The more domains the better?
We get a lot of questions about Search Engine Optimization here at Redman, and I thought it was high-time I addressed some of the most frequent questions here on the blog, and share the answers around. Keep checking back on the blog for more SEO Myth Busting in coming weeks!
Myth #1: More Domains = Better SEO
We get this one a lot. People buy up a dozen or more domain names that have some variation of keywords they’d like to rank for (like “buy-city-real-estate.com” and “buy-smart-city-real-estate.com” for example) then ask us to point all those domains at their website, thinking this will improve their SEO.
SEO doesn’t work like that. The only domain that counts is your primary domain, the one people see when they’re actually on your website. Think of a forwarding domain like a forwarding address: you want people who try to find you at that domain to get to your website, but it’s not your actual address. The search engines understand this is a forwarding address, and “discard” it as having any current value. They work on the “one site, one domain” idea, and only give SEO consideration to the primary domain of your site.
So if there’s no SEO value, what is the value of having multiple domains?
1. If you’ve got it, no one else can have it.
Sometimes called “domain squatting”, the biggest perk of having keyword-rich domains in your personal collection is that they aren’t in someone else’s personal collection. You might not be getting any SEO value for those domains, but no one else is either.
The downside here is, of course, that owning a lot of domains can get expensive pretty quickly. They need to be renewed regularly, and at the end of the day good SEO can overcome a keyword-rich domain.
2. Different domains for different marketing.
The other possible use for multiple domains is for tracking how people are finding out about you. For example, you can set up your Analytics to track different incoming domains, and put a different one on your bus bench.
Let’s say your primary domain is JaneSmithRealEstate.com, and you’re planning to buy some bus bench ads, but you want to track how many people are actually converting – that is, how many people are seeing your ads and then visiting your website because of it. An easy way to do this is buy a different domain, let’s say “HireJaneSmith.com” in this case, and track home many times this domain is used to access your website. This works best if you set up a specific landing page on your website for this domain: a page specifically designed to talk to people who have seen your bus bench ad.
A forwarding domain is also helpful if you’ve got a keyword rich primary domain – let’s say findSaskatoonRealEstate.com – but want to have something more personalized (and maybe shorter) on your business card, say a domain with your name: “JaneSmith.com”.
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