Multiple Related Domains

G

great nosferatu

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Mar 4, 2011
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I'm developing a site at exactmatch.com and have bought up 'exactmatch.net's and 'relatedkeywordexactmatch.com's.

What's the best strategy for the related domains?

301 to primary?
Develop separately and link to primary?
Park?
Other?
 


Don't worry with the backlinks; there's no reason to invest in them at all unless you plan on branching them out into standalone pages

eg.[1] I own the .com, .net and .org of a good phrase. For years I had a niche directory with all three domains pointing to it; later I spun off the .org into a charitable/community site for businesses in that niche. I set up some e-mails on the .org and talked about it at forums and such before the spin off, to get some feel for market sentiment in advance. It was worth it -- but I can't imagine other circumstances where I would promote exactmatch.etc over the main domain

eg [2] I often build little "gateway" pages on exact match longtail domains that point to the main site. If they seem to be providing value I keep or even flesh them out; otherwise I just later 301 them to the main domain. It provides benefit often enough to at least warrant testing, but has not produced results enough for me to consider it a large-scale promotional effort (ie. where I'd go buy a bunch of long tails and build them out to point to the main site.)

Short version (too late!) there are some circumstances where you could benefit from the multiple domains being set up/promoted separately from the main site, but these are generally few and far between.


Frank
 
Thanks for the good responses.
A little more interrogation....

I have keywordA.com and keywordB.com, which are both in the same niche and it makes sense to only build one site, so I just 301 keywordB.com ->keywordA.com.

What exactly is passed between the two: PR, authority, anything?

If I do all my SEO work on keywordA.com, and someone searches for "keywordB", Is keywordB.com going to outrank keywordA.com for that search, based on the authority, etc. of keywordA.com and the exact match of keywordB.com?

This doesn't seem right to me. Eg. keywordA.com is currently #4 for searches for "keywordB". If I point keywordB.com to keywordA.com, that would make them appear #3,4 or #4,5 respectively. That can't be right?


The basic question is, "What am I gaining by redirecting the alternate-keyword-domain to the main site?"
 
You are not gaining anything per se by even owning the alt keyword domain, unless it gets type-in traffic. The mere existence of a matching domain for a given phrase does not give it "default rank." 301 can help presever existing rankings and PR and such for a page, if you've moved it to a new domain or otherwise altered the URL (more commonly, from changing the file structure, eg. from example.com/stuff/shit.htm to example.com/shit.htm) But just adding more domains to your existing domain isn't going to do anything for the existing domain's rankings, and in all likelihood the additional domains will not be indexed at all.

Actually -- I just ran some very non-scientific tests, and found that in many cases alt domains that I own actually are indexed -- but generally not nearly as deeply as the main. Best I can figure without seriously digging into the data is that someone came into the site via the alt and then linked to the page via a bookmarking or similar service. I see one page indexed under a .net for which there are 280 pages indexed for the identical .com, for example, and the .net page that is indexed is a pretty useful how-to article for that niche. Again, no way am I bothering slugging through the data to produce empirical info, so take all the above with a grain of salt, but that said, conventional wisdom and my own superficial testing suggests that there's no meaningful SEO benefit to the additional domains, unless they were indexed previously and are now pointing to similar/identical content on the new domain.


Frank
 
It depends how much the keywords are worth to you. If they're worth a lot I would develop both. Concentrate on the .com and use the other one for some seo testing and to link to any other sites you have.
 
I have to disagree with the post below.
I've had also results with multiple keyword-based domains.
Sure I have the main site, but then I take all the other sites I create small functional sites anywhere from 3 to 6 pages a piece.

If all these domains are hosted on separate servers, different class C addresses. And all these sites are all optimized for your keyword, specifically the keyword in the domain. Then it is possible to get 3,5 or 10 pages on the top 10 of Google for your specific keyword, all pointing eventually to your site.

If you work this set of sites your main site will also get a higher ranking. Because it is being linked by other sites.

What I go to set up a multiple keyword-based domain project. I make sure that I purchase all of them for multiple years and with privacy. I then make sure I use the registrar's DNS servers and not my own.

I hope you have good luck with this.

Airborne!
Kevin



great nosferatu said:
Thanks for the good responses.
A little more interrogation....

I have keywordA.com and keywordB.com, which are both in the same niche and it makes sense to only build one site, so I just 301 keywordB.com ->keywordA.com.

What exactly is passed between the two: PR, authority, anything?

If I do all my SEO work on keywordA.com, and someone searches for "keywordB", Is keywordB.com going to outrank keywordA.com for that search, based on the authority, etc. of keywordA.com and the exact match of keywordB.com?

This doesn't seem right to me. Eg. keywordA.com is currently #4 for searches for "keywordB". If I point keywordB.com to keywordA.com, that would make them appear #3,4 or #4,5 respectively. That can't be right?


The basic question is, "What am I gaining by redirecting the alternate-keyword-domain to the main site?"
Click to expand...
 
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