Business Banking & Finance Website/online marketing question

Discussion in 'Starting & Running a Business' started by LifesGood, 18th Sep, 2016.

Join Australia's most dynamic and respected property investment community
  1. LifesGood

    LifesGood Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    26th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    911
    Location:
    Perth WA
    hi all! This is a question for all you online gurus out there!

    Let's say I have a domain shoes.com.au
    But I also own some more specific domains like redshoes.com.au, runningshoes.com.au...

    Is there a benefit to having multiple domains that all point to my main website? If so, how would you best execute this? Have each additional/specific domain name point to a specific section/topic of your website?

    Thanks for all your help!
     
  2. D.T.

    D.T. Specialist Property Manager Business Member

    Joined:
    3rd Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    9,189
    Location:
    Adelaide and Gold Coast
    Better off pointing them at different websites you own that are specific to that topic (or specific separate pages within your main website).

    Google penalises multiple names.

    The domain name can be a search term of its own so may as well provide content that matches what potential clients are looking for.
     
  3. Simon Hampel

    Simon Hampel Founder Staff Member

    Joined:
    3rd Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    12,386
    Location:
    Sydney
    This strategy is called "Exact Match Domains" (EMDs), which used to be a thing and a good shortcut to good rankings.

    However, the penalty was specifically targeting micro-blogs with a small amount of niche content which were specifically set up for SEO purposes using an EMD. So this is no longer considered a valid strategy on its own.

    With recent Google updates, they are much more focused on quality content and backlinks from authoritative websites than on anything else. Yes, you can still rank very well with an EMD, but that's a factor of content more than the domain itself.

    In some cases, an EMD as your primary domain can work well for search engine rankings - especially if targeting local search (eg Sydney Dentists).

    301'ing a domain to your primary site won't get you any real benefit at all (indeed it may actually hurt your rankings) - Google won't list the domain in the search results, it will list the destination domain instead, so you won't get any keyword benefit from the domain. That is unless that domain already has existing traffic that you want to capture and redirect to your branded site.

    PS. this would be a great question to ask over on BusinessChat :: Australian Business and Startup Forums :D
     
    EN710 and charttv like this.
  4. LifesGood

    LifesGood Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    26th Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    911
    Location:
    Perth WA
    Thanks for the info guys. I knew that duplicating content was a massive no no but I wasn't aware that you can get penalised by having multiple domain names.

    If I had the time and money I'd have multiple websites but I am much better off building up the presence of my main website.

    Thanks for the heads up @Simon Hampel , I'll jump over there for a look too.
     
  5. Michael V

    Michael V Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    17th Sep, 2016
    Posts:
    68
    Location:
    Adelaide, SA
    Hey mate, lots of places do this but for very specific reasons. As Simon said it is called EMD but Google has somewhat turned off of this. You are better building up your primary website with a correct navigation structure to target your keywords/customers....

    E.g. shoes.com/red/ or shoes.com/blue/

    There is lots to go over and get the correct strategy going :) Happy to have a chat with you as this is my forte!
     
    Colin Rice and LifesGood like this.
  6. Colin Rice

    Colin Rice Mortgage Broker Business Member

    Joined:
    9th Jul, 2015
    Posts:
    3,183
    Location:
    Perth
    Does that mean if you had a website set up with domain x and then you had to change business name so changed domain name to suit new business name and now use that to point traffic to the original domain x?
     
  7. Michael V

    Michael V Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    17th Sep, 2016
    Posts:
    68
    Location:
    Adelaide, SA
    Colin that would be perfectly fine. There is no hard in redirecting old sites to a new domain for valid reasons. It will retain any trust by Google for the previous domains.
     
    Colin Rice likes this.
  8. Simon Hampel

    Simon Hampel Founder Staff Member

    Joined:
    3rd Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    12,386
    Location:
    Sydney
    No. DT's comment wasn't entirely accurate.

    If you have a site which responds to multiple names and serves content under each - for example, invested.com.au exists and serves the same content that investchat.com.au does, so there's basically two identical websites on two separate URLs ... that's bad and you don't want to do this. There should only be one "canonical" version of a website. I think that's what DT was referring to by saying "multiple names".

    All other URLs should redirect (technical term is: "301 redirect") to the canonical (master) version.

    So in my case, I rebranded invested.com.au to investchat.com.au ... I simply set up 301 redirects on all the old URLs and domains and so when you visit the old site or click on a link in Google which points to the old site, you get redirected to the same content on the new site using the new URL. Search engines will eventually reindex the site and so invested.com.au will disappear from the search results and be replaced by investchat.com.au

    This is what Google tell you to do when changing URLs of your site.

    So having redshoes.com.au 301 redirect to shoes.com.au is typically what you'd do (I have investingchat.com.au and other similar domains point to investchat.com.au), but it won't get you any real benefit from an SEO point of view, since Google won't keep a separate entry in the listings for those 301'd domains - it will list the ultimate destination of those redirects (investchat.com.au in my case, or shoes.com.au in our earlier example).

    It may still be worth doing if it's the type of name people type into a browser directly so you get people redirecting to the correct site. I do it from a brand protection point of view rather than an SEO perspective - I register names related to my site to protect my branding. Which is why I also own investmentchat.com.au and propertytalk.com.au and so on - and they redirect to my main sites).
     
    Michael V and Colin Rice like this.
  9. Michael V

    Michael V Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    17th Sep, 2016
    Posts:
    68
    Location:
    Adelaide, SA
    It definitely depends on the scenario :) there are SEO benefits when redirecting old domains to your new one. Such as retaining your back links and ranking power if any from the old domain using a 301 redirect.
     
    Colin Rice likes this.
  10. Simon Hampel

    Simon Hampel Founder Staff Member

    Joined:
    3rd Jun, 2015
    Posts:
    12,386
    Location:
    Sydney
    Of course - but redirecting a new domain to your existing one wouldn't get those benefits.
     
    Michael V likes this.
  11. Michael V

    Michael V Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    17th Sep, 2016
    Posts:
    68
    Location:
    Adelaide, SA
    Exactly right, it is only useful for old domains pointing to a new one.