I have a question... let's go with the topic about fixing cars. Let's say I own a .com with the name of the company, for example robertfixcars.com or something like that. Now the .com name has had a little bit of advertising, but nothing major yet and not really getting any hits (advertising such as word of mouth, nothing major) but lets say i want to get a domain such as f-i-x-c-a-r-s.com or even fix-cars.com (if it were available of course). If I'd want these new domains to be SEO'd and be found, would I just create a 301 redirect to robertfixcars.com or should I create two new completely different sites with different content on the 2 new domains and forget about robertfixcars? I'd hate for either domains to get blacklisted of course, but i want the two new ones to try and be found... not sure if doing a 301 will still have them show up in a search result.
My Advice: -I wouldn't get a domain with too many hypens... it doesn't help with SERPS like one without. If you can get a .net, .org or even a .info with the keyword then do it. It is so much easier to rank in Google with the exact keyword domain. -I would not 301 the domain. Google treats it differently and will not give you the same credit as it would with out the 301. Get seperate hosting and register it in your wife's, girlfirends or cousins name and build another site around that domain. Give it some links... you won't need as many if you get the exact keyword in the domian. I have a client that does this on about half of dozen sites and most rank in the top three for their main keywords. (Google)
I agree, get a few domain names that are keyword rich and I think the point someone was makign above was make each of the domains like seperate 'mini sites' which will be independent but at the same time you'll get those prime spots in Google SERPS for your domains.
Well for starters, I wouldn't take the first one if it was available. The second one would be better, and the dash in there would act as a keyword separator. Most of the time I avoid dashes in my domain names, but there are instances where having them will be essential, such as experts-exchange.com. It's very easy in this case to tell what the keywords are, but what if the dash wasn't there? Would the keywords be "Experts Exchange" or "Expert Sex Change" in this case? Not something I'd want to take a chance on, if you ask me. Now, if such a domain name were to become available, I'd snap it up, develop a new site (my way - which is a process about 85-90% of Web designers and developers actually get WRONG and don't understand), launch and promote it, then take down the old site, forward the old domain to the new one, and 301 redirect the old pages to the new ones (yes, the specific new pages, not the home page - redirecting to the new specific page will enhance the accessibility and usability of the new Web site). If you're thinking of it from a spam perspective, then I'd have to disagree. It'll have no effect from an SEO perspective, but it sure would be a pain in the neck to type out and remember. Of course, as a general rule of thumb, I tend to keep the dashes in a domain name to a minimum (or not use them at all if possible). And just for the record, I have a feeling this is what you meant to say. Google will only treat it differently if you continue to promote the domain. At best, the 301 redirect will continue to deliver any PageRank that links from the old pages had from other sites to the new domain until such a time as the site owner could contact those sites and ask them to update thier URLs. As for registering domans in other peoples' names, I wouldn't suggest doing tha because the people whose names you use to register those domains become the legal owners of those domain names. Should you have a falling out with one of those individuals... well let's just say it may not be pretty. That's an interesting way of setting up a link farm.