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Busy Beavers & Domain Registrations

8/16/2012 3:57:00 PM -- Ted Krapf

<span style="font-size: 16px;">It's been a while since my last blog entry -- life has been extraordinarily busy with IT and web development projects, some family transitions, and planning for my upcoming wedding to the girl of my dreams! &nbsp;<br /> <br /> <br /> Have you ever run into a client, or guilty yourself, of purchasing tons of extra domain names for a single business? &nbsp;Even ones that aren't related to the business name, but end up pointing to the same website?<br /> <br /> <br /> I had a client recently with hundreds of domain names. &nbsp;Some had value, as they were common misspellings of their company name or alternate TLD's, but most that were just related to their industry. &nbsp;The extra domains came to my attention as many of them were about to expire and the client wanted to know what to do with them. &nbsp;Should we just point them all at the same website? &nbsp;Should we build a separate site for each? &nbsp;And how will this impact our search engine results and online marketing efforts?<br /> <br /> <br /> We went through a series of options, research and explanation with the client:<br /> <br /> <br /> Option #1 - Point all extra domains at the same web site<br /> PROs: Quick fix<br /> CONs: Doesn't allow the client to see if the other domains are being visited; could negatively affect SEO.<br /> <br /> <br /> Option #2 - Forward all extra domains to the primary domain name<br /> PROs: If the forwarding is done correctly with a 301 - Permanently Moved redirect, the search engines will at least get users to the correct site<br /> CONs: Forwarding could get mismanaged by the client; could massively dilute their SEO results across many many domains; could have Google's Panda demerit their ranking because of domains with duplicate content<br /> <br /> <br /> Option #3 - Create a site for each domain name<br /> PROs: If, and a BIG if, the content were different on each site, you could potentially create a large foot print of referring sites for the primary domain<br /> CONs: Duplicate content would demerit their rank; management 100's of sites instead of one, need to create the best content possible for 100's of sites now instead of a single site; Google's Panda is smart and getting smarter every day. &nbsp;While only a handful of Google ninja's know Panda's inter-workings, I'd strongly advise against trying to trick Panda into giving your site a better rank.</span>

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