Howdy, this is my first post and I hope it is in the correct forum. I currently have 3 domains. My main site is www.armyparatrooper.org, and my other two domains are www.airbornesoldier.org and www.paratroopers.us, but they are both only pointer domains to my main site. What I'd like to accomplish is to expand visibility of my main site using my other domains to bring more traffic to it. I assume that the search engines are the main force behind this so I am guessing that I really want to expand the search engine coverage so that all 3 domains show up to increase traffic to the main site. Currently, when I search for my pointer domains I get no results and I assume that it is because they are only pointer domains. Is this possible and if so, how do I go about this? Thank you for your help.
As I understand it, if you already have a domain with a decent rank in google, linking to another domain can help increase the rank of the second domain. If you have three domains that are at the bottom of the pile, however, I don't imagine linking between them would help much. Some things to try: Post to forums (like this one). After you have 10 posts here at DP you can include a signature with a links to you sites. This of course doesn't mean post a bunch of junk, as the powers that be would likely not take kindly to that. Start up a blog at a blog site that gets indexed. Blogger is a good one. Then ping this blog using Pingomatic. Try using Google sitemaps to at least get indexed, even though this likely won't help get you to the top of the search indexes. Submit your sites to free directory sites. I've thrown together a brief list here: http://workfromhomespot.com/resources/freedirs.aspx I think the consensus is still that there's nothing better than creating links to your site for getting your site indexed and improve your position. Cheers, Gary
Thanks for the info. My website is currently #1 on google for "army paratrooper", so you are saying I should add links to the other pointer domains even though they go to the same site?
Hmm, no I'm thinking that wouldn't help after all. I misunderstood your question. If you just link to the other domains, I would imagine that google would detect that the site content is the same, and not bother indexing the other sites. Now if you had some different content on the other sites, I'd think that would be more beneficial. I'm assuming that since you're already #1 for "army paratrooper", you're trying to improve your position with other keywords, right? I'm fairly new at this, though, so I'm mostly just guessing about how google works. Anyone else care to chime in? -Gary
Your assumption is correct. Google will only index your site itself and ignore all those other domains. The only way I can think of for you to use those domains to help your site would be to use them to create sites that have different content then your main one. Of course since all your domains are just variations of the same name, coming up with different content might be difficult. If your serious about this I would suggest creating different sites that deal with other areas of the Army.
Hi Cal, Having three sites about the same subject won't help you to rank better for the main one. You're better off working with one site than having to deal with 3 sites about the same topic. First off you must remember that search engines rank pages not sites. If you're trying to get traffic to your home page then you should focus on one or two keywords for that page. Every page on your site should focus on a different topic but relative to the theme of the site and every topic should focus on one or two keywords/phrases. A few things to consider: Focus on one or two keywords per page Every page should have a different topic but relative to the site theme Your site structure is very important. Make sure you use descriptive anchored text links to point to the interior pages. Use appropriate and unique titles, meta keywords and descriptions per page Start a link building campaign. Don't use any FFA (free for all) sites. Your anchored text for the links is going to help you with the offsite factors in your positioning. I hope this helps.
This is a very interesting thread as I have a similar dilemma. I have my main site which is dedicated to the Treo smartphone which is Everything Treo. Palm has recently announced a new Windows Mobile Treo. I own a PR4 domain treomobile.com. In the past, it's been used as a mobile portal. It's got nothing going for it in terms of rankings -- just decent PR, some directory submissions and a nice domain. Since this is a "niche" product, I was considering creating a site that deals specifically with this version of Treo. The other option that was presented to me was to create a sub-domain, so I could "brand" that specific area of my main site. The third option is to just stay "business as usual" and keep the content within my main site. I've been racking my brain thinking about the various options and factors: My Visitors - what do they want and is there a need What's the best option from an SEO perspective Am I overvaluing my PR4 site and what's the best way to utilize the value in that domain How does starting an entirely new site affect my workload and would I be diluting my brand -- by creating a sister site Any feedback or thoughts are appreciated. Thanks. Chris
I would think that setting a page on your main site is probably the best thing and use the keywords Windows Mobile Treo in the url. For example: yousite.com/windows-mobile-treo.com. I did a quick research for the keyphrase Windows Mobile Treo and it's being searched 18 times a day and you have some heavy competition for the keyword. Seeing that the product is new the search for the keyphrase will probably go up. Having a page for that product is probably a better choice because you're adding content to your main site, helping regular visitors by showing recent products and you're keeping within the site theme. If the keyphrase was searched more often then working on a separate site might have been a good choice because you could have started a link building campaign around the keyphrase. As I see it now it's not worth the effort for a new site.
Thanks for your help. Sounding this out has helped me big time. What about creating a subdomain off my main site? I recently created a store subdomain and the PR travelled to the subdomain. From a user perspective, the subdomain would be branded and dedicated to the new device. I see this as a positive and becomes a nice "mini-section" devoted to the new device. From an SEO perspective, I'm not sure if it makes sense. Do you gain anything by having windowsmobile.everythingtreo.com? Once I settle on a "homepage" or main page for this content, I'm thinking a redirect of the PR4 treomobile domain will help out. Any thoughts? Thanks! Chris
Linking the new page from the home page will pass pr too. The reason I mention setting up the page like this; yousite.com/windows-mobile-treo.com is because you can include the keywords in your url separately. Setting up your URL like this;yousite.com/windowsmobiletreo.com will not help you with your keyphrase because the SEs see it as one long word. You would set it up that way if people would search for "windowsmobiletreo". Remember that pages should be built for people and not SEs. If you believe that setting up a sub-domain is better for your visitors then that's the way you should go. You can always do a good job of optimizing the content. The URL is only part of the process for seo, it helps but isn't the deciding factor when it comes to ranking.