SEOmoz algorithm? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | ParisChildress0 -
How to get organized for Freelance SEO
Hi there, I'm fairly new to SEO but have learned a substantial amount in the last 8 months or so. I currently run my own web design company but want to add a new SEO service to the list. My question to you all is this... How do other SEO'ers organise their week for clients with SEO needs? Do you dedicate a day per client, divide your day up into hourly segments per client? What i'm looking for is a rough guide as to how I should get organized for the new service that I want to provide. How do you monitor what you have been doing with a client? There are sooo many questions that I want to ask, ut feel I may end up driving people crazy. Any help/advice will be welcomed with open arms!! Many thanks.. Alex
Moz Pro | | SeoSheikh0 -
How do we change our domain settings for a changed domain?
We have changed the primary domain for an existing campaign we are tracking with SEOMOZ. How do we update the NEW domain name for our campaign so that we can maintain the existing set of data? We just want to change the URL that SEOMOZ is crawling. We have already updated the Google Analytics settings, so they should be consistent with SEOMOZ once we get the URL updated with you.
Moz Pro | | 403SEO0 -
How do I change domain settings for a campaign?
So I set it up one of my Moz campaigns as domain.com Rogerbot only hits 1 page. I am thinking I should change it to www.domain.com, but I cannot seem to find how to do this. Thoughts?
Moz Pro | | stubby0 -
Change campaign domain name
I have just changed the domain name on one of my sites, can i change the domain name of the reletive campaigns and keep the data, or do i have to set up a new campaigns?
Moz Pro | | AlanMosley0 -
How do I delete a question?
Having problems with this question, old edits get saved as copies of the question, even this one had to be edited twice, originally an old version of an edited question. How do I DELETE a question I authored (like this one) I see no button for it.
Moz Pro | | AspenFasteners0