Use Many Domain Names for SEO?

[AycheKay]

I work for a company that sells oil field equipment. We cover a fairly broad spectrum of brands and categories/applications. We'd like to increase our web presence and one of our ideas is to buy domain names that contain the keywords we want to promote. We have already purchased 40some domain names for this purpose but we are not utilizing them yet.

Is this strategy a good idea? Are there any caveats or gotchas we should consider? Is there any reason we should instead put pages on our primary company website for these same brands or applications and hope to get the same results?

I'm already fairly experienced in SEO especially when it comes to page optimization for visibility with Google. I'm aware that we don't want to have duplicate content on any two websites so that is the one practice we will avoid.

[Tiggerito]

It sounds like you already plan to have each domain contain a small and unique website that focuses on a brand, then pushes visitors to the main website.

That is one of the best ways to handle multiple domains, however, you are creating a lot of work for yourself. Building, hosting, writing and promoting all those domains!

I would personally build up the main website first, then consider working on the satellite websites as a way to bolster it up a bit.

[AirForceOne]

Hi,

It is really helpful to have your targeted keywords as your domain names. Also, it is a nice idea to target a relative small niche using a top level domain but not via directory or sub-domain.

all the best,

[redesignunit]

keyword in url is very helpful to get indexing and targeted visitors

[wowrain]

As of 2009, there are only a few large markets where Google is not the leading search engine. In most cases, when Google is not leading in a given market, it is lagging behind a local player. The most notable markets where this is the case are China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the Czech Republic where respectively Baidu, Yahoo! Japan, Naver, Yandex and Seznam are market leaders.

Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.

[Sahilb]

So, long as each site becomes an important resource in its niche and is unique, then it is a good strategy to use, though it will require a lot of effort.

[AycheKay]

It looks like the general agreement here is that using separate domain names is a good SEO idea but does require a lot of work to setup and maintain. That's really what I wanted to know. Thanks

[jimsem]

Keyword domains are working a treat right now. They shouldn't (if Google is to be believed) but they do, and until that changes, it's a great strategy.