Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Domain dominance
-
I've just started to work for a company who've purchased masses of domains with every conceivable permutation based on all their products with every extension possible e.g .biz . eu. .net (including .co.uk and .com of course).
I have two questions:
1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire?
2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?
-
Lisa
It is a personal decision. There is no right or wrong answer.
Big companies - sometimes buy them and do not use them in any shape nor form, but keep from competitors. Smaller companies usually don't as it is a costs issue.
My experience is most competitors do not understand their own digital channel let alone, snapping up similar names of competitors...
-
Is it worth keeping any domains that are similar to our brand/products? Why pass that opportunity to our competitors?
-
I would let them expire and buy beer with the savings.
Let the competitors spend their time and money on them.
-
I echo Andy above.
On the domains I would run them all through "open site explorer" &/or "majestic" to ensure you are not giving up anything of any value.
I would also be careful if they have no value, and are 301'ed to your main site, that could look spammy to google. So if you do choose to hold them, even though they have no value, so held for brand protection sake, do not 301 them unless it could be a traffic referral domain.
Hope that assists.
-
Hi Lisa,
1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire?
If they are keeping them to help ensure brand security, then this is very popular and no harm in keeping them.
2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?
There is probably not a lot of point in all of them being live and pointing towards the main site as there will be no SEO benefit in doing this. If the sites were live and each had a site on there, it would be a different story and one that would end in a penalty.
If they are hoping to gain any SEO benefit from doing this, then they will be wasting their time. By all means they can buy them, but if what they have is delivering nothing beneficial (and I suspect they aren't), then I would just take them all down. It is more common to have a .co.uk and .com (and perhaps a few others) pointing to one key domain to capture traffic that types it wrong, but outside of this, it's a bit of a dead duck.
-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
-
Why is my domain authority still 1?
I changed the domain of my website from www.vanillacrush.co.uk to www.carissamay.co.uk at the end of December and yet my DA for carissamay is still 1. As advised, I set up a 301 redirect from VC to CM which seems to be working fine. However when I check on redirect detective it tells me I also have a 302 set up. Could this be confusing things? http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 11, 2017, 2:56 PM | Carissamay
http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk/ 
http://www.carissamay.co.uk 
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks
0 -
Backlinks from old domain
Hi, We have gone through a change of company brand name including a new domain name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 6, 2016, 10:26 AM | Agguk
We followed google recommendations at: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en and it seems to have worked really well, the new domain has replaced the old in the google search results. My question: Still most of our backlinks, both anchor text and links use the old brand name and domain and it´s a slow process trying to update all references. Although they get redirected fine to the new domain (also following google recommendations), I wonder if the current scenario is doing any harm, SEO wise (other than the missed visual exposure of the new brand name) ? ...since the old brand name is not present at the new site I´m thinking of including "New brand name - previously old brand name" somewhere just to provide some sort of connection to all old backlinks, would that be unnecessary? I should mention that the old brand name actually includes our most important keyword but the new brand name does not. Thanks!0 -
Duplicate content due to parked domains
I have a main ecommerce website with unique content and decent back links. I had few domains parked on the main website as well specific product pages. These domains had some type in traffic. Some where exact product names. So main main website www.maindomain.com had domain1.com , domain2.com parked on it. Also had domian3.com parked on www.maindomain.com/product1. This caused lot of duplicate content issues. 12 months back, all the parked domains were changed to 301 redirects. I also added all the domains to google webmaster tools. Then removed main directory from google index. Now realize few of the additional domains are indexed and causing duplicate content. My question is what other steps can I take to avoid the duplicate content for my my website 1. Provide change of address in Google search console. Is there any downside in providing change of address pointing to a website? Also domains pointing to a specific url , cannot provide change of address 2. Provide a remove page from google index request in Google search console. It is temporary and last 6 months. Even if the pages are removed from Google index, would google still see them duplicates? 3. Ask google to fetch each url under other domains and submit to google index. This would hopefully remove the urls under domain1.com and doamin2.com eventually due to 301 redirects. 4. Add canonical urls for all pages in the main site. so google will eventually remove content from doman1 and domain2.com due to canonical links. This wil take time for google to update their index 5. Point these domains elsewhere to remove duplicate contents eventually. But it will take time for google to update their index with new non duplicate content. Which of these options are best best to my issue and which ones are potentially dangerous? I would rather not to point these domains elsewhere. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 17, 2016, 6:02 PM | ajiabs0 -
Domain Redirect and SSL Cert
Hi, When redirecting an entire site to another domain, do you have to maintain the SSL certificate? The SSL expires 3 days before the planned redirect. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 14, 2015, 4:33 PM | sofla_seo0 -
Should I redirect my Google Update Effected Domain to brand new Domain?
Hey Moz experts, I had a domain which was really doing better but after the Humming Bird update my traffic was decreased up to 90%. There are plenty of posts on my existing blog, Now what should I do? I mean should I redirect it to a brand new domain or Copy all the posts to a brand new domain and delete my existing domain? Note that the Old domain has PR1, DA 19 and PA 30.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 16, 2014, 3:18 PM | imran20780 -
Is it safe to redirect our .nl (netherlands) domain that we have just purchased to our .com domain?
Hi all! We've recently developed a German version of our website with German translation and now we have just purchased a .nl domain, but with this one, we want all of the copy to remain in English. Is it ok to redirect our .nl domain to our current .com website or will this give us bad SEO points? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 3, 2013, 8:44 AM | donaldsze0 -
Domain Name Change - Best Practices?
Good day guys, We got a restaurant that is changing its name and domain. However they are keeping the same server location, same content and same pages (we are just changing the logo on the website). It just has to go a new domain. We don't want to lose the value of the current site, and we want to avoid any duplicate penalties. Could you please advise of the best practices of doing a domain name change? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 30, 2012, 2:57 PM | Michael-Goode0 -
How long should a domain redirect take?
Hi, I know that this is a 'How long is a piece of string?' type question but at what point should the ranking value of site A pass over to site B following a domain 301 redirect? I have shifted a domain over to a new URL, same hosting server, same IP address. I haven't made any URL changes or any content changes other than to change the site logo to match the new domain name. Domain B is basically an exact clone of domain A. I have redirected Domain A to domain B using the following line at the top of the .htaccess file:- Redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/ I have submitted a sitemap for the new domain via google webmaster tools. It looks like the original domain as been completely indexed by google following the redirect as all rankings have been dropped from the results and there are no results for a site:olddomain.com search. Surely the rankings should have switched over at this point? Any help would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 24, 2012, 8:28 AM | AdeLewis
Ade.0