Keywords based domains redirecting to a site.. is it SPAM?
-
Keywords based domains redirecting to a site is considered spam isn't it ?
And if yes, then is it considered spam in all cases whether those domain based sites are related or non related to main site?
-
Hi Moosa,
The answer will vary based on the specific situation.
If you buy domains which have backlinks then redirect them to your site in an attempt to pass PR to your site, you are attempting to manipulative search rankings. That is clearly a problem.
If you buy keyword domains and put up 1 page sites with the goal of ranking for those terms, then forwarding them to your site, that is also clearly a problem.
If your site is SacramentoVacuums.com and you purchase all the local area site names (RanchoCordovaVacuums.com, FairOaksVacuums.com, etc) and redirect them to your site for the possibility of type in traffic, that is not a problem. Even if you purchased 100 such domains...these domains do not have backlinks, they don't have a site, you are not attempting to rank any of them, you are simply trying to gain a bit of extra traffic.
If you are concerned, you could always 302 redirect the sites. That would be an unusual implementation, but I do not see any problem with it.
-
Based on what you shared, absolutely.
My question is...why redirect the domains? If there is no backlinks to the site and there is no page on the site, the sole reason is for type-in traffic. If you have an established website with a long name, you could later acquire a short name and 301 redirect it for either marketing or type in traffic. For example, bankofthewest.com owns botw.com and it used to redirect to the main site. Now they use it for their mobile site.
-
I understand your point, Ryan. I also understand that Google itself recommend 301 redirect from one domain to another in genuine cases. so yeah you made a valid point (just that your answer was bit aggressive but I still appreciate your help. thanks!).
Ok To be specific in my case- its in house, we already have two existing EMDs (not developed as sites) and we are planning to permanently redirect them to another EMD (even though it is EMD but still it will be developed as a proper brand site.).
So i guess you reckon its ok to do so?
-
Agree with you Moosa! Google has clearly mentioned that - "Google frowns on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the one they selected" - Google
So ofcourse redirecting 100s of them is definitely not a good idea!
-
Vikas, I am very familiar with the page you shared. I still stand by my response as correct. I believe you are either misinterpreting the guideline, or you have not fully explained the situation which is why I had requested an example.
Using the example I previously shared, if I purchased "SEOtips.net", "SEOtricks.net" and 100 other domains then 301 redirected all of them to my site, that would not violate Google's Guidelines. There is no attempt to manipulate search rankings. My site will not rank any higher because I redirected these domains to my site, assuming these are new domains which have never been used.
You quoted the policy on Doorway pages. Please read Google's definition of a Doorway page. It is a single web page designed to rank in search engines, pull traffic for the terms related to the page, then redirect the traffic to the target site. That is not what is happening here.
I am perfectly comfortable with your selection of Tyler's response as the correct answer. Tyler's response gets a thumbs up from me. Nevertheless, the response I shared is accurate.
-
"Google frowns on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the one they selected" - Google
"Having multiple domain names targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page" - Google
link - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2721311
-
Thanks Tyler!
-
My two cents: Like most things SEO the answer is to stop and think; collect all the statements/opinions that you can and then apply what you have learned to your current situation. In this case you are going to be taking both the EMD devaluation and the intent of the Panda (thin content)/Penguin (spammy links) updates and apply them to your situation. Without knowing your site or the other sites being linked from. I will be responding in broad hypotheticals and hopefully, if I understood your question correctly, it will provide you with something to consider.
First things first: Ryan is basically dead-on with his assessment of the 'I heard...' issue. So, for the sake of clarity, I will once more state that what follows is my opinion on the vague question presented.
Your question is a good example for the 'use your head' school of thought. The question appears to be about the spammy-ness of buying and redirecting EMD sites to a main website in an attempt to benefit from their existing site traffic/linking metrics. The confusion seems to be a common one: "Does changing X on site Y accomplish/trigger Z? If yes, then does this apply to everything?" Coupling individual situations and fixes to something as scattershot as 'in all cases' is writing yourself a check for future struggle.
I think that your main source of confusion is all the misconceptions that float around about the EMD update, so for the sake of clarity:
If you own an EMD site that sells baby clothes (ex: babyclothes.com) then the EMD update didn't penalize your site, it simply took away the algo advantage that having an EMD used to grant. Think of that EMD advantage/'penalty' as a short person standing in a crowd and on a stool; the short person appears taller than they actually are and the stool may be large enough to help that person stand out from the crowd more easily than they otherwise would. If the stool were to be removed then that short person would lose the boost in visibility the stool provided. This wouldn't be making the person shorter, but simply removing the vertical boost the stool provided.
With this understanding of the EMD devaluation in mind, your situation/question clears up and becomes less muddy than it may have initially seemed:
If you own a site that sells baby clothes (branded, EMD, etc...) and you acquire related EMDs (babyclothes.com; babyclothes.net; infantclothes.com; etc...) so they can be redirected then you should be just fine. The key word in that last sentence was 'related' and it applies to any type of domain, not just EMDs (they have lost their boosted value so should be treated like any other site). This is all assuming you are buying established/existing sites that have content because link schemes (like Ryan correctly pointed out) are penalized regardless of the site being an EMD or not. A doorway is a doorway regardless of its domain name.
Oh, and one final thing: Make sure that if you buy an existing site you give the user base of that site a few days or weeks notice of the coming change. Users are the most important part of any decision made and nothing will earn you the ire of your users more than sudden changes with no warnings (once again, I am assuming you are buying existing sites and not just setting up a bunch of doorways pointing to your site).
In short:
The EMD update has made the benefit of having such a domain moot, however, existing EMDs can still ride the wave of link and user base metrics that having an EMD used to be helpful in acquiring.
Redirecting any existing sites (EMD is an irrelevant variable for this case in my opinion) which you have purchased into your primary domain is not a problem assuming you aren't simply setting up a bunch of doorways and that the purchased/redirected sites are relevant.
I would love to hear some of the other opinions on this.
Vikas_Rana, did this help at all? I hope so.
-
**I heard a while back that some people spam by buying EMDs and then use their natural traffic by redirecting it to their main site. **
Where exactly did you hear this? Can you share a link?
People often say "I heard...." There is really nothing anyone can do to respond to such statements. SEO information is spammed on tens of thousands of sites. Every site owner has an opinion. We need to understand who said it? Did Matt Cutts say it? Or was it a random webmaster?
I heard it is important to optimize the meta keywords tag. Last week I had a client share two different monthly reports from two SEO companies where their meta keywords tags were being optimized each month. Does that mean I should run out and optimize all my meta keywords tags? No. The two companies were from India and their SEO knowledge is quite flawed.
**So Google started seeing it as spam technique. **
Google's Guidelines are published. They have been revised to offer additional clarity. Furthermore, Google has a public webmaster forums and publishes many articles and videos offering further clarification.
I work with Google penalties every week. I have never seen nor heard of a site penalized for having EMDs pointing to their main site just because they were EMDs. You discounted the prior example because SEOmoz is a large domain. OK. Let's use another example. If I were to go out and buy 100 domains such as "SEOtips.net", "SEOtricks.net" and 98 other similar domains and redirect them all to my company site, Vitopian.com I would not expect a penalty.
Now, if you were to alter your question in such a way as each of these domains had one page websites on them, then they become doorway pages which is a violation of Google's Guidelines.
-
The answer is No. All keyword based domains are not spammy. it depends upon the domain authority of the domain. Google stated that having keywords in your domain names will not give you a boost which was the case earlier.
However redirecting keyword based domain to your main site will not be spam if your keyword based domain is not blacklisted by Google.
It all depends upon what is the status of your keyword based domain. Is it black listed by Google or does it have a good domain authority.
-
Ryan, correct me if I am wrong but having one or few keyword based domains pointing out to main domain is fine but too many will a suspicious signal to Google... also the authority of main domain should also be put in consideration... no?
-
for seomoz it wont anyway because its very high authority domain too high to be effected by these small things!
-
Are you sure? I heard a while back that some people spam by buying EMDs and then use their natural traffic by redirecting it to their main site. So Google started seeing it as spam technique.
how about - ex: sportsshoes.com, shoes.com, leahershoes.com all redirecting to a site (which is also EMD!) ?
-
Can you share a specific example of the situation?
If SEOmoz.org owns bestseotools.com and chooses to 301 redirect the domain to the SEOmoz.org site, there is nothing spammy about it at all. In that sense, the answer to your question is no.
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
-
keywords are not ranking as per the expectation and need site review too
Hello, Recently We have a taken a project " http://customerconnect-services.com/ " and are responsible for the Digital Marketing for the website. FYI, we have been following the best On-Page SEO practices ever since we took the project: Performing Keyword Research, Finalizing the Keywords,Using those in the Page-Title, Meta-Descriptions, Heading Tags and of course in the Content as per MOZ suggestions & SEO standards. But, we are unable to rank in first page; all the considered keywords have a ranking of 51+ which is a serious matter of concern for us. We have also checked whether the Domain / URL has been blacklisted, but it's not (Not even by Google). We are therefore unable to figure out what is going wrong even after following so many best practices to get the keywords a good ranking (1st & 2nd page of SERPs). Therefore I would like to request you to provide your expert opinions in this regard by checking what is it that we are not getting right. The website url is http://customerconnect-services.com/. As this is a high-priority issue for us & the client is a prestigious one of course, please help. Looking forward to hearing from you at the earliest. Thanks & Regards,
Technical SEO | | Harini.M
Harini2 -
Sub Domain Redirect
Hey Everyone, Here is the situation : Currently, a website's sub domain is being redirected to the main website home page. We're having issues getting the sub domain pages indexed. Just want to confirm that it is because of the redirect on the sub domain URL. Should we kill the sub domain redirect and set it up as it's own page? Will that solve the indexing issue for the sub domain pages. More explanation below: subdomain.domain.com currently redirects to domain.com We're having issues indexing pages belonging to the sub domain ( subdomain.url.com/page1 or subdomain.url.com/page2) Appreciate your input in advance. Cheers,
Technical SEO | | SEO5Team0 -
Why my site is not ranking for any of the keywords?
We have a site for Property management software, we have done everything like set proper Title and descriptions, heading tags, robots tag is also ok, set schema and its ok with Google webmaster too also we are doing Social media promotion. can you please check our website and tell me what is the problem??
Technical SEO | | rootwaysinc0 -
Should I consolidate multiple domains to a single site with 301 redirects?
Our client wants all his sites to be re-designed and perhaps consolidated into one domain. What are the dangers of using 301s on all his already ranking and established domains to their new forward-slash location? If there are some good articles that describe this exact issue please post a link.
Technical SEO | | dsmdesign0 -
Trying to Optimize my site for one keyword any advice please
Hi, we are trying to optimize our site www.in2town.co.uk for the keyword of lifestyle magazine. We are having trouble with this. We were last year number one in google for the keyword and then the end of last year we went to position four and now we are on the bottom of the second page and we are not sure what is happening. here is the text view of the site http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5U281SBmDlUJ:www.in2town.co.uk/&hl=en&client=firefox-a&gl=uk&strip=1 I am just wondering if we need to do a better description of the lifestyle magazine at the top as i know it says you should have your keyword within the first 100 words Any help on trying to solve this problem and get the page back where it belongs will be great. I know we have a lot of text on the page so google maybe finding it hard to find out what keywords are what but the only keyword we are interested in this page is lifestyle magazine, in the near future we would be looking at including lifestyle news many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Delete 301 redirected pages from server after redirect is in place?
Should I remove the redirected old pages from my site after the redirects are in place? Google is hating the redirects and we have tanked. I did over 50 redirects this week, consolidating content and making one great page our of 3-10 pages with very little content per page. But the old pages are still visible to google's bot. Also, I have not put a rel canonical to itself on the new pages. Is that necessary? Thanks! Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
Will rankings for my micro site rank better if I 301 redirect it to my main site?
This is my first time asking so I will try to be as clear as possible. Ok, I have a micro site that is an (exact match domain) and the domain is a couple 3-4 years old and ranks very well for several search terms. The main two terms it ranks for are like this. houses for rent in XXXXX XXXXX homes for rent (XXXXX equals a city name) The issue is this site has no backlinks, zero advanced SEO, I only did basic optimization to it when i set the site up. Even site structure, url structure all are not good.
Technical SEO | | Robbie8299
The only page I have ever even seen rank is the main root url. But with all that the site does really good in the top 1-2 results for key search terms. Now, I have a main site that is a very big site that has steadily been climbing in search terms every month with great backlinks, optimized for the city and all.
It currently ranks on second page for the listed search terms listed above. What I want to do is 301 redirect this microsite to my city page on my main site that is much better optimized for the key city terms.
The 301 redirect would point this "root domain" (mymicrosite.com) to my city page that looks like this. www.mymaindomain.com/city/XXXXXXX If I do this will Google rank my main URL city page as well as it ranks this microsite with zero links, seo, etc, etc. What happens if it does not? Will I be able to turn off the 301 redirect and keep the microsite rankings? My main reason for wanting this is I want this city page to rank well and I only want to optimize one site instead of both. Any help would be great!0 -
.CA site same as .com site - are both necessary?
Dear Friend, We representa a major national brand in the auto care industry, and they have locations in both US and Canada. There is a primary content site at .com that we have duplicated at .ca. We are hosting the .ca site on a separate IP on a server in Canada - but by in large it is the same site. (there are some minor changes we made to change US English to Canadian English - though minor. When we search Google.ca we generally see strong search results for the .com site, but rarely, if ever any evidence of rankings for the .ca site. The .com site was launched several years ago about 18 months before the .ca site. Why doesn't Google.ca show the .ca site? Is this an issue of duplicate content, and Google.ca simply shows the .com version which it knew about first? Are we wasting our time, money and efforts having both? Thanks, Tim ps. this isn't about location. We use a separate site to locate local shops, and have coordinated that well with Google Places, and when looking for local auto care - we do well in both US and Canada. The sites described above are largetl content sites.
Technical SEO | | lunavista-comm0