new domain best practices?

[BCO]

Our company just purchased a new domain name with keywords in the domain relevant to one of our products. Our intention now is to use apache virtual host redirects to ensure that any time someone clicks on this new domain name, they are directed to our main site's page for this specific product. So let's say that (keyword-rich-domain) will be directed to ( main-site / specific-product-page). Then we can advertise ( keyword-rich-domain ) everywhere.

From what I understand, using redirects will avoid the issue of duplicate content penalization in search engines. But I would like to know if anyone has any best practice suggestions, criticisms on this approach, or anything else that we should be thinking about before moving forward with this plan.

Any thoughts?

Thanks all,

B.

[Canonical]

Generally speaking, buying a brand new keyword rich domain and then 301 redirecting it to your main domain buys you nothing from an SEO perspective and it's confusing to your visitors. If it were that easy... well, you wouldn't need SEOs.

I say this because the keyword rich domain has no backlinks, so the 301 redirect is simply sending the visitor to the main domain. It's NOT transferring credit for any inbound links to the keyword rich domain because it doesn't have any.

Also the 301 redirect tells Google to remove the keyword rich domain URL from it's index and replace it with your main URL because it's permanently moved. So the keyword rich URL will NEVER show up in Google's index.

The only time owning multiple domains like this is beneficial IMO is if:

1) you build a separate site at that keyword rich domain with its own unique content related to the content of your main site, and use it to link over to your main site giving it relevant links or

2) you buy an existing domain (it doesn't even have to be keyword rich) that is relevant to your current site and 301 redirect all of the inbound links to the bought domain over to your main domain to give your main site credit for the inbound links to the purchased domain.

Unfortunately, if you go the route of #1 above you will have doubled your SEO, link building, and content generation efforts... so you'll typically have to either do twice the work or more likely do half as good a job promoting your main site. And what does it buy you even if you did get the new site to rank? Keyword rich domain names ONLY give you a significant ranking boost on EXACT matches (ie. if your domain is keyword1keyword2( dot)com then it ONLY helps you rank significantly better for search phrases "keyword1 keyword2" or "keyword1keyword2"). The boost you get on searches for "keyword1", "keyword2", "keyword1 keyword3","keyword2 keyword3", etc. (i.e. partial matches on the domain name) is no more a boost than having the keyword1 or keyword2 somewhere else in the URL (like a folder name or page name) which is VERY minor.

And if you go the route of #2 and buy existing site after existing site for the sole purpose of redirecting their URLs to gain backlinks, Google will catch on to this and likely devalue all 301'd links from other domains to your main site so you gain no benefit.

I would focus on your main site and not get sidetracked with cheap gimicks like this unless you have the time and money to deal with developing a whole other site while continuing to develop your main site.

[BCO]

Thanks for the reply. That clears up some things for us.
We primarily purchased the new domain to more more credibility to the new product and our patent application.

New question: If we develop a secondary site for this new domain and have links to our main site (and from our main site to this secondary domain), is there any estimated benefit (acknowledging the extra SEO efforts) for our main site? Or is more information required to answer this?

[wige]

Hm... I will start by saying that as far as secondary sites go, I agree with Canonical's points above. However, as part of a marketing campaign, a simple, easy to remember domain name that redirects to a product page can be beneficial. If you own Wesley's Widgets, and want to promote your line of fantastic Sprockets in traditional media, it is likely that you will get more traffic by putting the URL sprockets.com in your ads instead of wesleyswidgets.com/sprockets/index.php. In addition, the shorter URL may be easier to give out when requesting inbound links from other sites, and people that like your sprockets may be more likely to link (correctly) to your site using the easy to remember short domain name than the longer URL. PageRank will still flow through the 301, even if it may get diluted somewhat, and again, don't underestimate the potential benefits this strategy may have in offline marketing.

As to the point that Canonical raised about the change in URL possibly confusing visitors, I don't think that will be a major issue as long as your ads appropriately brand your product. As long as the customer knows that Wesley's Widgets is the company telling them about Sprockets, they are not likely to be too put off if they notice that they are taken to a new domain.

Many many many companies have followed this strategy. In fact, Google's own examples of how redirects work in the search engine used xbox.com, which was an easy to remember domain name, which redirected to microsoft.com/en-US/products/index.aspx?prodid=somecode2347432 or something similar.

[Canonical]

Hm... I will start by saying that as far as secondary sites go, I agree with Canonical's points above. However, as part of a marketing campaign, a simple, easy to remember domain name that redirects to a product page can be beneficial. If you own Wesley's Widgets, and want to promote your line of fantastic Sprockets in traditional media, it is likely that you will get more traffic by putting the URL sprockets.com in your ads instead of wesleyswidgets.com/sprockets/index.php. In addition, the shorter URL may be easier to give out when requesting inbound links from other sites, and people that like your sprockets may be more likely to link (correctly) to your site using the easy to remember short domain name than the longer URL. PageRank will still flow through the 301, even if it may get diluted somewhat, and again, don't underestimate the potential benefits this strategy may have in offline marketing.

As to the point that Canonical raised about the change in URL possibly confusing visitors, I don't think that will be a major issue as long as your ads appropriately brand your product. As long as the customer knows that Wesley's Widgets is the company telling them about Sprockets, they are not likely to be too put off if they notice that they are taken to a new domain.

Many many many companies have followed this strategy. In fact, Google's own examples of how redirects work in the search engine used xbox.com, which was an easy to remember domain name, which redirected to microsoft.com/en-US/products/index.aspx?prodid=somecode2347432 or something similar.

Totally agree with you from the marketing perspective... having multiple domains (we call them vanity domains) to use in offline advertising (print, TV, radio) that 301 redirect to your main site. They generally don't provide any SEO benefit, but are often easier for users to remember.