This week’s Ask An SEO question comes from Mike in Columbus, who writes:
“Let’s say I do some keyword research and find very strong search volume around some keywords that are highly relevant to my site. Then I buy those keywords as URLs — 30 of them.
What’s best for my main site traffic, authority, search results, and overall improvement in SEO? Should I create a login page for each URL and link to my main site from each login page, or simply forward each URL to my home page? “
I think having multiple keyword-specific websites is a very bad strategy for most companies.
It’s almost always better to start by consolidating your web properties into a super-powerful website where you can drive all your marketing efforts, not just SEO.
From a non-SEO perspective, when you create a strong branded website, you will get more clicks and traffic.
From an SEO standpoint, each site you control requires additional resources.
If you have 30 sites, you must optimize 30 sites.
you have to do Technical SEO Maintenance on 30 sites.
You must secure and secure 30 sites.
You must link to 30 sites.
Having many sites causes resource issues for most companies, and most companies simply don’t have enough bandwidth to optimize 30 sites well.
What ended up happening was that some sites got the attention while others got stuck.
In fact, I can confidently say that most companies using this strategy have either achieved nothing or have a low ROI.
In many cases, it takes more resources to optimize so many sites than can be earned.
Exact match domains do work
It’s a shame to have to admit, but I do know that including a keyword in your site’s URL makes it more likely to rank for that particular keyword.
In the past, Google told us, Keywords in URLs are not ranking factors.
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, having a website ranking for only specific keywords does not automatically translate into increased traffic, sales, and leads.
Unrelated domains, i.e. domains outside of your main brand web property, are more vulnerable to Google Algorithm Update Rather than a well-built master-branded domain.
If you have the resources to build a strong web presence on an unrelated domain name, then you may lose any rankings you gain from having the keyword in your domain name.
Google says keywords in a domain name don’t affect rankings.
Even though we know they do.
But at the end of the day, keywords in TLDs are a weak signal and won’t yield a good ROI in most cases.
keywords in page names
One strategy I like is to use keywords in the page URL name.
The keyword’s signal is not as strong as when it appears in the top-level domain. But with a little effort, you can make the signal stronger than those on unrelated domains.
Creating a robust and sound internal linking structure combined with great content is often enough to elevate a page with domain keywords to the same level as a site with top-level domain keywords.
In summary
I highly recommend Find a better strategy Instead of buying a bunch of domains with keywords.
Of course, if you have unlimited resources, test some of these domains possible Makes sense, but even doing so risks cannibalism.
When you buy 30 domains hoping to rank the same company, don’t think Google doesn’t know what you’re doing.
Just a tip – Google doesn’t like it when you try to rank multiple domains for the same company.
If you can rank all your sites, you’ll have a bad experience for the end user.
And the experience Google doesn’t want them to have.
So when Google figures out what you’re doing, you can bet they’ll take action to fix the bad UX.
More resources:
Ask about SEO is a weekly SEO advice column written by some of the industry’s top SEO experts, handpicked by Search Engine Magazine. Have questions about SEO? fill out our form. You may see your answer in the next #AskanSEO post!
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