When you sign up for a domain or start researching your domain, one thing becomes quickly clear; your domain name matters and having a keyword in your domain is often an aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Just to define the term, a keyword can be considered any search word (or phrase) people will type into a search engine that you want to be a result for.

The role of a keyword in a domain is easy to overstate. That is, unless you’re contending for a word that doesn’t have a lot of competition, your use of a keyword in the domain is a single mote of sunshine streaming into a greenhouse — easily lost and having almost no noticeable impact.

That said a relevant and logical keyword does give your website some boost and in today’s keyword saturated market, there’s really no reason not to, unless such a thing would make for a cumbersome domain name.

In this case, cumbersome just means the domain is too long:
johnsmithcoaching.com isn’t long but

johnedgarsmithnewyorkcitycoaching.com is going to be hard to remember let alone rattle off when you’re giving your domain to a prospective client or colleague for referral.

Especially if you consider that your email would then be [email protected] – you’ll be out of breath before you can tell someone where to email you.

But that single keyword looks nice and gives you an SEO boost. So, imagine how many keywords you can get a boost on just by purchasing more domains.

Then before you know it you’re on GoDaddy or Namecheap and own everything from

johnsmithnewyork.com to
johnsmithtopcoaching.com to
feelhealthylifebetterjohnsmith.com

Unfortunately, as tempting and simple as it sounds, buying every keyword domain in your field is not going to boost your search results. If you handle things right, multiple domains will not hurt your website’s search engine ranking, but that same money spent renewing domains would be better spent with a smart adwords buy.

There are several scenarios for multiple domains without multiple sites of content and neither one will ultimately give you the SEO boost you’re looking for.

Scenario 1: Duplicate site content.

Definition: Each domain has the exact same site content but is technically a separate site.

Why it’s bad: Search engines hate duplicate site content. For one, if multiple links go to the same place, then search engines aren’t doing their job. For another, when search engines see multiple sites with the same content, they assume you are spamming or trying to trick the system into giving your site a higher ranking than it deserves, and react to negate, not reward this behavior.

Therefore, when you have two sites with the same content, search engines apply a proprietary and secret (a good search engine will never reveal exactly how to gets results) set of rules search engines to determine which site is canonical and which is just a copy.

Like the branded version and the off brand version, the copy is put on the bottom shelf.

However, which version is canon and which version is considered the copy might vary on a page by page basis, and in the end both of your pages are weakened by this duality.

In a case where you must have duplicate content, there is a tag system to help, but all this tag does is tell the search engine which site version to discount. There is no tag that will cause it to take both sites into consideration.

In short, the best you can do is negate the ill effects a duplicated site has.

Sidenote: This is one reason why we always recommend personalizing your content at least minimally see this blog and this blog for more on that.

Scenario 2: The 301 Redirect.

Definition: Alterations are made to the records which guide your domains’ behavior so that any one who goes to the non-primary domain will be redirected to the primary domain. This is how we handle multiple domains, with some rare exceptions.

Simply put, when a user attempts to go to domain “A” they are automatically redirected to domain “B” which acts as the primary domain and the only domain with content the search sees.

This is how we will handle multiple domains on your account with few exceptions.

But equally relevant, the secondary domains have no weight, only the keyword in the primary domain will be considered when your site is being ranked. Therefore, again, you aren’t getting any boost from having additional keyword-heavy domain names.

Scenario 3: This site is used to point to your main site

Earlier in search engine history, the idea of creating microsites (tiny sites with very little content) that linked to your main site was not a terrible idea. However, with the release of Google’s latest search engine algorithm and similar updates on Bing, this idea is totally obsolete. If your site doesn’t have activity; fresh content, new pages, updates and the like, then it’s going to be less attractive.

Since search engines prefer regularly updated sites, The Hot Topics! page has content which updates regularly.

That means if you want to create pointer sites (sites geared to get more traffic to your main site), every pointer site needs to have active content changes and unique text. Without this, no pointer site is will matter enough to give your main site any juice.

So now, instead of having one site to maintain, you’ve got lots of sites, which means a lot of time (and time is money) spent maintaining sites whose only purpose is to draw traffic to your main site.

To find out some great SEO alternatives, get in touch with the CoachingWebsites SEO team or check out the SEO tab for more information.
Mari F – CoachingWebsites Support
Email any questions to [email protected]