Is it better to rank higher in a single position frequently, or to own more of the SERP real estate consistently? The answer may vary. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand presents four questions you should ask to determine whether this strategy could work for you, shares some high-profile success cases, and explores the best ways to go about ranking more than one site at a time.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about ranking multiple domains so you can own a bunch of the SERP real estate and whether you should do that, how you should do that, and some ways to do that.
I'll show you an example, because I think that will help kick us off. So you are almost certainly familiar, if you've played around in the world of real estate SERPs, with Zillow and Trulia. Zillow started up here in Seattle. They bought Trulia a couple of years ago and have been doing pretty amazingly well. In fact, I was speaking at a real estate conference in New York recently, and my God, I did an example where I was searching for tons of cities plus homes for sale or plus real estate or houses, and Zillow and Trulia, along with a couple others, are in the top five for every single city I checked no matter how big or small. So very, very impressive SEO.
One of the things that a lot of SEOs have seen, not just with Zillow and Trulia, but with a few others like them is that, man, they own multiple listings in the SERPs, and so they kind of dominate the real estate here and get even more clicks as an entity, a combined entity than they would if Zillow had, for example, when they bought Trulia, redirected Trulia.com to Zillow. On Whiteboard Friday and at Moz and a lot of people in the SEO world often recommend that when you buy another domain or when you're combining entities, that you do actually 301 redirect, because it can help bring up the rankings here.
The reason Zillow did not do that, and I think wisely so, is that they already dominated these SERPs so well that they figured pushing Trulia's rankings into their own and combining the two entities would, yes, probably move them from number two and three to number one in some places, but they already own number one in a ton of these. Trulia was almost always one or two or three. Why not own all of that? Why not own 66% of the top three consistently, rather than number one a little more frequently? I think that was probably the right move for them.
Questions to ask
As a result, many SEOs asked themselves, "Should I do something similar? Should I buy other domains, or should I start other domains? Should I run multiple sites and try and rank for many different keyword phrases or a few keywords that I care very, very deeply about?" The answer is, well, before you do that, before you make any call, ask yourself these four questions. The answers to them will help you determine whether you should follow in these footsteps.
1. Do I need to dominate multiple results for a keyword or set of keywords MORE than I need better global rankings or a larger set of keywords sending visits?
So first off, do you need to dominate multiple results for a keyword or a small set of keywords more than you need to improve global rankings? Global rankings, I mean like all the keywords that your site could rank for potentially or that you do rank for now or could help you to rank a larger set of keywords that send visits and traffic.
You kind of have to weigh these two things. It's either: Do I want two out of the top three results to be mine for this one keyword, or do I want these 10 keywords that I'm ranking for to broadly move up in rankings generally?
A lot of the time, this will bias you to go, "Wait a minute, no, the opportunity is not in these few keywords where I could dominate multiple positions. It's in moving up the global rankings and making my ability to rank for any set of keywords greater."
Even at Moz today, Moz does very well in the rankings for a lot of terms around SEO. But if, for example, let's say we were purchased by Search Engine Land or we bought Search Engine Land. If those two entities were combined, and granted, we do rank for many, many similar keywords, but we would probably not keep them separate. We would probably combine them, because the opportunity is still greater in combination than it is in dominating multiple results the way Zillow and Trulia are. This is a pretty rare circumstance.
2. Will I cannibalize link equity opportunities with multiple sites? Can I get enough link equity & authority signals to rank both?
Second, are you going to cannibalize link equity opportunities with multiple sites, and do you have the ability to get enough equity and authority signals to rank both domains or all three or all four or whatever it is?
A challenge that many SEOs encounter is that building links and building up the authority to rank is actually the toughest part of the SEO equation. The keyword targeting and ranking multiple domains, that's nice to have, but first you've got to build up a site that's got enough link equity. If it is challenging to earn links, maybe the answer is, hey, we should combine all our efforts or we should on work on all our efforts. Remember, even though Zillow owns Trulia, Trulia and Zillow are one entity, the links between them don't help the other one rank very much. It was already a case, before Zillow bought them, that Trulia and Zillow independently ranked. The two sites offer different experiences and some different listings and all that kind of stuff.
There are reasons why Google keeps them separately and why Zillow and Trulia keep them separately. But that's going to be really tough. If you're a smaller business or a smaller website starting out, you're trying to decide where should you put your link equity efforts, it might lean a little more this way.
3. Should I use my own domain(s), should I buy an existing site that ranks, or should I do barnacle SEO?
Number three. Should you use your own domain if you decide that you need to have multiple domains ranking for a single keyword? A good example of this case scenario is reputation management for your own brand name or for maybe someone who works at your company, some particular product that you make, whatever it is, or you're very, very focused and you know, "Hey, this one keyword matters more than everything else that we do."
Okay. Now the question would be: Should you use your own domain or a new domain that you buy and register and start building up? Should you buy an existing domain, something that already ranks, or should you do barnacle SEO? So mysite2.com, that would be basically you're registering a new domain, you're building it up from scratch, you're growing that brand, and you're trying to build all the signals that you'll need.
You could buy a competitor that's already ranking in the search results, that already has equity and ranking ability. Or you could say, "Hey, we see that this Quora question is doing really well. Can we answer that question tremendously well?" Or, "We see that Medium can perform tremendously well here. You know what? We can write great posts on Medium." "We see that LinkedIn does really well in this sector. Great. We can do some publishing on LinkedIn." Or, "There's a list of companies on this page. We can make sure that we're the number-one listed company on that page." Okay. That kind of barnacle SEO, we did a Whiteboard Friday about that a few months ago, and you can check that out too.
4. Will my multi-domain strategy cost time/money that would be better spent on boosting my primary site's marketing? Will those efforts cause brand dilution or sacrifice potential brand equity?
And number four, last but not least, will your multi-site domain strategy cost you time and money that would be better spent on boosting your primary site's marketing efforts? It is the case that you're going to sacrifice something if you're putting effort into a different website versus putting all your marketing efforts into one domain.
Now, one reason that people certainly do this is because they're trying riskier tactics with the second site. Another reason is because they've already dominated the rankings as much as they want, or because they're trying to build up multiple properties so that they can sell one off. They're very, very good at link building this space already and growing equity and those sorts of things.
But the other question you have to ask is: Will this cause brand dilution? Or is it going to sacrifice potential brand equity? One of the things that we've observed in the SEO world is that rankings alone do not make for revenue. It is absolutely the case that people are choosing which domains to click on and which domains to buy from and convert on based on the brand and their brand familiarity. When you're building up a second site, you've got to be building up a second brand. So that's an additional cost and effort.
Now, I don't want to rain on the entire parade here. Like we've said in a few of these, there are reasons why you might want to consider multiple domains and reasons why a multi-domain strategy can be effective for some folks. It's just that I think it might be a little less often and should be undertaken with more care and attention to detail and to all these questions than what some folks might be doing when they buy a bunch of domains and hope that they can just dominate the top 10 right out of the gate.
All right, everyone, look forward to your thoughts on multi-domain strategies, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Great topic! I think each business and industry will vary, with the higher of competitiveness for a search term or industry, the less likely this will be feasible. However, if a business can take up more of the SERP real estate with their blog or service pages on their website, or even social media profiles or directory listings if we are talking local SEO, this is extremely advantageous. More of a defensive SEO move in my opinion, but still a valuable strategy after a high ranking for the ideal page you would like the user to click through to is achieved first, otherwise you may not focus your SEO efforts enough on a single page to get any pages ranking. Again, search competitiveness being a huge factor.
Hi Rand,
We rank multiple sites consistently in the local organic space while avoiding that cannibalization you mentioned. The trick for us has been to have a company with a corporate structure with multiple locations, so the corporate site is the "global" while the network of branches each have their own local website to focus on local queries. The result is we sometimes rank both corporate and local sites for the same query, and have actually managed to consistently take up 4-5 spots in the SERP with this strategy (if you count the map pack). This really only works if you have that Enterprise structure and a CMS that can efficiently aid in creating unique content at the local level, but the results are fantastic.
So how do you go about naming your other domains? Something like BrandNameCity?
Hi Brett,
Very interesting!
Makes sense, my only thought would be that every time you have a new location open up, you are starting fresh with a new domain that has no authority instead of using the authority of your corporate site if you were to make it a sub-folder.
But I am wondering the same thing as John-Paul. How do you get the new websites' authority up to ensure you will be able to rank for those websites as well as the top level website? Or are these cities a subdomain of the top level site?
Interesting Whiteboard post Rand!
I believe going for multiple domain strategy is only fruitful if we can provide some different experience to the user as per the intent on both the domains.
I have seen people buying 2 different domain for their business, but having same identical websites with same content and services for users. This doesn't help users in any way, neither it's good for search experience.
But, this can be done in a better way.
For example, a company provides cab services in New York City, they can have one domain where it allow users to book cabs with chauffeur in New York City. At the same time, they can have another domain which allow users to book cabs without chauffeur in New Your City where people wants to drive themselves.
This way the business is serving same audience (who are looking to book cabs) with different choices.
Thanks
Great topic, Rand.
I've started seeing more and more companies use this approach to dominate the organic search results. And, nowadays you almost have to do this! We work with a lot of home service companies, and similar tor real estate (where Zillow, Trulia, etc. are ranking), our clients are trying to outrank websites like Yelp, HomeAdvisor, etc.
Thank you for discussing the pros and cons — it's great to see it laid out like this, because like you mentioned, this strategy could be good for one company but not another.
Thanks again!
Hello Champ,
This is something interesting, I guess this would be beneficial for some limited niche (One as mentioned by Praveen - Cab service). So, every business can not take advantage of it.
I believe, if you do a proper marketing and take care of your brand, then there will no required of creating another brand. (Best example - Moz)
Thank you !
I think you're right, but I think it makes sense for companies who are diversify into a different market.
Just a few thoughts...
Benefits of having two domains with hundreds of high ranking keywords:
God forbid anything happens to one of your domains such as it getting a penalty by Google -- if you have two successful sites generating leads, at least half your marketing platforms stay alive during recovery. (don't put all of your eggs in one basket)
Your different domain names (keywords inside the domain name) can make it easier to rank for a certain group of keywords. For example; my company's one site goldenfs.org ranks number one for my branded keyword (company name; Golden Financial Services). My company's other website NoMoreCreditCards.com ranks top 3 on Google for (credit card relief programs) and often we steal the "position zero" spot for this same keyword.. By having two different sites your company can generate leads from different groups of keywords.
Tip: Setup a strategy where you're focusing on a different group of keywords on each site.
Our biggest challenges with having to maintain two sites:
Having two sites, usually means complying with the regulatory rules and regulations on both sites. For example; to be accredited with the Better Business Bureau they're going to look at both your sites.
With two sites, that means you probably have to maintain two blogs right? I've always considered somehow combining the two blogs into one but over the years I'm finally starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel and the benefits of having two blogs.
By bringing in industry-leading authors to help you by contributing content (user generated content) can help. However if you have a small company and one writer is supposed to maintain two blogs, it's going to be a grueling process.
Make no mistake, it's double the work having to maintain two domains, but the value can clearly make it worth your investment. Every single time Google comes out with a new feature whether it's AMP pages, new schema.org codes, new types of mobile page requirements -- you will have to update both sites with these changes.
Final tip:
Make sure before you decide on having two sites that you have a reliable programmer and designer on staff or at least standby, you will need them. If you are only skilled with the abilities to manage your site inside Wordpress with plugins -- you're in trouble, so make sure to establish an inhouse or on standby programmer/designer.
Paul, thank you for such great insights!
Right now I am working with a client who is trying to decide what to do with their websites. Company A + Company + are coming together under Company B's brand. However, Company A has much better rankings.
What would you suggest they do? Should they move all the content from Company A's website to Company B's website and delete Company A's site? Should they redirect all the pages on Company A's site to Company B's site? Or, should they keep Company A's site and change all the mentions of Company A to Company B, and keep both websites active?
Any advice would be appreciate! Thank you.
Hi Rand. Thank you for your topic today as I think it is important for website owners to consider all of the facts of having 1 website vs. multiple websites. I have experienced this myself. I started a new website to try and rank both sites in top positions. However, being a single person operation, it was very hard to run both sites at the same time. Funny thing is, once I decided to incorporate the new site into the old site, the old site actually ranked higher and for more new keywords. So, my recommendation is only have multiple domains if you can make both great.
Nice strategy, Rand, but it's only useful for those who are already big, rich & successful: If you already rank #1 for a substantial set of popular keywords and wanna get rid of some competitor who ranks just behind you on #2, it may be good tactics as you basically throw him down one rank so that you effectively occupy #1 and #2 and leave him with #3. As you are talking about real estate portals: Here in Germany we have the Big Three (Immobilienscout24, Immonet, and Immowelt). Immonet bought Immowelt last year, but still keeps this portal alive in order to keep its rankings. Furthermore, these three guys sometimes set up (formally independent) satellite portals like null-provision.de whose sole purpose is to occupy ranking positions and to lead those who click on their SERP links to the "real" portals.
Honi soit qui mal y pense. :)
Using multiple domains to own more paid (adwords/bing) section of SERP real estate is another angle.
This is a really important discussion point. Particularly in the local sphere, companies do go out of business all the time. Buying their IP (in this case their website) in order to leverage work, links an authority is something all businesses should think about.
That's good to know, I'm in the process of building a website for a client in the constructions industry. I'll make sure to buy an existing domain and redirect it to my client's to take advantage of their link equity.
Right....or if that site was ranking for similar keywords...why not just keep the site up and occupy a higher % of the SERPS real estate and get more traffic by owning the two (or more) domains & keeping all of them up?
Indeed. It's worth not just looking at *businesses* that are going bust but hobby websites/blogs where the owner has lost interest.
Agreed. I've even taken some hobby blogs over for free, using their SEO to both build links, and sometimes own ranking realestate. The smaller players are often overlooked unfairly; they have a lot of potential.
What about creating a multi shop, based on your e-commerce website, but only showing one category of products to rank better on that keyword? Example: You run a sporting goods store online and want to rank better on your golf segment, so you create a multi shop showing only products from your golfing category, and launching it on www.golfstoredomain.com. Will this help you rank better on golf clubs and other golfing supplies, given that you write new titles, descriptions etc for every product to avoid duplicate content?
Great WBF, Rand! Dealing with this very issue on several retail clients at the moment.
Love the shirt :-)
Rand is a snappy dresser
and the moustache is back!
And here I thought I was the only one who was going to notice hah!
To New SEO: "Yeah, Rand Fishkin, the Wizard of Moz."
New SEO: "Not sure"
Me: "The Mustache."
New SEO: "Oh Yeah, Him, of course!"
Me: /Facepalm
Hi Rand,
As always, amazing post! Somehow you always are on top of the current issues that I am dealing with.
Lately some of the new business I have been bringing in are big brand names that have never done SEO in the past (or have done very limited SEO) and want to build up an optimized micro-site to rank for similar keywords. I am not sure where this idea of multiple domains keeps coming from, but your example is the only one I have seen where it works well. And so your last question Will my multi-domain strategy cost time/money that would be better spent on boosting my primary site's marketing? has been something that I have been asking very often and usually end up telling these big brands that they need to focus on the issues of their main site, even if they are currently ranking well.
My go to is usually to consolidate because of a video of Matt Cutts that haunts me from 2011 that says to build up one site that can be known as the authority and brand name. But I think for the Trulia and Zillow example, because they have the benefit of having two strong brands (and not creating a new site from scratch), that is what helps them stay separate.
Multi domain strategy? Don't create keyword monopoly on google rankings. Meanwhile google update is on? I am new to SEO.
Why this message?
? This comment hit Roger's moderation filters, possibly due to brevity or the inclusion of a link (remember, links in comments are nofollowed). Thanks for your patience!
One of the biggest problems with having multiple domains trying to dominate SERPS is the danger of falling into the trap of publishing duplicate content across them. Site ownership is also transparent so it wouldn't take a genius to work out that the content should be concentrated under one domain.
To answer the argument for competing in different cities. It is still better to fire off the same website with pages dedicated to different cities.
Piece of slate Rand !!!
These questions are crucial to knowing what to do next. It is not the same to want numerous visits because your business model is to collect ads from your website; That strengthen a personal brand to hire your services or a small local store.
Each goal will give us other answers to each of these questions.
Great video. We purchased a competitor site back in 2010 and kept them separate. They had equal sales to us, but usually from different products than us. It takes much more time and man power, but since then we have been able to double sales for both sites, which I don't believe we could have done redirecting one of them. Now if the other site was a very high authority website, the decision might have been different, but both sites at that time were medium authority.
Right now we are looking to actually purchase another competitor website as well. A very well known brand, but with terrible SEO. 80% of their traffic is on their company name, and none of their site is optimized. In this case again, we plan on actually keeping them separate as our current two websites do very well ranking wise, and this one not only has brand recognition, but could also rank very well if proper SEO was just put in place.
With linking, the easy thing is we sell products from the same manufacturers, and those manufacturers link to our websites, so that is easy to manage and gain links for all websites at the same time. It's a little tougher building links elsewhere though.
One of the things I like most about going this direction is the things you learn. Each website is slightly different in the marketing/pricing/offers so we can really see what works and test things against each other...and the implement those same things on the other websites.
While it is much more work, I do believe it was the right choice and are sales overall are higher because of it.
Thoughts?
Hi Rand! I'm working on some 10x content, and this was absolutely helpful for me. Rather than worrying about dominating multiple rankings, however, I'm just curious:
1) whether I should have the 10x content live on our subdomain, or as a new domain and effectively a "microsite"
2) whether I should index each page in the tool. It'll be like Zillow, where there's a gated page to put in your location, your email, and another field, and then it'll give you specific content to your filters. Better to try to rank for one big keyword on the home page, or that and many smaller location-based keywords on the filtered pages, but lose the option for email addresses? Or to rank for those location-based keywords from the blog instead, linking to the 10x content from there?
Curious if you have any content you could point me towards!
Have you ever encountered affiliate filter for making 2 websites around the same niche?
Your hypothetical example of Moz-Searchengineland combining is an interesting one. In that case, unlike Zillow-Trulia, there would be a good number of links pointing from Moz to SEL and vice versa. Therefore, wouldn't combining them deprive the resulting site of high quality, uber-relevant links? In other words, former links from SEL to Moz would become irrelevant and look like self-links. A rare situation for sure but could or should that factor into such a merge debate?
Insightful questions to ask, for sure!
Great talk, althoguh I don't think this WBF will apply to many people. My thoughts on the multiple domains is that - it makes more sense if you're dealing with local companies that want to rank for specific cities(maybe in diffrerent states.)
As always a really excellent job Rank !! I always try to implement your posts, the ideas and techniques that you share in my projects.
Do you think there is a max in number of domains you could rank high withing the same category. I run a few websites, targeted at a different user group, own look & feel, but with similar keywords. For me this works really well.
In the example of the real estate projet. What would happen if you would ad a third real estate business and achieve to get top positions as well. And to be absolutely dominant you also start Adwords campaigns. Could you get a penalty for this?
Hi Rand
nice video and good questions to ask. But the most important was missing I think.
How can you make sure to have different user experiences and content on the different domains?
We had this problem some years ago with an ecommerce site or a clickout ecommerce site (kind of affiliate). The main domain was about everything (fashion, multimedia, furniture, etc). Then we had multiple small domains with had only products from parts of the main domain (like shoes, or children toys). We had different seo texts and category naming. But sometimes the sorting and the products where the same.
In the end, Google was switching these domains for keywords, they were ranking for. And eventually, we needed to noindex the small domains.
Learning: be very careful, when having multiple domains with "same" content ranking for same keywords.
Really very impressive blog Rand,
Many people including me will get very confused while going for SERP,. There are many options available that how should we improve our SERP but we have to choose either we go for multiple domain strategy or only go for one domain strategy.
but if we provide two or more domain and the content is same means the each domain landing page is same then the experience of the user is not enjoyable and user will skip and does not visit the web-site.
Google now days is very particular about the domain name if Google will find out that someone is using different domain names but landing page same then Google index of your website certainly ruined .
To avoid this we should use canonical url to maintained the user visit to your website enjoyable.
Regards,
keshav
The multiple domains I think make more sense for companies that want to compete in different cities.
Great White Board Friday!! Really relevant for my company as we do encounter reputation management issues. Now I have to go watch the Barnacle SEO one that I clearly missed. Thanks Rank for another thought-provoking & useful topic!
Thanks Rand, I was actually exactly looking for this, this week. By the way, thanks also for attending the SMXMunich, your Keynote was awesome as always :)
Instead of pushing my budget more in multiple domain, I would select "barnacle SEO" this may make domain to reach users who were engaged in that webpage.
Great Whiteboard Friday Rand! It makes sense that redirecting for a ranking boost isn't always the right choice if you could dominate SERP real estate. But this leads me to a follow-up question:
Could there be a case where your strategy is a combination of redirects and monopolizing rankings?
Example:
Company A purchases Company B. They share ABC keywords but Company B ranks higher for XYZ. You redirect ABC on Company B to Company A for improved rankings, but leave XYZ alone because the boost wouldn't be enough to benefit rankings for Company A.
Unrelated:
Epic shirt.
Are there any further risks associated with this multi-domain strategy? E.g. circumstances in which google would be ranking sites lower than site would rank if same company would not operate several sites targeting same keyword?
We already run for a decade three (legit) websites targeting the same keyword. Apart from our main store, one purely informational site, one wholesale site with different content. I suspect that particularly in the US this multi domain approach may have led to lower rankings for our core site in google.com in recent years, but cant say for sure if this was the cause of the ranking drop.
Our company had this exact situation. We used our main company domain for our site and the alternate domains we purchased as single-page responsive sites with useful information or content with a link to the main company site. It seems to have worked in some searches.
CompanyDomain - Brand and Ecommerce Site
TopKeywordDoman
TopKeyword2Domain
TopKeyword3Domain
This works really well in e-commerce around product benefit keywords.
Using a main authority site alongside multiple EMDs around micro topics helps to block out competition from entering the keyword space VERY well.
After addicted to the Pro Moz subscriptions, what i liked the most is the "Create Alert" option (as shown in video 2) which helps me to find mentions of any term on the web. Truly awesome !
Hi Rand. Thank you for this information. It was very very useful.
#4 : ‘Will my multi-domain strategy cost time/money that would be better spent on boosting my primary site's marketing? Will those efforts cause brand dilution or sacrifice potential brand equity?’
I am managing a web for a Real Estate company in Alicante, Spain, and we are studying strategies that could include expanding our domain (we are doing it at the moment), creating new domains (we already bought it but not developing it) or buying the whole web from our competitors (which costs a lot of money and we do not have it).
It seems you are talking to us. This was really helpful. Thank you! We are working on it for months with a wide range of opinions. We are not a great company but a group of people with a great project that goes slowly.
I would like to include a question related to real estate webs, would you try a multi-language web; or different webs, domains and strategies for any language?
Regards.
Aww.. What a way to get a link on the keyword dude. Anyways, it's a NoFollow ;P
Edited : Now, its good to see you have removed the link. Sound good and thank you :)
Sure it's no follow. Are we talking about real estate webs? If I have a question about one web I manage, what's wrong with telling you which one it is, so if you want to help can check it?
There is no harm buddy, but the way you have placed the link is does not make sense in your comment. You could have been simply named of your client's website rather than linking to your keyword.
We all understand that strategy. I hope you will take it positively.
Hola, ¿por qué incluyes un enlace con un anchor text semejante a tu página web? Como te dicen por ahí es un nofollow, con lo cual es tiempo perdido.¿ La pregunta a Randy es real o sólo por el enlace? Está un poco feo spammear el blog de Moz.
Claro que es nofollow, lo único que vale es para visitarla si alguien quiere saber de qué estoy hablando antes de realizar una respuesta. Spammear sería hablar de zapatos y colocar un enlace de inmobiliaria, pero si estamos hablando de este sector y tengo una duda concreta sobre webs de este sector, en concreto una que gestiono, ¿qué problema hay en indicar cual es?