Would this idea work?

[monitor185]

Hi folks

I have been thinking about something tonight and I could do with a second opinion please as to whether it would work.

Say you have a business - lets say its a window cleaning business and you wanted to do business throughout the UK and you have a main website called something like mrsqueegee.co.uk

What if you then bought a load more available domains eg windowcleanerbirmingham.co.uk, windowcleanerscotland.co.uk, windowcleanerdorset.co.uk - all over the country and the set these all up to automatically redirect to your main site (mrsqueegee.co.uk)

Would there be any reason why this approach would not work? Would it be frowned upon at all, eg by Google or whoever?

(by the way window cleaning is just an example)

Thanks in advance!

 

[SpencyCWS]

Having a domain name that redirects will not deliver anything.

Unless those domain names have hosting and some web page content with them, this approach will not work.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Having a domain name that redirects will not deliver anything.

An aged domain with existing traffic can be beneficial.

 

[Curious]

New domains redirected wont help. But buying those new emd domains and then filling them with unique copy can work.

I have single page emd's that rank well with nothing other than copy and basic onpage in one area, but these arent competitive terms.

As above though, if you can get existing domains and then redirect them it can help your site but im not sure how many you could safely redirect..

 

[monitor185]

Thanks for the replies so far.

Given that my idea appears to be a non starter, what would be the most effective way of utilising the available 'local' domains, would it be better to have:

• A single page with company information and a link to the main site; or

• To more or less duplicate the main site on each of the 'local' sites.

I'm sure that I read somewhere that Google does not like duplicate content, so would the second option fail on that point?

All advice welcome.

 

[AnswerNet]

Nope it is not good idea.

 

[SpencyCWS]

Thanks for the replies so far.

Given that my idea appears to be a non starter, what would be the most effective way of utilising the available 'local' domains, would it be better to have:

• A single page with company information and a link to the main site; or

• To more or less duplicate the main site on each of the 'local' sites.

I'm sure that I read somewhere that Google does not like duplicate content, so would the second option fail on that point?

All advice welcome.

If it were me, I would add location pages to my own website with unique content per one.

I would also develop (if you did have those domain names anyway) a few squeeze pages with good content that you will get hits for.

For example, say you had 10 domains, you could be a reseller account from a hosting company and host the lot for £30 a month. You could then set up small squeeze pages or mini sites, each with unique content per domain name and see how it goes.

Even if these sites each picked you up 10 hits a month, across the ten and over the year every little helps.

But, if you have a decent existing site, my advice would be to add a few unique location pages like:

www.website.com/window-cleaning-gloucester

ETC

 

[SearchBlogger]

You might want to listen to this by Matt Cutts from Google regarding exact match domain names like www.windowclearnerscotland.co.uk

 

[sarah@opace]

I think you could go on for ever buying up sites, maybe you could get better value for money if you considered some good SEO? You don't have to break the bank but it will bring you more traffic then re directs,
Good luck

 

[monitor185]

Thanks everyone there's plenty to think about there!

 

[LearnLeadership]

Have you thought of sub domains?

I'm not an expert, but just going through this myself.

Examples:

www mymainsite.com This would be your main content. If you had a business with several business units or locations you could do a page for each, but this would only be one page:

www mymainsite.com/london
www mymainsite.com/lancashire etc (I am omitting the dot after www otherwise it makes it a hyperlink to some sales site)

Sub domains work differently as you can build a whole new site without having to buy domains.

www mymainsite.com would be directed to your hosting for that site. You can go to wherever you purchased your domain (123-reg or 1and1 etc) log in and go to manage domains or something similar and you can change DNS settings. www. is a subdomain and you can set new sub domains and direct them to another site/hosting and link to them through the main site.

www mymainsite.com
london.mymainsite.com
lancahire.mymainsite.com etc and these can be directed to different locations; several websites, one domain.

Hope this is helpful
http://www.learnleadership.org.uk
Sean