Leveraging a second valuable domain, which has no content currently.

[symbolphoto]

Hello All,

Wow, people answer very quickly, concisely and are well informed. Very impressive.

I have a question that may be a little different. I have a current site which ranks well, and has lots of links etc etc..

1. http://www.symbolphot*.com     **            * replace the * with an o**.

Key search term for this site:  "B*ston Wedding Photographer"

The second site i own:

2. B*stonWeddingPhotographer.com is currently empty.

I can do whatever i want with this site. I was thinking that since my site is mostly images, i could start a duplicate wordpress blog with the same images, but different page text and alt tags to the same images.

Obviously, since 'b*ston wedding photographer" is the phrase i want to rank #1 for, how should i go about leveraging the power of the URL? Do you have alternate suggestions beyond duplicating image content? I don't really see a way around that as it's ultimately the images i'm selling to potential clients.

And the last part of my question is, how strong are my chances of ranking #1 for "Bston Wedding Photographer"  while publishing good content on Bstonweddingphotographer.com ?

[KyleChamp]

Be very careful with this. If I am understanding this correctly you want to use both domains for your Boston wedding photographer company. Google is not going to like to see 2 websites with similar content for the same company. It’s going to look like your manipulating the search engines to get a bunch of sites in the top 10 for your keyword for the same company.

Also, your putting to much Enphasis on your keyword URL. Years ago that did have an effect on your rankings but Google has deminished that ranking factor. If i were you I would stick with the site you have been working on.

[EGOL]

I would put all of my efforts into a single domain until I am dominant in that niche.

Lots of people think that they will toss up a hotdog stand of a site and use it as a link platform to their original site.

Actually, the smart way is to use a powerful site to power a hotdog stand - but that should not be done until you have dominance in the niche.

[symbolphoto]

Ok, I guess it's what I expected. Does anyone else have an opinion on this? I'd love to hear any alternatives.

[ZephSnapp]

I do know of several examples of small businesses that have been able to get multiple sites onto the first page for competitive terms, but they certainly did not get there by just throwing up duplicate content.

Usually what they do is turn one of the sites into a review site that points to several options, but suggesting that theirs is the best.  However, I tend to agree with the other commenters who say that keyword URLs aren't as important as they used to be and that you would need to have a ton of resources to manage and continue to build the two sites.

But don't put up duplicate images, that is just asking for a manual slap from the search engines.

[symbolphoto]

Thanks folks! Now i sit here wondering what to do with the extra domain.... hmm it's a highly relevant domain and lots of folks probably visit it by default. I'll have to investigate a good use, i suppose.

[KyleChamp]

There's a good idea. Turn the B*stonWeddingPhotographer.com site into a review site.