Multiple Domain names pointing at one website
-
Hello,
A collegue has asked if we can buy multiple domain names which contain keywords and point them at our website.
Is this good practise or will it be seen as spam? Will these domains actually get ranked?
I'm sure I'm not the first person to raise this but can't seem to find any questions and answers about this.
Thanks
Mark
-
I would not advise buying EMDs for the purpose of linking into your main site, or for redirecting to your site after those EMDs get exact-match external links. Theoretically, if you had good content on the EMDs that you wouldn't mind putting on your main site some day (because catch-all redirects, like an entire site redirecting to the home page, are treated as 404s, according to John Muller of Google) you could gain something by redirecting the EMDs to that content on your main site once the EMDs had some decent links. However, the amount of effort it would take to do this would be significantly more than what it would take to put good content on your main site to begin with.
Google has been lowering the importance of exact-match domains and exact-match anchor text for some time now. Shortcuts don't work forever. I don't mean to sound like some preachy white-hat guy, but even if you could get it to work for awhile you would be risking the reputation of your primary domain. When a site gets banned people often lose their jobs. They go on unemployment. They can't pay their mortgages. They can't afford health insurance. So yea, maybe a little bit preachy. Don't do it. Just my two cents.
PS: I did try this a few times about five years ago on a few of my own personal sites. It didn't take long for Google to figure out how people were manipulating the algorithm by purchasing EMDs and redirecting them for this purpose.
-
Does this technique still have any value ... or did the google updates catch this
-
Great, thank you all very much.
-
Nothing is linked until I 301
-
Google's take is you're not supposed to do it.Also,
a) make sure the domains are private registration so no one knows who owns the sites
b) put about 2000 words per page on the site, you can get away with a two page site just make sure both pages have tons of unique content
c) link to your site from the web and let Google find the site on it's own, don't submit it to Google's ADD URL tool - some claim that doing so tells Google that this is a new site, if Google finds it on it's own it doesn't make that determination (again can't be proven 100%)
d) this strategy only sometimes works for some reason, don't count on them all ranking.
-
Very Interesting - thank you Stefan. Does anyone know what googles take is on this?
-
Interesting strategy Stefan. Did you link between your 7 exact match domains in any way or just to your main site? Thanks.
-
I mean that your main site and the seperate sites you're creating for link juice should not be on the same host. I've seen people link to themselves like that way too much and in my experience it doesn't work out well.
Quick example of how I did the hosting:
1. Main site is hosted somewhere in the middle-east
2. The 7 other sites are hosted with Arvixe, in the USThis way they're not connected in any way and they look like completely different sites that don't share anything.
-
Hello Stefan,
I read with interest your post and would like you to please clarify -
"Get completely different hosts for the other domains"
Do you mean completely different domains for your 7 websites. If yes, why so ?
-
I've done something sort of like this before so I'm sure my story gives you some insight.
I have a big forum that I do SEO for a lot and we were looking to rank our new sections for their respected keywords. Now, instead of fighting the big competitors we have by just building links, we decided to make multiple websites with the exactly keywords in the domain names. This way we ended up with 7 .com, exact match domain names. We filled these up with content and did some small SEO on them. After about two weeks they were all ranking in the top 3 for their keywords where my main site was nowhere to be found. We kept the sites there for about a month, and then 301'd them to our main site which led to our main site being in the top 5 after a week, and on rank 1 after three weeks and some extra linking.
When it comes to just having the domain names I wouldn't do it like that, I'd fill them up with content, do some quick link building for them, and then 301 them. This way you'll get their link juice and you don't have to do too much SEO for it.
Notes:
1. Get completely different hosts for the other domains
2. Make sure they're exact match, or at least close to it, otherwise it's not all that useful, they need to give you an advantage
3. Make sure the content you post on the sites is of high quality so you don't look spammy.I'm not 100% if this is the best way to do it, but this is the way I did it and I had great success with it so I hope it helps!
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
Two A Records or one CNAME and one A Record for www / naked domain?
What's the best way to point a domain to an IP address? Two A records one with host @ and the other with host www ? One A record pointing to the naked domain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aj613
One CNAME record with host www pointing to nakeddomain.com Something else? Thanks so much! This seems so basic, but always seems to stump me. I'm using WordPress, if it makes difference.0 -
Website Traffic Is Down
Hi, My Website www.financeninvestments.com is down for almost now 2 years. I was receiving the good traffic before this but now the traffic is almost down. I want to again do something to get my Traffic back with some consistent efforts. So what efforts should i do to make this back.Pls suggest.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rahulsoni250 -
Redirecting main www. subdomain to new domain. Can you then create a new subdomain on the old domain?
Hi there, The scenario is this: We have been working on a rebrand and have changed the company name So, we want to redirect www.old-name.com to www.new-name.com However, the parent company is retaining the old brand name for corporate purposes So, in an ideal world, we'd be able to keep www.old-name.com active - but clearly that would sacrifice all of the authority built up over the years, so we do have to redirect the main www. subdomain in it's entirity. However - one suggested solution is to redirect www.old-domain.com to www.new-domain.com... but then create a new corporate subdomain: for example, business.old-domain.com business.old-domain.com will not be competing with the new site on any service/product related terms; it will only need to appear in SERPs for the company name I'd appreciate some thoughts on this, as I've not done this before or found any examples of anyone that has. Is that a massive risk in terms of sending a confusing message to Google? Thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edlondon0 -
Two websites (Domains) with same content for more than 4 years which one to choose now?
Hi, I need help with this decision, thanks in advance. My client has 2 websites but they have the same content: one has 4 years http://radiocolombia.com.co/ and the the other one 7 years: http://radiocolombiainternacional.com/web/ This content has been duplicated for years, how do I know which website is more relevant for google? we have to pick one. Please any advice? Thanks, David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoweb330 -
Will I mess with Authorship if I setup multiple client websites under my Webmaster tools login?
I currently have a dozen client websites or so that I have setup under my Webmaster tools login. Should I put them each separately under their own webmaster tools, then just add me as a user? Is the way I'm doing it now messing with Authorship?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daviddischler0 -
Domain Choise
Hello, Im working a e-commerce shop, and my question is about choosing the domain. Presently the website is not performing good with the domain www.casaobjecto.com, that is the brand name of the shop. Now I have made my analysis about keywords and conclude that it would be very interesting to have a domain name with the main keyword that im targeting. The domain is available. If I choose the maintain the www.casaobjecto.com as main domain and the other keyword domain pointing to that site, whats the influence that can take in the keyword im looking for? Or should I replace the target keyword domain (becomes the main domain) by the brand domain name? Whats the best choice? Tks in advance, Pedro M Pereira
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
Multiple domains expiring that have 301 redirects to my primary domain. Am I in trouble?
I recently took on the SEO of a large website with http://example.com. My predecessor bought 40 plus domains for specific cities like Jacksonvilleexample.com, Miamiexample.com, etc. ZERO of the additional domains linked to our main website. The domains that were bought basically had our exact same website in terms of content, links etc that mirrored our main http://example.com. I added 301 redirects to help problems that may be a result of this type of structure. Some of the additional domains were indexed and some were not but all have 301's and as far as traffic is concerned I'm not worried about loosing short term traffic. My question: All the domains are set to expire in June and I don't want to continue to have them 301 redirected to my main domain (example.com). I'm not trying to avoid the additional cost of all the domains but I don't see an advantage to having them so CAN letting all these domains expire hurt me from a long term SEO position if I don't renew them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ballanrk0