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
-
Pages Fighting Over Keywords
Hi Guys, Just after some general advice. Since manipulation of keywords through links is no longer a feasible way of ranking these days, I was wondering how people got round the issue of pages bouncing for the same keyword or Google deciding that a blog post is a better signal rather than your service page. For instance if you are doing local and national search, how do you stop the local keywords ranking for national pages, without diluting the local signals. I have some ideas:- stronger internal linking to the page review content But obviously redirects or canonical won't be a good solution as I still want these pages to exist in their own right. Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Cross domain canonical issue
Hello fella SEOs! I have a very intriguing question concerning different TLDs across the same domain. For eg: www.mainwebsite.com, www.mainwebsite.eu, www.mainwebsite.au, www.mainwebsite.co.uk etc... Now, assuming that all these websites are similar in terms of content, will our lovely friend Google consider all these TLDs as only one and unique domain or will this cause a duplicate content problem? If yes, then how should I fix it? Thnx for your precious help guys!
Technical SEO | | SEObandits1 -
Tool to Generate All the URLs on a Domain
Hi all, I've been using xml-sitemaps.com for a while to generate a list of all the URLs that exist on a domain. However, this tool only works for websites with under 500 URLs on a domain. The paid tool doesn't offer what we are looking for either. I'm hoping someone can help with a recommendation. We're looking for a tool that can: Crawl, and list, all the indexed URLs on a domain, including .pdf and .doc files (ideally in a .xls or .txt file) Crawl multiple domains with unlimited URLs (we have 5 websites with 500+ URLs on them) Seems pretty simple, but we haven't been able to find something that isn't tailored toward management of a single domain or that can crawl a huge volume of content.
Technical SEO | | timfrick0 -
Ranking dropped after domain change
Dear Moz Community, first of all excuse my bad english, i am from europe and my english is not the best 😉
Technical SEO | | domiji
I use Moz Analytics for several days and try to figure out why our "main keyword" totally dropped after our domain change. We started this year with a new company name and a new domain. Our old domain was dp-hochzeitsfotograf.de and the main keyword we try to rank for was "hochzeitsfotograf" which means "wedding photographer" here in Germany. Last summer we reached position 1 and short before our domain change we still ranked on position 6. We register the domain change in google webmaster tools and redirect all urls via 301 redirect to the new domain. Our new domain name is yourheyday.de and all rankings adopted pretty good except our main keyword (now position 62) which could break our neck the next few month. I would be so so happy and really appreciate if anyone of you have an advise for us. Thanks and many greetings from europe
Dominik0 -
New small business.. brand or keyword rich domain?
With so many keyword rich domains in circulation is there actually little option for small business right now other than to use keyword rich domains themselves e.g. (businessname)(keywords).com instead of brand e.g. (businessname.com) where competitors are using keyword rich domains and ranking high? It could be a mis-perception on my part, but, unless you have a very old non keyword domain name, if you don't have a keyword rich domain name in a competitive market you will struggle to succeed unless you have a serious SEO budget. Unless you are the next Google/Facebook/Pepsi isn't branding just a load of BS ? We are ourselves are in a predicament about which domain to use for our own website design business. We have a brand name domain name which is a 4 char domain but we also have a brand+keyword domain and are not 100% which one to use as our primary domain. Perhaps we can use the brand domain as our primary domain and then use the brand+keyword domain as an appropriately constructed single page promotional site, perhaps with unique content which links back to the brand domain? Good idea / Bad idea? I guess the overriding question is, if the content is good enough is the domain name you choose irrelevent to some extent?
Technical SEO | | NeilD0 -
Keyword targeting by page, site, or both?
Hi, We recently discovered that a product we sell has a misnomer, and that a ton of people take to Google and use variations of that misnomer while trying to find us. Unfortunately we don't rank in Google for this keyword, and its costing us thousands in lost sales. I've been slowly building the misnomer into the content of our site in hopes that the spiders will pick up on it. It has started to work in the last couple weeks, but we're nowhere near the top (and we are #1 and #2 for most of our other prime keywords.) The site which sells the product is specialized, and only sells this specific product (in different models, but they're all the same product essentially.) With that in mind, I'm trying to figure out the best way to attack a new keyword. I know that normally you would dedicate a specific page (in an eCommerce store probably that product's own page) to employ your SEO tactics. However, because this site specializes in this product and offers different models and information about it I'm confused about the best approach. Does Google take into consideration the entire site a s whole, or are the pages within my site competing against each other for rank?
Technical SEO | | ninjaprecision0 -
Keyword cooccurence
Is there any truth to keyword cooccurence being a ranking factor in google or any other search engines. Meaning that they not only look at the words you are targeting but the other words on the page to see if those words have a close relationship to the main theme ( the words being supposedly targeted) I heard that keyword coocurrence does not scale well over the billions of pages that are on the internet however, some waterdowned approached of keyword cooccurence is possible. what do you guys think?
Technical SEO | | mickey110 -
Keywords
Hi All, If I had a site about a cartoon character (for example). When I add keywords to the 'keywords' meta tag, would I be best to put specific phrases such as Cartoon Character, Cartoon Character on TV, Cartoon Character on Television or would the following have the same effect: Cartoon Character, Tv, Movie, Television I was wondering if having the above instance might be less effective as the search engines might read TV, Movie, Television as less relevant to Cartoon Character. Hope that makes sense! 🙂
Technical SEO | | wedmonds0