Lots and lots of domains

[CarolineBogart]

I have a client who bought maybe 30 or so domains for his one business.

Can I use these domains in a white hat way to promote his business?

[Quadrille]

They could be "301'd" to catch type-in traffic, if they are close to the name, but otherwise they simply compete with the main domain - and anyone landing on them has an extra click to get to the real thing.

There's plenty of non-white hat ways, but Google's on to them!

The general 'white hat' approach is to have as few domains as possible - preferably one - to concentrate, rather than dilute, your marketing effort.

The only other advantage of owning multiple domains is to stop competitors hurting you (eg if your active domain is domain.org, you'd be sensible to own domain.com, with a 301).

I'm sure you know all that stuff, I'm using your question to reach others who might not! :)

[CarolineBogart]

You're kind, but I really don't know. I'm more of a "take the data from here and put it over there" programmer. I've joined the forum to learn about internet marketing. I picked up some intellectual stuff on my own but I'd love to hear real-world!

One thing I did wonder if this is ok, suppose I built a portal on one of his other domains. Would we get penalized if the whois was out in the open and the sites pointed to each other?

[Comeran]

YES YOU WILL GET HURT!

The last thing you want are a bunch of sites and pages pointing at eachother. You will get hit down for sure.

The best thing to do is a 301 redirect to get the traffic off of the sites.

If your intent was to build 30 sites, get them all ranked and use them to point to a main site to build PR it is a scheme that is very well known by Google and won't work for long.

Let us know what you end up doing.

Comeran-

[CarolineBogart]

so one site should have everything -- portal if I build it, marketing... community forums...

[Quadrille]

I don't think the whois stuff matters (though some believe it does, and it certainly may in the future).

The issues are really two: Duplicate content and links.

If the portal is worth having, then surely that content should be on the 'main site', rather than on a secondary site which could remove the 'main site' from search results.

And a bunch of reciprocal links between the two is a real risk.

The question to ask is "How is this overlapping site adding value for the visitor" - and in most cases, it won't - it confuses them, by having them hop from domain to domain and back, and it risks success in SEO terms, as your effort is divided between two domains, instead of concentrated on the one.

Once upon a time there could have been SEO value, as links were so important, and there was no such thing as a bad link (almost!).

Them days are long gone!

[Comeran]

I totally agree w/ Quad.

You need to think about the visitor and multiple sites is almost always not of value to them.

I still think the best bet is a 301 from all sites to the main site and just milk the traffic from the other domains until it is done.

The only thing is that multiple domains w/ duplicate whois DOES hurt you. I had a client that couldn't be listed in DMOZ because he had 10 domains, and after he came to me we turned them all into 1 but he had already had his account commented with "duplicate content, watch these domains" so we never could get listed.

Your best bet is to fly straight on this one, it will help your client in the long run, I also think that search engines will use whois inforamtion in the future for duplicate content penalties as well (if they aren't already doing that).

Comeran-

[CarolineBogart]

So you can actually find out what happened to your stuff in the dmoz black hole? Wow! I've never gotten anywhere with them.

[Comeran]

ROFL!

I am an editor of many categories. I simply msged the editor of the category for the client and they were kind enough to forward me the information on that domains comments. I was shocked to see that they had been so thorough, they had 7 of the 10 domains listed in the warning so every time he submitted they just deleted the request and never looked back.

I couldn't ask them to take the site even though I had removed the multiple sites because the truth is you don't trust sites that used to spam, once a cheat always a cheat is the general concept (even though I don't think of it that way).

The sad part is that some people blindly trust the SEO's they hire and end up getting hurt and can never recover with that site, they will have to start over to gain creditability back.

Good luck.

Comeran-

[CarolineBogart]

I got into dmoz maybe two weeks ago, but I just saw it last night. *happy dance*

My listing (hmm, bad word here, I was censored) though. It's not at all what I said. I was put into the Litchfield, New Hampshire category instead of the computer consultant category, too.

To me dmoz is a black hole with no doorbell.

(Ok that's a weird metaphor, but it is late.)

Thanks for this advice, all. It's very helpful.

[Quadrille]

Well done - you are in!

Don't worry about the category; very few people search directly through the ODP directory - the value is in how the data is spread around the web.

Don't worry too much about the description, so long as its fair - they are very specific on the structure of a description, and there are few exceptions.

In fact, one sign you've been around too long, is that you know the style so well, you can submit a description that doesn't get changed :D

[Comeran]

It takes a few months to get used to the ODP descriptions :p

I remember before I was an editor how scared I was trying to fill that form out for my sites :p It is a humbling situation.

Glad that you made it in!

Comeran-