Are multiple domains spammy if they're similar but different
-
A client currently has a domain of johnsmith.com (not actual site name, of course). I’m considering splitting this site into multiple domains, which will include brand name plus keyword, such as:
- Johnsmithlandclearing.com
- Johnsmithdirtwork.com
- Johnsmithdemolition.com
- Johnsmithtimercompany.com
- Johnsmithhydroseeding.com
- johnsmithtreeservice.com
Each business is unique enough and will cross-link to the other.
My questions are: 1) will Google consider cross-linking spammy? 2) what happens to johnsmith.com? Should it redirect to new site with the largest market share, or should it become an umbrella for all? 3) Any pitfalls foreseen?
I've done a fair amount of due diligence and feel these separate domains are legit, but am paranoid that Google will not see it that way, or may change direction in the future.
-
Yes, link building will be extra (and often duplicate) effort. Adwords would be another concern. Other maintenance issues not so much. My goal was to target a specific visitor segment with a bonus of having the top keyword in the domain name, but recognise there are more benefits to keeping as one site. Thanks for your and Devanur's responses.
-
Your law analogy is the premise on which my though is based. Ironically, I SEO a law site that has segmented their dive attorney business and have found that targeting this specific market separately works well. The keyword in domain name is a bonus.
-
The only time I would do this is if each business entity had it's own group of people dedicated to the business and you had plenty of content to support the site. Lawyers will sometimes break up Family Law, Business Law, Maritime Law etc into different microsites. It's a ton of work though to keep each site updated and current.
-Bob
-
Keri got it right. With multiple websites all your SEO efforts are scattered and with all other operational overheads. Here is my take on this. One website, very stable, high and wide that will become an authority in the niche going forward. Let that one website target all those keywords/phrases. There is really no need to come up with new keyword specific domains. There might be some level of keyword cannibalization with multiple domains targeting the same niche.
If at all you want to cross-link the domains you own, you should ideally make those links no-follow.
I conclude by saying, one big website with loads of quality content will always win over multiple small websites in many respects. Those were my two cents.
Best,
Devanur Rafi
-
My first thought is why do you want to split up your link building and content efforts among several sites, and have several sites to maintain instead of one?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why Moz is showing Spam Score at my New Domain?
Hi folks I just registered a new domains boring magazine but I forgot to check the spam score. Recently, I checked and it showing spam score of 46% without any backlinks. You can check the domain age is 30 Days only till now. Need your recommendations on how can I reduce it and on which basis Moz showing it as spams? sp.PNG
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ImranZahidAli0 -
Question RE: Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation
This question is regarding this Whiteboard Friday from October 2017 (https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo). Sorry that I am a little late to the party, but I wanted to see if someone could help out. So, in theory, if header links matter less than in-content links, and links lower on the page have their anchor text value stripped from them, is there any point of linking to an asset in the content that is also in the header other than for user experience (which I understand should be paramount)? Just want to be clear.Also, if in-content links are better than header links, than hypothetically an industry would want to find ways to organically link to landing pages rather than including that landing page in the header, no? Again, this is just for a Google link equity perspective, not a user experience perspective, just trying to wrap my head around the lesson. links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 3VE0 -
Hreflang/Canonical Inquiry for Website with 29 different languages
Hello, So I have a website (www.example.com) that has 29 subdomains (es.example.com, vi.example.com, it.example.com, etc). Each subdomain has the exact same content for each page, completely translated in its respective language. I currently do not have any hreflang/canonical tags set up. I was recently told that this (below) is the correct way to set these tags up -For each subdomain (es.example.com/blah-blah for this example), I need to place the hreflang tag pointing to the page the subdomain is on (es.example.com/blah-blah), in addition to every other 28 subdomains that have that page (it.example.com/blah-blah, etc). In addition, I need to place a canonical tag pointing to the main www. version of the website. So I would have 29 hreflang tags, plus a canonical tag. When I brought this to a friends attention, he said that placing the canonical tag to the main www. version would cause the subdomains to drop out of the SERPs in their respective country search engines, which I obviously wouldn't want to do. I've tried to read articles about this, but I end up always hitting a wall and further confusing myself. Can anyone help? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | juicyresults0 -
Spammy Links (from .ru) pointing to my domain! How to deal with it?
Hi all, We run an e-commerce store - I am just looking at the apache logs and I am finding a lot of spammy links that have been referrers to our pages - when I check the links, I cannot find our URL in an HREF on their page so I presume they may be using some country based cloaking? These are the domains that are targeting specific pages on our site:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs2010
http://3xru.ru/
http://saldoconsult.ru/
http://euro-casino.ru/casino/
http://delaymoney.maroderi.ru/
http://intimhot.ru/ How to deal with this? Our site is about cookware and they seem to be pointing these links to very specific products and categories. Never seen anything like this before, help would be appreciated. Thanks, B0 -
Keyword Specific Domain | Outranking trend
Hey everyone, i looked for a similar question but didnt found anything. Ive been having a lot trouble competing with other websites that use the "exact-keyword" domain (www.keyword.com), then they just stuff some mediocre content and rank 1-3 in Google SERP for that keyword I wasnt worried before because i thought they were going to be penalized or decreased in ranking. But they bought several keyword domains and outrank everyone in almost every word. Their conversion rate cant be that good because of the mediocre content, but still i dont like the fact that they rank better just because of the keyword. Any comment on this? , what would you do? Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JesusD0 -
What are the best ways of improving our domain authority?
My site's domain authority has gone down by a few points recently. What the best ways of increasing it? It's currently 29 out of 100. What is a good domain authority number?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Saunders18650 -
Does Google+ make a huge difference?
I run a website that's been ranked well for good keywords related to our business for some time. It was founded back in 2007 and has been there a while. Recently a new site has popped up that ranks brilliantly for everything. It's a new site, and the only redeeming factor I can see is that it has an AddThis box showing the Facebook Likes and Google Plus Ones, and they are around 400 Facebook Likes and 80 Google+ (for every page that ranks). Any other pages on their site which doesn't have any Facebook likes or Google Plus Ones, they don't rank. Our site doesn't have any likes or pluses. Is this making the difference? I stress that other than this our sites are very similar, other than the fact we've been around over 5 years.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | freebetinfo0 -
Penalised by Google - Should I Redirect to a new domain?
Last month my rankings dropped a couple of pages on Google and am no longer receiving as many visits from Google as I used to. It's coming up to summer which is the time my business naturally picks up yet I can't fix this problem. I have a crazy idea of redirecting my established site onto a new domain in hopes that the penalty would be removed. I have tried removing any manipulative links yet my ranking are not coming back. Anyone had success in redirecting to a new domain?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | penn730