I know there are a lot of threads on this topic, I have been reading for hours, but maybe this is a slightly different angle or I am mis understanding something. Apologies if I am being a bit dumb. Please hear me out.........then you can call me dumb or not I would like to set up a number of domains, rather like a hub and spoke arrangement. The spokes being domains with key words in the TLD, just with a homepage, feeding links to the hub. For example, if I had a stationery store, called stationery.com, the spokes might be: pens.com with a story about our new range of great pens, with links to the hub saying order them here. pencils.com all about the technical aspects of different pencils/leads, again with links to the hub, stationery.com The whole purpose of this being, that seperate domains, with the key words in the TLD, would be far more effective in SEO terms (search ranking), than putting these topics on the main or hub domain, such as stationery.com/pens.htm. There would be no duplicate content whatever. There would be no links from the main or hub domain back out to the spokes. So what do you think? Would the spokes perform better for their specific key words, leading to more traffic at the main or hub site? Would Google penalise this in some way? The aim is just to drive traffic to the hub, not benefit from higher PR using more links. I understand that I might need to host the sites in different locations so as to get different IP addresses. No problem with that. I am only talking about 3 or 4 additional spoke sites. Another related question is about 301 redirects. I notice a lot of the advice for this type of situation was to use 301 redirects for the 'spoke' domain names, redirecting to the hub. What is the point in that, if the spoke domains have no content? How would they attract traffic? Or in my example, is the asumption that pens.com being so specific, would attract traffic even though it does not really exist as a site (ie no content, no title tags, no description meta trags etc), but is merely a domain name? Once again my apologies if this seems to be a repeat of a common question, but I think I am looking at this in a slightly different way. Then maybe not. Any guidance most appreciated.
??? huh ??? , no only kidding. My guess is that unless this is a pretty major investment for you, I don't think there would be enough value in it. Consider this: 3 spokes = 3 domains + 3 seperate hostings + 3 times more link building (they still need to be indexed and have some juice even to utilize the domain name advantage) = money. Maybe that much money invested into link building on the hub might be a better and simple solution. I'm not really sure though. I did actually register 2 domains for a project recently for a product I am developing where productname.com will be the sales page and keyword.com will be a review site, and will hopefully take multiple positions in top 10 for main keywords in the niche with this arangement, but only did that because I think the niche is uncompeditive (SEO wise) and there is a bigger time (and hopefully reward) investment in the project for me than a typical one of my sites. My guess is that you will typically do better by focusing on 1 domain. Have not tested anything like this before though.
I don't mind the investment, as it's a major part of my life/income. Re the link building, I always saw that as so time consuming. I just don't have the time. (120 hour week already running a business) I have money....but no time. So how can I invest money rather than time in link building? I thought paid links were of little value with Google?
Sure, investing money in link building does not have to mean paid links. You can look at services for methods that are not against the guidlines (i.e. article writing/submission services, directory submission services, ...). You can look at whatever link building methods you are comfortable with and find a service that has a high corrsepondence to that and outsource it. I always tend to put a value on my time, so weather I link build myself or outsource it, I see it as money none the less.
The cost, maintenance and logistics of this concept will be overwelming. It is hard enough to make one web site rank. This requires many highly tuned SEO links. Since it sound like you are going to sell things, you will need a shopping cart. Your concept will need 5. Just stay with a good Search Engine Friendly Shopping Cart and focus on proper on-page SEO and off-page Link Building. If you can get this to work, the start your spokes. Just get one working first.
Seems like no one here has actually tried this. I appreciate the feedback but it's only supposition, not based on any experience of trying it. I'll be giving it a go over the next couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted.
Sorry to ressurect this thread, but I thought it might be interesting to review what happended, 2 years later. Just to add to the background, the purpose here was to provide some satelite sites, to drive traffic to the main site. The main site is a B2B brochure site for professional services, let's call it architects. Each satelite site was a seperate url, where the TLD was in fact a specific keyword. All the sites were hosted on different servers and some were in different countries. Each satelite site to date was just one page. Some content about the specific keyword and then links for contacts, more details etc to the main site. So, for example. Apologies to any architects. Main site. architects.com Satelite site. architects-USA.com Satelite site. architects-Offices.com Saelite site. architects-tall-buildings.com No off page SEO was done. No adwords campaigns. Oh, in the early days I might have submitted a couple of articles each. But basically they have just sat out there for 2 years unattended. Bit like a 'mooring minder' if you are in to boats. So what happened. Well they did not take off and drive huge amounts of traffic. Think that is to be expected. But: They all eventually ranked OK for their keywords. In fact most of them rank #1 for the keyword. But they keywords are VERY specific of course. They drip fed some trafic to the main site. In the dozens per month, certainly not thousands. They have no inbound links to them. Not surprising given there has been no SEO done. So was it worth it. Commercially no. Seperate hosting accounts etc. But they have ranked quite well naturally. And they are all just one page sites. (10 sites in all) So this poses some questions. If the keywords used for the TLDs are really good keywords, it might be worth developing the sites further. Some more pages, some basic off-page SEO, some link building perhaps. I have another 20 domain names registered stil to trial. Again these are based around the use of keywords as the domain name. i.e. cheap-architects.com So I might continue the trial. And hey, get this. A couple of the sites have even got PR! One page site, no off page SEO! OK, only PR1, but even so. Actually, one site is PR3. So I might continue the trial, but need to consider a couple of things. The first trial was largely focussed on specific geographic markets. i.e. Architect-India.com with the site hosted in India. This was used to try to capture local traffic and pass it to the main site. My other domain names are more service than geography focussed. So I might host them all in my home country. But this raises other questions. If I host them all on the same server as my main site, with links to the main site, I think Google will ping me. Seem to remember reading that first time around. Would the same occur if I host them all on the same server (to keep cost and admin down) but that the server was not my main site server? So a seperate IP address. Any thoughts or experiences on this would be most appreciated. So the trial continues. As others pointed out intially, it is an expensive way (hosting costs etc) of boosting the main site. And I have not even invested in link building yet. Any offers of assistance would be most welcome. But I think the results whilst not commercialy beneficial yet, are interesting and have potential. I'll keep you posted. I plan to put up another 20 sites this year along the same concept, so any advice or tips on hosting would be most apreciated. Also if anyone can offer some professioanl link building services, I would consider that. But needs to be professional. i.e. Links will be permanent. Links will be do-follow. Link will be on pages with fewer than 15 other outbound links. Links will not be on text link sites, web directories, adult/gambling or casino sites. Your sites have at least 200+ backlinks according to Yahoo's Site Explorer. Or if any members have had good experiences using professional link builders, maybe you could recommend someone. Whoever I go with, I will do extensive reference checking, because this main site markets my own business and is my livelihood and that of a lot of other people. I don't want anyone screwing it up! Anyway. Thought it was interesting to let you know how the experiment went. Some potential benefits maybe?