I got an email a few days ago with a question from a web consultant whose client was solicited with an offer to purchase a keyword-rich domain name. The premise here is that because Google counts keywords in your domain name (see my recent post, “How to SEO Your Content: 16 Places to Place Your Keywords“), that having a keyword-rich domain name would benefit the client’s search ranking. Was it worth it, and was it worth the nearly $500 they wanted for the domain name?

I get this question every so often, and I even wrote a post about it way back in 2009. So what’s changed in those ensuing 7 years, if anything?

My standard consultant answer to these types of questions is, “It depends.” (Yes that’s a joke.)

Let’s break it down a bit.

Does Having Keywords in Your Domain Help SEO?

The simple answer here is, yes. If you have already established your domain name, and it has keywords in it, then it is a factor in Google’s ranking. As an example, this website is www.dog-obedience-training-review.com. I’ll give you three guesses on what their company is all about, and the first two guesses don’t count. They rank well for all kinds of dog training information.

When I set up my own domain, I specifically wanted “Bay Area” in the domain name, because people search for SEO training in the San Francisco Bay Area where I teach. It’s a ranking factor, and it helps me get found for my target search terms. How much does it help? Who knows?

Does Adding Extra Domains Help SEO?

Multiple Keyword Domains Pointing at One Website

Do Multiple Keyword Domains Help SEO?

So it would seem logical that if I have a website, www.company.com, and purchase a couple target keyword domains, and point them at my website, that because Google counts keywords in the domain as valuable, then this would help me rank higher for that target phrase.

Hold that thought for just a second.

Google counts unique web addresses (including domains) as being a web page. So www.company.com/page1.html is one page of content. Similarly, www.company.com/page2.html is another page of content, and Google gets that.

However, if www.company.com/page1.html has some content, and www.company.com/page2.html has exactly the same content (because you copied it for some reason), then Google gets a little suspicious that something fishy is going on, because the content is identical. This is called duplicate content, and Google will discount the second address, and it won’t rank well, if at all (I’ve tested this).

Now if you compound this and point www.keyword1.com to www.company.com, you’re going to further duplicate the content on every page. www.keyword1.com/page1.html will be identical to www.company.com/page1.html, but in a different domain. Now things are smelling really fishy to Google, because you’ve duplicated ALL pages into another domain.

If you purchased five keyword domains, this has just been compounded to be a bigger duplicate content issue, and you’ve completely shot yourself in the foot. Google will devalue all the duplicate pages, and they won’t perform at all in the search engines.

The Problem With Keyword Domains

Unless you’re starting a new website or changing the domain to something else for branding, keyword domains severely limit you. You’re stuck with whatever you chose, and if you chose wrong, then it will prevent you from expanding into other lines of business or switching gears if your company changes (and whose doesn’t?).

Being very picky about the domain name is important so you don’t box yourself in unnecessarily. My own domain for instance, includes “Bay Area” and “Search Engine”, but no other specific terms. That’s deliberate. I didn’t want to box myself into one thing.

Furthermore, if you haven’t done the keyword research to find out what people are searching for, randomly buying a keyword domain could be a complete waste of money. If you think it sounds good, but haven’t done the research, then you might as well roll some dice. Chances are good your roll of the dice will lose.

As an example, the consultant’s client website was something like “SamsAutoRepair.com” (I’m making this up – not a real website). The domain they were being offered was something like “houston-carburetors.com”. Sounds good. But why would they limit it themselves to carburetors when they do so many other things too?

When It’s Useful to Have Multiple Domain Names

Yes, you absolutely can have multiple domain names, but you don’t want them to resolve or be indexed by Google. To prevent that you set up a 301-redirect or “forward” the domain to the “real” domain. If you 301-redirect a domain, it will never be indexed, because the “301 error” is a message to Google that “sorry, this URL doesn’t exist, here’s the ‘real’ one you should pay attention to.”

As an example, I used to have bayareasea.com which redirected to bayareasearchengineacademy.org. The former is just easier to send in social media or in emails. But I never want it to be indexed. Go ahead and try it (click the link). You’ll see it automagically changes to the correct web address.

You might want to own the .com, .org and .net versions of your domain so a competitor doesn’t get them. Just 301-redirect them to the one you want indexed. Example:

I had a student in one of my SEO classes that said people were always calling them to say their website was down. It’s because their company name was an odd spelling, and the customer was mistyping it. I said, “Buy the misspelled version, and 301-redirect it to the correct version. No one will ever know the difference, and you’ll stop the phone calls and end customer frustration!”

So to conclude, in my opinion, the company that was being solicited for a keyword domain purchase, was a complete waste of their money. It certainly wasn’t worth the $500 unless they had done their due diligence on the selling company as being legit, done the keyword research, and validated it as a viable option that wasn’t going to limit their business in other ways.

What are your thoughts on this? Tell me below!