Purchase a domain to gain its rank, Highlander-style?
-
(urls have been altered)
We are KitchenApps.Com, your online portal for kitchen appliances. One of our biggest selling products is toasters, but despite SEO efforts, **KitchenApps.Com/toasters **ranks on page 6 for "toasters" and barely budges.
One of our competitors, Kool-Kitcken-Apps.biz just tossed in the towel and sold his domain/site to our boss for the cheap. It's an old domain, but the URL isnt lovely. He's got content, but it aint pretty and of course, we sell differently than he does, have some different products, etc. BUT BUT BUT hold everything, he ranks on the first page, with his homepage, for "toasters" his best ranked keyword. A lot of sites have linked to his site for toasters, buying toasters, etc.
Of course, the boss wants to just toss his content, and since his domain is different than company name (which is literally KitchenApps.Com) we should redirect Kool-Kitchen-Apps.biz to our SEO friendly KitchenApps.com/toasters url. He expects that will keep the same positioning, and we'll snag the toaster clicks.
Can we expect to maintain the positioning on page #1?
-
Sadly, I'm in Montana, and have very few bushes around, so option D) is out of questions
How is the new domain ranking for other keywords? Maybe like 4 slice toaster, or whatever phrase gets a lot of traffic? If it's ranking high for other phrases I would use it as a temporary test dummy. Pretty up the website, and find out which phrases, designs, etc. convert the best while you improve your original /toaster website. Once you have all the data you need, and a highly improved /toaster page, just 301 it over.
However, if you don't have that much time, I'd just 301 it over, and go on with your day. There's always room for hopes and dreams, but this whole 24 hours in a day thing can get in the way if you don't have help.
If you choose to redirect, I would definitely put it on the inner /toasters page. It looks like you already have a good amount of links pointing to your home page, and not many to the inner page.
-
Good point, I guess I should add some color. Attached is an OSE exam of their site, our toaster landing page and then our main home page. Obviously, we are two completely different sites, and our main page holds a huge edge over the /toaster page.
Knowing this, would you:
A) play it safe, keep Kool-Kitchen-Apps.biz domain/site, and 'pretty it up'
B) redirect to /toasters, dice roll
C) redirect to /, likely keep or improve ranking for "toasters"
D) panic, stop using computers, hide in neighbor bushes until arrested -
Well, I wouldn't expect you to jump to the first page just from 301'ing their website into yours. There are other factors at play, as I'm sure you know. However, you can expect a good portion of the link juice pointing at the other website to be transferred to yours. Depending on the other factors on your particular website, you should see a jump in your current ranking.
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
-
Ranking Above sub-domains
So I work for a company that has a very successful affiliate that operates under a third level domain name such as "region.company.com". Their SEO practices are very good and they rank highly in keyword searches. However "company.com" does not even though it is not a subdomain. Even after optimizing the company.com's pages etc, the regional sub domain ranks much higher for keywords and the main company fails to rank at all. Is Google discounting the main company's page? Is it a matter of trust or time? or is it something else? How can I get Google to prioritize the main company website rather than a lower level domain affiliate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Resolute0 -
Is .ME domain is effective in SEO ?
I am always listening about TLD. com. org .net but what about the .me domain. Can this will be effective in SEO. Can i able to beat down my competitors, if i choose .me . I also have a .com or other TLD option but if i am making my name than .me is for me but i need your suggestion for the seo purpose. Is there really domain affective in term of SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pnb5670 -
New domain purchase 301 and 404 issues. Please help!
We recently purchased www.carwow.com and 301 redirected the site to www.carwow.co.uk (our main domain). The problem is that carwow.com had URLs indexed like www.carwow.com/a-b-c the 301 sends them to carwow.co.uk/a-b-c which obviously doesn't exist so is a 404! What should be done in this situation? Should it be ignored and not re-directed at all, or is there a way to delete/disavow these dead pages? An SEO has advised we redirect all pages to the homepage, but won't that mess up the link profile? Any advice would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesPursey0 -
What is best practice SEO approach to re structuring a website with multiple domains and associated search engine rankings for each domain?
Hello Mozzers, I'm trying to improve and establish rankings for my website which has never really been optimised. I've inherited what seems to be a mess and have a challenge for you! The website currently has 3 different www domains all pointing to the one website, two are .com domains and one is a .com.au - the business is located in Australia and the website is primarily targeting Australian traffic. In addition to this there are a number of other non www domains for the same addresses pointing to the website in the CMS which is Adobe Business Catalyst. When I check Google each of the www domains for the website has the following number of pages indexed: www.Domain1,com 5,190 pages
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimmyFlorida
www.Domain2.com 1,520 pages
www,Domain3.com.au 149 pages What is best practice approach from an SEO perspective to re organising this current domain structure? 1. Do I need to use the .com.au as the primary domain given that we are in this market and targeting traffic here? Thats what I have been advised and it seems to be backed up by what I have read here. 2. Do we re direct all domains to the primary .com.au domain? This is easily done in the Adobe Business Catalyst CMS however is this the same as a 301 redirect which is the best approach from an SEO perspective? 3. How do we consolidate all of the current separate domain rankings for the 3 different domains into the one domain rankings within Google to ensure improved rankings and a best practice approach? The website is currently receiving very little organic search traffic so if its simpler and faster to start again fresh rather than go through a complicated migration or re structure and you have a suggestion here please feel free to let me know your ideas! Thank you!0 -
301 many smaller domains to a new, large domain
Hi all, I have a question regarding permanently redirecting many small websites into one, large new one. During the past 9 years I have created many small websites, all focusing on hotel reservations in one specific city. This has served me beautifully in the past, but I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer a sustainable model and therefore I am in the process of creating one large, worldwide hotel reservations website. To not loose any benefit of my hard work the past 9 years, I want to permanently redirect the smaller websites to the correct section of my new website. I know that if it is only a few websites, that this strategy is perfectly acceptable, but since I am talking about 50 to 100 websites, I am not so sure and would like to have your input. Here is what I would like to do: (the domain names are not mine, just an example) Old website: londonhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/london/ Old website: berlinhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/berlin/ Old website: amsterdamhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/amsterdam/ Etc., etc. My plan is to do this for 50 to 100 websites and would like to have your thoughts on if this is an acceptable strategy or not. Just to be clear, I am talking about redirecting only my websites that are in good standing, i.e. none of the websites I am thinking about 301'ing have been penalized. Thanks for your thoughts on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tfbpa0 -
Why won't my sub-domain blog rank for my brand name in Google?
For six months or so, my team and I have been trying to get our blog to rank on page one in Google for the term "Instabill." The URL, http://blog.instabill.com, is a sub-domain of our company website and they both use the same IP address. Three pages on our www.Instabill.com site rank in the top three spots when searching our brand name in Google. However, our blog ranks 100+. For our blog, we are currently using b2evolution and nginx. We have tried adding static content on the home page, static content in the sidebar, static content on an About Instabill page, and optimizing blog posts for the keyword Instabill, but nothing seems to work. We appreciate any advice you can provide to us. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
Page Rank
Hi guys I have an ecommerce in prestashop (unfortunatelly I can not change it at this moment). I made all main activities both off and on the page. And actually it is working pretty well since I am up on the SERP for all the target keywords. BUT, the page rank still be 0. The site is about 2 years old. My main competitor has the same domain authority than mine, but he has a page rank > 0 Moreover I have more quality links then it has, but it is older Any suggestions? Many thanks Ciao Diego
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrelax0 -
Changing domain extension to detoxify a domain
Hi there, A linkbuilding company that has been building links for us has not gained any sustained results. They have advised that our domain may be toxic, and that we should consider permanent redirecting from .co.uk to another domain extension in order to remedy this. Is this a recommendation worth considering?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maximise0