Multiple domains

[JRS]

I represent a lawyer who's website has a keyword positive url - lets say "targetKeyword.com". He ranks well. I understand this isn't the only requirement of ranking - there are many, hundreds even. Some think the url has no affect on either organic or local rankings. That's not been my experience, but to what extent I'm not sure. The question is...he's being sold another domain, lets call it "AnotherGoodKeywordTarget.com". Has anyone had experience using 1, 2 or multiple domain redirects for the purposes of seo? I've never done this sort of thing - seems kind of old school, early 2000's scammy seo like, but I'm curious if there's value in owning a few good domains referring back to the primary domain? Any advice is welcome. Thanks

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

We've also experienced that a quality domain that contains a keyword or keywords related to their core business as a beneficial factor to ranking, both Local Pack and SERP. However, I'd be extremely reluctant in changing a domain, especially if the website and pages already rank well, even if the domain name "seems" better from a keyword standpoint. There are a lot of factors to consider and personally, the only benefit I could see where it would be beneficial is due to a merger/acquisition and the brand value of the other domain is better or if the business is changing some aspects of its business. Here's a great article that sums it up really nicely.

 

[ElizabethRule]

Is your plan to buy the domains and redirect them to your site, or to host them and build links back to your main site? The first sounds like it might be a viable strategy, but I am not sure how much value the reidirect would have especially if you did not host the site forever to retain the value. this seems relevent too

the second strategy I do not think is a smart idea. Google doesn't like links build specifically for the purpose of SEO, and if you were to buy a website just to build links from it, that would not look good to Google.

 

[JRS]

Thank you. The idea would be to buy the domain and simply redirect it back to the original url.

 

[elephant]

Hi JRS, there would simply be no benefit to pointing these domains in.

You can develop a potent strategy around multiple local domains but this is not it.
Search for "The definitive guide to subdomains vs subfolder/subdirectories and stand-alone domains" to get more in depth info about options and they can be leveraged from an SEO standpoint.

 

[JRS]

Thanks