This week’s Ask an SEO question comes from Mike in Columbus, who wrote:
“Let’s say I do some keyword research and find really strong search volume around some keywords that are very relevant to my website. Then I buy those keywords as URLs – 30 of them.
What is best for your main website traffic, authority, search results, and overall improvement in SEO? Should I create a landing page for each URL and link to my main site from each landing page, or simply redirect each URL to my homepage? “
I think having multiple websites targeting specific keywords is a really bad strategy for most businesses.
It’s always best to start by consolidating your web properties into one super powerful site where you can drive all of your marketing efforts, not just SEO.
From a non-SEO perspective, when you build a strong branded web presence, you will get more clicks and traffic.
From an SEO perspective, each site you control requires additional resources.
If you have 30 sites, optimize 30 sites.
Technical SEO maintenance should be performed on 30 sites.
You must secure and protect 30 websites.
You must build links to 30 websites.
For most companies, having too many sites causes resource issues, and most companies simply don’t have the bandwidth to optimize a good 30 sites.
What ends up happening is that some sites get attention, while others falter.
In fact, I would be confident in saying that most companies that use this type of strategy either don’t get anything out of it or have a poor return on investment.
The resources required to improve many websites cost more than money can be made, in many cases.
Exact match domains work
It’s a shame you have to admit it, but I know that having a keyword in your site’s URL will make it more likely to rank for that particular keyword.
In the past, Google told us that keywords in a URL are not a ranking factor.
It may not be a ranking factor, but anecdotal evidence suggests that sites with a keyword in the URL are more likely to rank for that keyword.
However, simply having a site rank for a particular keyword does not automatically translate into increased traffic, sales, and leads.
Exotic domain names, meaning domain names that go beyond your own branded main web property, are more exposed to the whims of Google’s algorithm update than a well-constructed main brand domain.
If you have the resources to build a strong web presence on your exotic domain name, you will likely lose any rankings gained from having a keyword in your domain name.
Google said that keywords in domain names do not affect ranking.
Although we know they do.
But at the end of the day, keywords in the top level domain are a poor signal and in most cases will not lead to a good ROI.
Keywords in page names
One technique I like is to use keywords in the page URL names.
The keyword’s signal isn’t as strong as when it appears in the top-level domain. But with a little effort, you can make the signal stronger than it is in those extraneous fields.
Creating a strong and sensible internal link structure along with great content is usually enough to elevate a page with keywords in the domain name to the same level as a site with keywords in the top-level domain.
In conclusion
I highly recommend looking for a better strategy than buying a bunch of domains with keywords in them.
Sure, if you have unlimited resources, test some of these areas may be Logically, but even doing so runs the risk of cannibalism.
And don’t think that Google doesn’t know what you’re doing when you buy 30 domain names hoping to rank for the same company.
And just a hint – Google doesn’t like it when you try to rank multiple domains for the same company.
If you can rank all of your sites, it will create a poor end user experience.
And the Google experience doesn’t want them to have it.
So when Google finds out what you’re doing, you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll take action to fix the poor user experience.
More resources:
- Building on a country-specific domain or using an existing site?
- The Ultimate Guide to SEO Friendly URL Structure
- Is domain name a google ranking factor?
Ask an SEO is a weekly SEO advice column written by some of the industry’s top SEO experts, hand-selected by Search Engine Magazine. Do you have a question about search engine optimization? Fill out our form. You may see your answer in the next #AskanSEO post!
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