Why Multiple Domains are Mostly Bad for SEO
It happens all the time, and causes me to scratch my head in complete confusion every time: Someone I’m working with on SEO will own multiple domains for the same business. I don’t mean that they have a couple related domains, I mean the same business and same offerings or services on more than one domain.
I usually find out about these domains in one of two ways: I find them through poking around and investigating the site (and the client usually acts like it’s some sort of dirty secret), or, they come to me about the domains and want more than one site to show up at the top of the search results.
I’ll be honest, I’m not usually a happy camper when I get this news; mostly because the secondary domains tend to have duplicate content (if you’re not aware, duplicate content is a bad thing). That being said, however, there is such thing as effectively using multiple domains (although I don’t recommend it). There are two main tactics commonly employed with owning multiple domains. Keep in mind that I’m going to keep an SEO perspective on these and only lightly touch on other marketing sectors.
The Defensive Domain Buyer
Some businesses are worried that competitors will buy keyword oriented domains thereby pushing their own site into obscurity. This can lead to a panic shopping spree of domains. The idea is that as long as they own the available domains, there is less chance of a competitor beating them in the rankings. While there is some merit to this tactic, it will have no effect on your SEO at all. Nor do I believe that it will really have much effect in blocking out your competitors. You can’t think of all the domain variations and buy them all, and if you buy too many, it can get expensive just to maintain them. Any competitor can rank better by offering better content and getting more links regardless of domain name.
As a side note, if you do this tactic, you had better make sure that all of your domains are redirected toward your main domain using a 301 redirect.
The First Page Domination Strategy
In buying multiple domains, some companies want to simply dominate the search results. Buy having multiple sites on the first page, you can get that much more traffic, right? In theory, yes, and it has on occasion happened. However, there are some fairly serious drawbacks to this:
- Doesn’t work on brick-and-mortar stores — If you have a single physical location, it’s not a good idea to have multiple websites. You’ll confuse your visitors and customers, and I personally avoid having two websites with the same address. Google doesn’t want to have multiple sites from the same business (as it doesn’t provide good results) and I consider this to be one short step away from spam.
- Duplicate content woes — Because you can’t use the content from another site, you will have to write all new content. Considering how hard it is to write content for sites as it is, not to mention the allocation of resources to get it written, I wish luck to anyone writing content for a whole new site.
- Double branding all the way! — You have branding issues with two sites. Does one site become higher-end and the lower-end? Do you keep the prices the same? For that matter, what names are you even going to use on the site? If you have a phone number, how do you answer the phone? While there are certainly going to be exceptions (such as targeting different demographics), such a chaotic and divisive branding effort comes with a lot of risks and extra work.
Country Specific Domains
This is less of a tactic, and more of a “must do,” and is therefore my exception to multiple domains. It’s an exception because all of the problems above do not apply when you get into other countries. In fact, in order to have the best results in international SEO, you’ll need to have a country specific TLD (or top level domain). For example, if you’re doing business in England, you will have a hard time ranking without a .co.uk domain. You can still rank without a country level TLD, but it’s an uphill battle. And by uphill, I mean Rocky Mountains-type uphill.
SEO Resources and Indented Listings
One final (and big) point to that I would like to reiterate. If you really intend to own and run multiple domains and get these sites to show up in the search results, you will have to double your SEO work. There are no shortcuts, freebies, or quick rankings that you can get, even if you are already ranking well for your main domain. In fact, a new domain and site will be significantly harder to rank than a site that has history and some authority already built. I highly recommend that indented listings (or secondary pages for the same site showing up underneath the first main listing) be the primary goal before attempting to achieve multiple domains in the same search.
Tags: domain names, domains, domains and seo, duplicate content, Multiple Domains, seo
Couldn’t agree with you more Scott. This always seems to come up in conversations and I try to sway people against this method.
Sure it may work on a small scale, and I have tried this method myself. But the drawbacks outweigh the benefits… IMO.
“One final (and big) point to that I would like to reiterate. If you really intend to own and run multiple domains and get these sites to show up in the search results, you will have to double your SEO work”… Another good point. Simply ranking on a keyword really does no good when you can do the same on your own site with minimal effort.
Dan
Surely multiple domains is a bad plan because it makes it harder to focus your energy? Isn’t it better to have a great position 1 listing for multiple terms than owning the page for one term?
Yes, having only one domain is absolutely a great idea. The point I’m really trying to get across is exactly that, that your work is double as a result of trying to use multiple domains.
Sadly, it doesn’t stop people from trying.
One is good, then two must be great!
Clients fall into this trap not only with domains but keywords as well.
Rapid rise and profit is only possible with singular focus at any one time, all else just produces mediocre results because of “dilution”.
We are feature driven consumers.
More buttons, bigger numbers of things, must mean better deal.
The most successful SEO’s I know manage to educate their clients differently.
Scott,
What about buying relevant domain, just to keep someone else from grabbing it? Even if you just use the additional domains to link directly to your main site? Would this cause possible conflicts for SEO?
This doesn’t create any conflicts with SEO, it just doesn’t help with rankings. Unless you’re buying tons of domains, putting up landing pages and linking to your main site (as opposed to a 301 redirect). That’s a dangerous game, and would also provide practically no value.
This is interesting. I think you all should study and blog on the optimal way to park a domain portfolio, like what landing page ideas would be good for SEO or conversion?
I am currently going to school for web development and this topic is one that I’ve contemplated doing. I do have a second domain for one of my sites but am not using it and will likely not after this post. In the industry that I work in some of my competitors use multiple domains and are on the first page but I’d hate to think how much time and money went into their site.
You can use a 301 redirect from one website to another this can be handy if you did have multiple sites then you merged them all into one or something for example if you had a few services and had these domains and all of them ranked well for there exact keyword domains this is how you would do it.
The duplicate content issue is pervasive and tends to be my number one concern particularly when business owners rely on “webmasters/seo experts” to boost organic rank using this technique. Unfortunately, knowing about this duplication does not remove it. Your post is spot on…thanks
Scott, further to your well made point about multiple domains for different countries, I would like to further emphasize this point by advising companies that one domain name is no longer sufficient in reaching customers across the globe, and in this case, as you said, varying appropriate geographical domain names are a very wise choice.
Scott, I was very happy to find this article because someone told one of my clients it would help SEO to point a bunch of domains at their web site…. not create new sites just point them at the existing site. So the client went out and purchased a bunch of domains and now wants me to point them at their web site. I am fairly confident that this is going to do nothing and might even hurt their SEO.
From what you said above it sounds like the best way to use multiple domains on a single site is to use a 301 redirect… but chances are it still will not show up in SE results… but probably won’t hurt SEO either.
In the article you use ‘domains’ and ‘web sites’ interchangeably and confused me a little. I get the duplicate content issue and could not agree more. But what if my client wanted to put up a single page inside a site and point a domain at that page for advertising purposes – so when an actual human types in the URL it will go to that page – not trying to get search engine rankings with it. Would this hurt SEO?
Something we have done for some clients is use a second domain to build a single squeeze page site to promote a particular product or service. Usually these pages are sent out through Email and snail mail promotions. They might show up in searches but that is not necessarily the goal. We have not found that this hurt SEO of the company’s main site. Does this sound correct or am I missing something here?
Any further input you can give would be great.
Alfelt
Alfelt, it sounds like you’re right on track. Using vanity URLs like what you describe is completely fine and won’t hurt anything as long as 301 redirects are being used.
And yes, using 301 redirects will prevent the redirected domain from showing up in results.
If I own a few domains that I have not developed into websites (no hosting, just registered domain names) may I point them to my site without using a 301 redirect? I mean, the domains aren’t even hosted, so a 301 is not possible in that case, right?
I am also not a great fan of having multiple domain name. I would like to take one domain and then work hard to optimize it
Hi Scott,
I loved the post. Country specific domains is something I really want to test out. For some reason it took me a long time to get my head around how target to different locations. It really is not that hard.
Another cool tip is to make sure you add the backslash at the end of your backlink url.
So your backlinking efforts are not spread across multiple domain urls. For example “seo.com/” rather than “seo.com”.
Thanks again, SEO.com is full of awesome content.
nice article…and what Scott said, it is true that no matter how much article about the negative effect having multiple domains on SEO people read on the web, people don’t stop trying. Either way, this is very informative.
I agree with the Scott. It seems like two sites is a duplication of effort when it would make more sense to focus your efforts in one direction on one site. You also have to be concerned with how any duplicate content will be interpreted by the various search engines. In an effort to combat SPAM, duplicate content is viewed suspiciously. Why not just optimize different pages of your site for different keywords instead of setting up a totally new site. I guess the goal is to be 1 and 2 on the search results but more than likely the divided approach will cause neither to make the first page results – IMO
Content written here is very informative. Search engine always hates duplicate contents either its redirected or not. It is very bad from SEO point of view.
I know several people and businesses that have tried this, and like Scott said, when they realise that they can’t use the same content, it finally dawns on them how much effort is involved in maintaining the multiple sites. This time and money could be far better spent.
Scott, good point about the top level domains.
I always advise clients to get a TLD that relates to their country, especially if they are a small business and doing all of their business in that country. E.g. if they are a UK based restaurant, and only cater locally, they are better off going with a .co.uk domain.If they already have a .com, then I advise them to have their website hosted on UK servers (even if they have a .co.uk domain) and update their webmaster tools account for UK.
Yes, a main concern would be the tendency to have duplicate content and of course Google is death on duplicate content and does penalize sites accordingly. I agree that the idea seems to be to dominate the first page results of the major search engines; but that would be really hard to do and I’m not sure at the end of the day that that would improve your ROI all that much, for all the extra work of having to create so much more content for all the various domains. Also, you shouldn’t have to find out about the extra domains on your own…the company in question should tell you up front what has gone on in the past with their web presence which will create better synergy between you the SEO & the company you are representing.
Thanks for the comment. If only clients would be more upfront about telling us about the domains! Sometimes, though, the client just doesn’t any better. I really can’t expect every business to know that having multiple domain can be a problem (which is partly why this post was written). Hopefully this will educate some business owners out there to improve that communication.
Interesting topic indeed!
In regards of multiple languages i have the same experience but it also goes for product groups. My subdomains are far better of than my topdomains with sub groups. My top domain seems to be considered as jack of all trade…
I have other languages than english ranking top using .com as TLD. What I can see is that the sublanguages get less credit than the official start page, even though english is one of the subpages.
To get additional TLD was a good idea, that I will reconsider. Would it work just to do a re-direct to each language section? Would it be concidered as the main index page?
In any case its strange Google force us to do this when they expressly recommend us to keep all our companies webpages under one domain…
Niclas, it would not work to redirect a country specific TLD to a language page. You would want your visitors to be redirected to the country specific domain as the page you redirect to will appear in the search results.
Scott,
What’s your take on the situation when you want to use separate domain for market segmentation? For example, a business consultancy may have various products services that are vastly different from each other. It’s all branded under the same name & brand, but the audience is different & the internal workflow/logistics of customer service & service deliver is different (eg, biz consultancy, events & training, advertising & marketing). Is this a case of having 2 or 3 different websites, each one serving the needs of each division/department? If so, would you implement it using different domains or using sub-domains (from a SEO perspective)?
In all honesty, it would probably depend on the industry and company. However, I would probably still argue keeping the domains to just one. The reason is really the same, that is, having two sites doubles the work you have to do.
Perhaps it helps to think of it this way: If you have one strong domain with a lot of authority and “link juice”, that benefit will pass on to the rest of pages and sections. The more work you do to your main domain, the more the rest of your categories and sub sections of the site will benefit. If a subcategory starts to naturally gain links and attracts some authority, that will also benefit the main domain and other sections. This is all assuming that proper internal linking is taking place.
If they were all on separate domains, the best you could hope for is just a few good links from each domain and you have less chance of getting that association.
However, it’s understandable that politics would prevent keeping to one domian, in which case, it’s highly recommended to link freely amongst the several domains. I would also try to keep to sub-domains as opposed to completely different domains.
So what about domain forwarding? If you have multiple domain names because you don’t want your competition to buy names similar to yours… (which is how several web hosts market you.) How does having them all forward to the same website effect your SEO?
As mentioned above, it does nothing for your SEO, as long as those domains are being 301 redirected. It doesn’t hurt or help your rankings. It only gives one less option for competitors.
The problem of multiple domain is the organization and the correct management. Multiple domain which duplicate content, redirect 301 to the one domain is a practice whith more problem and if managed badly can carry to destructive result
Hey Scott,
Great article. But I have one question that I am still finding trouble getting a direct answer. I have an electrical contracting company and am happy with our seo progress. Now, I’d like to delve into general contracting (which we are also licensed for) but I don’t want to discount my previous and ongoing seo efforts for my electrical site, which is the main bread/butter. So for example my site is branovercontractors.com (its all electrical) Is it ok if I buy lets say branoverconstruction.com with obviously slightly different content (focus on general contractor stuff), but same have the same phone number and branover in it? I’ve been trying so hard to get a quality answer. Your opinion is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
First, you may want to talk with an SEO professional directly on this question. I have an opinion on what you aught to do, but it’s based on the limited information you have here in your comment.
If you are looking to expand services and offer something completely different you what you have been offering, it may make sense to create a new website. Just keep in mind, it will require additional SEO effort and spend, and you will be starting from scratch which makes rankings more difficult to obtain. If you can use your existing site as a starting point, and can put the new practice there, you might have better success. Again, you might have to talk with someone about how to best handle that.
As for your address and phone number, you shouldn’t have any problems with posting them on both sites, as long as the rest of the content on the page is clearly unique and different from your original site. You’ll only run into problems when you try to create more than one Google Places listing.
Scott,
In the LAEC’s situation, would it be at all beneficial to introduce the new offering (construction) via new pages on the original branovercontractors.com domain, taking advantage of that domain’s current SERP, and then when those pages had built up some ‘traction’ of their own, transfer the content from those pages to the new domain (branoverconstruction.com), add throw up some 301s?
sorry for the run on.
while all you’re writing is true, here’s a counter-question: would you put all your money in a single stock when investing?
there many ways a domain may be at a disadvantage (or even banned by google) and having several domains with unique content could help diversify in the internet market.
sure, the costs are higher but the same applies to diversifying your stock market portfolio as well. no rational investor would put all eggs in one basket…..
I would argue that Stocks and Websites are not equal. A stock will grow or crash regardless of what you do with it once you own it. A website and business will succeed only if you put your heart and soul into the effort (or get really, really lucky).
So, I again argue that having multiple sites will increase your workload significantly, or spread your workload too thinly.
Now if you have unlimited resources (aka money) then go right ahead. It’s just not a recommended practice to spread yourself to thinly with websites.
You’ve cleared many doubts on this issue. Great in-depth information. I must confess I fell for the trap, and bought a similar-wording domain to my main domain. Now after reading your post, I realize the pros and cons, and I think I need to sit and think what to do with it. Thanks a lot, Scott.
I agree with Sav.
I’ve seen too many webmasters get burned badly by the big G. Lose 90% of your domain’s traffic overnight, with no idea what you did wrong / what algorithm change caused it.
Thanks for the tip, but I’ll hedge my bets for now. Risk management. Worst case = i change my mind in 10 years & get to sell a bunch of aged domains.
Nothing wrong with this tactic, just keep in mind you’re adding a lot to your workload. It might work out for you, but you’ll have lots of small websites and businesses as opposed to one potentially big, money making site.
Just a counter-thought to consider.
Online shoppers are now getting wiser everyday. If they will see different domains on the first page then will see their content with the same message or duplicate, they will get easily annoyed. Therefore, it is better to just build one with lots of unique and informative information. In my opinion, this will increase the chance of visitors to keep coming to your site and bookmarking it.
What about Microsoft Officelive which allows you to have multiple domains automatically added and they all work with your site automatically?
I have a question.
What if a site is called “www.george.com” but George owns a landscaping business. If George has already established himself as “george.com” with business cards and marketing, signs etc… Wouldn’t it make sense for him to purchase “www.georgelandscaping.com” so that he has the word landscaping in his address? http://www.georgelandscaping.com would then have a 301 redirect to http://www.george.com.
I hope my question makes sense! I loved your article, so useful and articulate!
Nancy, nothing wrong, at all, with changing your domain. You’re talking about losing a generic domain for a more keyword centric domain, which is great! This post was meant to detract people from buying multiple domains with the belief that it would increase their rankings. When you switch domains, you absolutely need to keep the old one and make sure that a 301 redirect is being used.
About the idea of changing a non-keyword domain for a keyword-domain and using a 301-redirect to the new domain (as in the “george.com” example), would there be any substantial loss of traffic if the old domain was already established online for several years with numerous inbound links? Would it be like starting over again with a brand new site with zero traffic? Or would it be an insignificant change and yet a significant improvement at the same time? Please answer this question, as it is the very decision I’m facing right now with my business.
Mara, 301 redirects are are really a different topic than the article I have posted here. I would really recommend asking this question in a forums setting, like forums.seo.com, or forums.digitalpoint.com.
While I do recommend going to these sites for a more in depth answer, expect a dip in traffic from your 301 redirect, but no real loss of traffic or authority in the long long.
“duplicitous” content
You have waken me up from my ‘illusion’ of the merit and benefit of having more-than-one domains. I, at least, have had two domains for a single business. Now I realize that it is not efficient… and not effective.
Thanks for the post
Hi,
I have a client who has a product that they want to sell in Australia, New Zealand, The UK.
They want to use tld names for each country ie. example.co.nz, example.co.uk, example.com.au, example.com
The index and contact pages of each site will be slightly different but the rest of the content will be the same.
Will they be penalised for this?
I am guessing no because numerous large corporation must do this.
Thanks
David
David, in international SEO, the rules are a bit different. You won’t be penalized in the search engines, because each of those sites will only show up in their respective countries. While this isn’t a completely accurate way of thinking about it, it helps to think of the different countries as completely different, segregated search engines.
A couple of times in the past I have tried to build “sub” websites for niche products of our wilderness resort here in Canada. Each time I ended up with a revamped and better version of my original website because, although a niche product such as wildlife viewing seems to be separate from catch and release fishing, the actuality is that they both happen at our same resort which means the bulk of the content remains the same and the different activities actually support each other.
Reading this article I understand and am happy the secondary websites never worked out, although the efforts did work for me in revamping and improving my website. Thanks for sharing great information.
Wow. Great list! I have used a lot of them before, but it is nice to have them all in one place. I really should go .
I have a slightly different example which give me doubts.
For my upcoming business im thinking about purchasing a domain with several keywords included representing my business (for example: Jameshousesandappartments.com) As this domain name should be good in SEO point of view, offline marketing (example on tv radio or newspaper) such a long domainname is more difficult.
My id is to purchase a shorter domain (James.com) for offline marketing and redirect this domain to my main domain. (Jameshousesandappartments.com)
Good id? or any potential pitfalls?
Thanks in advance, Koen
Hi Scott
Great Post!
I’m running 2 country specific domains for the same website. (The domains are slightly different, not just a .com/.co.uk switch)
The content is the same apart from the product listings & prices, which is different depending upon what country you’re in.
Both domains are targeted to different countries in google webmaster tools.
D’you think Google would consider this tactic duplicate content and harm both website’s position in the SERPS?
Thanks again
Joe
I'm going to come in from the other side of the fence. I do have multiple domains for one of our company's products and it does work for us in the SERPS. However, the domains have been designed to work on a very broad spectrum services sector and have to cover a large number of keyword combinations. It's for this reason that I have arranged the domains and associated TLDs so that they have a decreasing number of in-bound links, depending upon competition and that those links are very keyword specific. The aim is to prevent having more than one domain show up in search results at any one time. but at the same time to cover such a broad spectrum of keyword results that if they were all on the same site, we'd be struggling. It has also proven great help with variations in search engine algorithms between Bing and Google, which means we have top 3 rankings on both engines, whereby the less important site has a greater weighting of keywords than the other. However, I'm careful to focus most of my energy on our main flagship site (the less 'keyword rich') and let the others bumble along, picking up a little traffic here and there (so as to avoid any form of Brand confusion).
However, this is not for the feint hearted and I've been extremely careful to avoid any form of spam generation. As a result, I've got 3 Authority domains that stick in the top 3 rankings of the 3 main Search Engines and have done so for the past 3 years- at present for some 2,500 keyword combinations.
I would advise the following though:
1) Matt Cutts has made it perfectly clear that there is no Duplicate Content Penalty in Google Serps.
2) Only your primary domain should be your main goal, a second or third domain will come in a very very distant second and third respecitvely.
3) My primary domain ranks for the most competitive keyword combinations, preventing any conflict of interest- thereby it gets 80-90% of total traffic- other domains are somewhere on page 6-7 of respective Engines for these keywords.
4) All domains are on completely different class C IP's.
5) All domains link back to the primary domain- this is designed to prevent them theoretically ' overtaking the primary domain'.
I have to admit throughout all this, I am extremely paranoid and although I'm fully aware that there is no duplicate content penalty, I hate creating spem anyway, so have ensured that each and every site is completely different to the last. I realise that it's extremely hard work to achieve, but if you want to get anywhere in life, there's no easy way to do it.
What about building up seperate websites with separate content? Is that a bad idea? If you can get more than one pages in in the top 10, isn't that a good thing?
Very good information!!! Its tough enough to seo one domain!
I had 3 domains, two of them were going right to the content of the main website. After this article I created 301 redirects, which do the same thing, but now the site isn’t viewing the links of the other domain.
Thanks! I also am using this is a paper I am writting about my marketing plan.
Chad
Scott, You each and every blog give some useful and deep information over differents Topics. Thanks. Keep It Up.
Thank you Scott, you just my task of convincing some clients that this is a dumb idea even easier. Focus and persistence pays off but not if you have to do this for 12 domains instead of just one.
After all, you can only get them to come to one website, and in fact just one page, it's the one that ranks at the top of Google.
So is having the exact same site on 2 different domains illegal by google or really bad?
Super interesting article. I have ONE product I sell (Headband Holders). It is a patented product that is brand new to the market, and we have had huge success in the past year on our website orders (going from zero to hundreds sold per month in less than a year) with no advertisement… only SEO.
Recently I have purchased several domain names related to this (headbandholder.com is "manin" domain name and has been at the top of Google for months). We also bought headbandholder.tv, headbandholder.mobi, and several others… I have not yet done anything with these sites; and I am wondering if a 301 redirect is wise (I was just going to do that originally) or now perhaps just "sit" on them!
Also… for International domains (co.uk, co.au, co.nz) I own these too; and am getting ready to do more International. Do I need to create brand new sites / content for each of these in order to get ranked in country (as opposed to some sort of redirect?) The content would be identical; and I am looking to minimize the work. If I can redirect these and get ranked, that would be excellent. I have not been able to figure out if this is the case. Thanks for any advice.
Hi, i am trying to make SEO to a site that have multiple domains and duplicate content to some other domains. The problem is that i was ok for 10 keywords (in top 10) and sudently they dissapear! The problem is the duplicate content, what cause this trouble?
Our normal business is travel. At different times of the year we do contract charters with a partner. While it is fine to promote the charters on our site, our site is not a good url for adwords advertising.
Would it make sense to have unique sites set up just for these promotions that could have much more effective urls that people would be more likely to click on through adwords?
Lost in Vancouver,
The more specific the URL is the better it will convert. The other thing about doing separate sites, (url included) is you can have fully customized content, which not only will you get the click, it will lead to higher sales conversions.
Another benefit of this approach is your SEO for each of these dedicated sites is going to be a natural pickup as well. It does however multiple your SEO firepower requirements.
Say you got hold of 5 keyword phrases that were 100% matching for what you wanted, you hosted them on different servers to your own, each domain has new server, linked the keywords/phrase back to your main site.
So, in reality a complete stranger is recommending your website, this can no way affect your rankings surely otherwise you can bring your competition down? It must help you.
Sorry, on the above post I meant to say 5 keyword domains……