Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?
-
I have a site that has been active for years - thinkbiglearnsmart.com. Awhile ago I had purchased about 50 domain names that were relevant to my company. I still have those urls and would like to use them to point to different pages on my site - just because they have good key words in the URLs.
For example - one is dreamweavertrainingclassesonlinelive.com. Currently they are all redirecting to my homepage.
A. is that hurting me?
B. I would like to redirect to the more relevant page. ie the page dedicated to Dreamweaver training (http://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver-creative-cloud-training-course/ ) Will this hurt my Dreamweaver keyword for example because there is already a 301 redirect on that page from a very old Dreamweaver link which was something like thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver
C. On my hosting account where I can select where the URL forwards to - it has an option for "Location forwarding" and "Frame forwarding" - currently they are set to Frame forwarding - which one is best?
Any help is much appreciated!!! Thank you!
-
ok William fair call. I was taking the question in general way though as he asked for the best way to do this, frame or location. Most do location. End of the day we know neither is of any use and should research this.
Virginia
-
Unless I'm mistaken, frame forwarding is masking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Masking
-
I'm not sure if 'masking' is the right term here for the answer?
Domain pointing for SEO provides no value anyway. You would need to review the older pages that you are wishing to redirect and determine if they had any authority before you redirect. If not then there is no point. Any redirect from a page that has SEO link value may or may not pass link juice. If it does it is less, but there are tools in google webmasters that can help but mostly site overall.
Virginia
-
This looks extremely spammy to Google. It makes for a bad user experience, since you're trying to trick the user into believing they are going to one site, when they're actually at another. Even if this isn't your intent, Google doesn't like it. Not a guaranteed penalty, but a way this set up could possibly hurt you.
You won't get any value SEO-wise, any keyword indicators the domains may have directed to your site should already be on your pages anyway (if freshly bought domains being 301'd were indicators in the first place).
-
Hi William,
Thank you for your response.
Can I ask why for C? And what the difference is?
As for the SEO value - I know that it won't pass any link juice - I was just wondering if the fact that the URL had my keywords in it if that would help a little?
-
Hi Enam,
Your questions are answered below, but there is a larger issue here. Buying 50 domains to redirect for SEO value will not hurt you, but it will also not help you in the slightest. None of those domains have any juice to give, and they aren't doing anything for you, good or bad. There are reasons to do this sort of thing (branding), but not for SEO. Also, PLEASE SEE ANSWER "C" BELOW.
A. No.
B. No.
C. Location forwarding, for the love of all that is holy. Right now you are masking your website with 50 different domains.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is an iframe redirect on the same Domain bad for SEO
Good morning. We have a vendor that has created a landing page with content that we want to use. Because of the way we built the site, the only way to use the content is to create an i-frame. The i-frame is re-directingon the same Domain. Would we benefit from the SEO Content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jdenbo_edf0 -
Changing Brand and Domain Name - SEO Impacts
Hi everyone I'm hoping a few of you can help me out... We're an online-one retailer and we're currently looking at rebranding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | piazza
This is for commercial reasons: Our current name is difficult for customers to spell It's not wholly representative of what we now offer We want to push offline and social marketing to help increase or DA In a nutshell, our current name implies 'cheap' and we're moving more upmarket.
Our DA is only 10, and a re-brand will make our brand more marketable.
A stronger brand and DA will help us climb up the rankings quickly - last year we ranked no 1 for a relatively competitive term before dropping a few places. In terms of current traffic: 30% is via SEO (we have a low DA but rank ok for certain phrases) 70% is via adwords We had our website redesigned last year and it performs well.
The idea is to have a new brand logo and colours and move to a new domain.
We will keep all our existing products and content. Please could anyone let me know the implications of this move?
What are potential pitfalls, and what will we need to do to alert Google?
I have read about 301 redirects, would these be required? As always, any help is very much appreciated. Many thanks Abs0 -
Does collapsing content impact Google SEO signals?
Recently I have been promoting custom long form content development for major brand clients. For UX reasons we collapse the content so only 2-3 sentences of the first paragraph are visible. However there is a "read more" link that expands the entire content piece.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
I have believed that the searchbots would have no problem crawling, indexing and applying a positive SEO signal for this content. However I'm starting to wonder. Is there any evidence that the Google search algorithm could possible discount or even ignore collapsed content?1 -
Consolidating Multiple Domains into A Single Domain
I have a client who's website is an amalgamation of multiple domains. jacksonhole.net is the main domain but the site passes traffic back and forth from the following domains/sites. My questions is, would it it be better for SEO to consolidate all of these domains under the single high authority domain and 301 redirect the rest or is that a really bad idea? Thanks for your help. jacksonhole.net (Domain Authority 31) jackson-hole-rental-condos.com (Domain Authority 22) jackson-hole-rental-homes.com (Domain Authority 21) j acksonholehotelguide.com (Domain Authority 19)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbaxa-2613381 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
SEO site Review
Does anyone have suggestions on places that provide in depth site / analytics reviews for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Should I buy a .co domain if my preferred .com and .co.uk domain are taken by other companies?
I'm looking to boost my website ranking and drive more traffic to it using a keyword rich domain name. I want to have my nearest city followed by the keyword "seo" in the domain name but the .co.uk and .com have already been taken. Should I take the plunge and buy .co at a higher price? What options do I have? Also whilst we're on domains and URL's is it best to separate keywords in url's with a (_) or a (-)? Many thanks for any help with this matter. Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoSheikh0 -
Migrating online store to subdomain using shopify and effects on seo and energy down the road for seo
I'm looking for some clarity... Looking at using Shopify for an existing online store that we have to migrate. Setting up the store with shopify means we will be using a subdomain such as shop.mywebsite.com instead of mywebsite.com/shop. The following are points to consider when responding The client currently has an online store, however it's a proprietary shopping store and CMS that has since gone defunct and they need to migrate to an alternative in order to survive online against new CMS systems that allow the site and its content to be better optimized. There is a lot of existing SEO done on the current site that we don't want to loose PR on. There is roughly 2000 products Client has a fixed budget, dealing with checkout issues, custom work and various other "bugs" seems to be easier controlled with Shopify...thus budget can be used more on content/strategy and migration We want to run the main site in Wordpress and are wanting to use Shopify since it supports a gateway, has great features and seems like it would allow us to get more bang for the buck and can focus more on the main site and content strategy and drive traffic to the subdomain store if needed Or main concern is the effort of migrating 2000+ products to shopify and the traffic and PR it gives the current site will have a negative effect on the main domain itself. Should we really be considering this path? The domain is diveidc.com One main benefit to the subdomain is the ability to clearly segment products from the service portion of the site in the analytics and focus 2 clear strategies and track it in a very defined manner. We're really on the fence with this...any thoughts are welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0