Company's main site ranking for a phrase when they also own the keyword rich domain

Hi

I've seen some companies / websites rank for a keyword phrase then discovered they actually own the keyword rich domain also too, yet the keyword domain doesn't appear in the results itself.

How does owning the keyword rich domain help their 'main' site appear and what did they need to do to achieve this?


Thanks,

Flinty

 

Either they own the domain for the type in traffic.

Alternatively it could be that the site was previously developed by someone else and has backlinks and they did a 301 to redirect on the keyword domain to their new domain.

 

As above I imagine they have a 301 redirect from the keyword domain to the specific page they are wanting, and then build links around the keyword domain to give it extra link weight

The 'inlinks' feature on Yahoo Site Explorer can be good to see where links are coming from.

 

Ok thanks guys.

So if it is '301 redirect' then the keyword rich domain would never appear as a separate site result in Google itself?

Does Google like this or do they see this as 'tricking' the system?

What if I were to have more than one keyword rich domain and '301 redirects' these to the main site - would that then put the main site in danger of being slapped by Google if they thought this wasn't good behaviour?

Is it best just to do it once and no more than that?

Cheers,


Flinty

 

A 301 redirect means that the site has moved so the original site would no longer appear in the serps. Google is fine with it. The main benefit to doing a 301 from another domain is that the backlinks should then count for your new site. So if you are thinking of buying a domain for this purpose buy it if it either gets type in traffic, or if has good backlinks.

I am sure doing one redirect to your site is fine, I doubt doing multiple ones will hurt otherwise your competitors could take you out of the rankings pretty easily). Also if you think that the redirect is hurting your site you can always stop it.

There are perfectly legitimate reasons for a redirect to occur, e.g. company changes its name, or merges with another company and the domains follow a similar pattern.

 

Ok thanks again.

What if the keyword rich domain is bought after the main site's domain (i.e domain bought now but the main site is say 3 years old) so no backlinks meaning maybe obvious to Google the reason for the 301 redirect is to get higher for that search term!? Any issues with it this way?


Cheers,

Flinty

 

Sounds good, I offer no guarantees though

 

I guess what i am asking is if the keyword rich domain is purchased after the 'real site' and yet does a 301 redirect does Google then see this trying to 'play' the system therefore both sites could potentially get sandboxed?

Are there any stories of this happening?


Cheers,

Flinty

 

You may have a penalty applied, but again I doubt it, otherwise it would be trivial for someone to knock someone else's site off the serps, at worst it would have no effect.

It is perfectly legitimate for this to work. Company A buys Company B, company A shuts down company B website and redirects it to an internal page on their website. When you Google for Company B it makes sense to be redirected to Company A's website.

 

If you're redirecting the domain with zero links TO the established site then it shouldn't hurt but it won't help either. No links and just a 301 redirect means that Google will ignore the new domain.

 

If the established domain is a 'brand' and the new domain is the prime keyword generic - what is the best way for the branded domain to benefit from investing in the generic - assuming that the brand is too strong to just replace it with the generic?

Concentrate on building links to the generic - or develop the generic in parallel (possibly not ideal, although sometimes possible) - or something else?

 

Thanks for the replies! Alot of help.

In regards to either leasing or selling a domain to an end user / client - do you find you need to go into this kind of detail when explaining to them the benefits of owning a generic domain?



Thanks


Flinty

 

You could use the generic purely for offline advertising i.e. on the TV, the radio, bus shelters, billboards, posters and anywhere else that people aren't necessarily in front of their PC. Unless the brand is VERY famous, it should be easier for people to remember the generic URL - and therefore be able to type it in at a later date to find the relevant site.

In that case, you'd 301 the generic to the brand site but not worry about promoting the generic or link-building to it. If the company in question's spending a sizeable amount on offline advertising the ROI could be very good even without using the new domain for anything beyond the above.

Of course, you could also redirect only "some" of the traffic from the generic, but e.g. set up specific pages on the generic domain as well. So the default behaviour would be to 301 to the brand site UNLESS the page existed on the generic site. That would allow the generic to be used for PPC as well, which should improve CTR and reduce CPC.

(lets you set up URLs like primegeneric.co.uk/landingpage/)

 

Great idea regarding the offline advertising - had never thought of that.

Alot of the great generics are gone and I don't seem to have much luck getting them when they do drop so what if the generic is 'ok' and targets a smaller customer i.e more local. Do you advise going into this level of detail regarding the '301 redirect'?

I guess Edwin you seem to have alot of great generic names that you could target businesses with who maybe have the £££ to spend - do you find yourself frustratingly educating the client about '301 directs' etc only for them not to get it and do you approach them or do you wait for them to come to you?

Thanks,

Flinty

 

I let the customers come to me (all my 4,000+ domains redirect to my sales site). The ones that get as far as buying tend to "get it" - after all, they're not going to spend thousands of pounds without a firm (and well-founded) belief in the merit of securing a strong generic domain name.

 

Great if you have great generic domains that you're confident the client / business / customer is going to come knocking.

If someone owns domains that are 'not as good' lol - maybe decent generics with a location attached - would you recommend contacting various parties to see if there was an 'interest'?

Also going back to the '301 redirect'. If a generic domain was bought with the intention to improve the rankings of the 'main' site by giving it some backlinks etc, does it then matter what the ccTLD is, if the site itself doesn't get to be found / seen in the search results? Could a bedroom company for instance just buy 'bedroomfurniture.me.uk' and have that do a '301 redirect' and therefore get the same result if they had managed to buy the co.uk? Of course i appreciate that using this example then they may want to have two sites but if they didn't and just wanted a '301 redirect'.


Thanks,

Flinty