Keywords based domains redirecting to a site.. is it SPAM?

[vivekrathore]

The answer is No. All keyword based domains are not spammy. it depends upon the domain authority of the domain. Google stated that having keywords in your domain names will not give you a boost which was the case earlier.

However redirecting keyword based domain to your main site will not be spam if your keyword based domain is not blacklisted by Google.

It all depends upon what is the status of your keyword based domain. Is it black listed by Google or does it have a good domain authority.

[RyanKent]

**I heard a while back that some people spam by buying EMDs and then use their natural traffic by redirecting it to their main site. **

Where exactly did you hear this? Can you share a link?

People often say "I heard...." There is really nothing anyone can do to respond to such statements. SEO information is spammed on tens of thousands of sites. Every site owner has an opinion. We need to understand who said it? Did Matt Cutts say it? Or was it a random webmaster?

I heard it is important to optimize the meta keywords tag. Last week I had a client share two different monthly reports from two SEO companies where their meta keywords tags were being optimized each month. Does that mean I should run out and optimize all my meta keywords tags? No. The two companies were from India and their SEO knowledge is quite flawed.

**So Google started seeing it as spam technique. **

Google's Guidelines are published. They have been revised to offer additional clarity. Furthermore, Google has a public webmaster forums and publishes many articles and videos offering further clarification.

I work with Google penalties every week. I have never seen nor heard of a site penalized for having EMDs pointing to their main site just because they were EMDs. You discounted the prior example because SEOmoz is a large domain. OK. Let's use another example. If I were to go out and buy 100 domains such as "SEOtips.net", "SEOtricks.net"  and 98 other similar domains and redirect them all to my company site, Vitopian.com I would not expect a penalty.

Now, if you were to alter your question in such a way as each of these domains had one page websites on them, then they become doorway pages which is a violation of Google's Guidelines.

[TLM]

My two cents: Like most things SEO the answer is to stop and think; collect all the statements/opinions that you can and then apply what you have learned to your current situation. In this case you are going to be taking both the EMD devaluation and the intent of the Panda (thin content)/Penguin (spammy links) updates and apply them to your situation. Without knowing your site or the other sites being linked from. I will be responding in broad hypotheticals and hopefully, if I understood your question correctly, it will provide you with something to consider.

First things first: Ryan is basically dead-on with his assessment of the 'I heard...' issue. So, for the sake of clarity, I will once more state that what follows is my opinion on the vague question presented.

Your question is a good example for the 'use your head' school of thought. The question appears to be about the spammy-ness of buying and redirecting EMD sites to a main website in an attempt to benefit from their existing site traffic/linking metrics. The confusion seems to be a common one: "Does changing X on site Y accomplish/trigger Z? If yes, then does this apply to everything?" Coupling individual situations and fixes to something as scattershot as 'in all cases' is writing yourself a check for future struggle.

I think that your main source of confusion is all the misconceptions that float around about the EMD update, so for the sake of clarity:

If you own an EMD site that sells baby clothes (ex: babyclothes.com) then the EMD update didn't penalize your site, it simply took away the algo advantage that having an EMD used to grant. Think of that EMD advantage/'penalty' as a short person standing in a crowd and on a stool; the short person appears taller than they actually are and the stool may be large enough to help that person stand out from the crowd more easily than they otherwise would. If the stool were to be removed then that short person would lose the boost in visibility the stool provided. This wouldn't be making the person shorter, but simply removing the vertical boost the stool provided.

With this understanding of the EMD devaluation in mind, your situation/question clears up and becomes less muddy than it may have initially seemed:

If you own a site that sells baby clothes (branded, EMD, etc...) and you acquire related EMDs (babyclothes.com; babyclothes.net; infantclothes.com; etc...) so they can be redirected then you should be just fine. The key word in that last sentence was 'related' and it applies to any type of domain, not just EMDs (they have lost their boosted value so should be treated like any other site). This is all assuming you are buying established/existing sites that have content because link schemes (like Ryan correctly pointed out) are penalized regardless of the site being an EMD or not. A doorway is a doorway regardless of its domain name.

Oh, and one final thing: Make sure that if you buy an existing site you give the user base of that site a few days or weeks notice of the coming change. Users are the most important part of any decision made and nothing will earn you the ire of your users more than sudden changes with no warnings (once again, I am assuming you are buying existing sites and not just setting up a bunch of doorways pointing to your site).

In short:

The EMD update has made the benefit of having such a domain moot, however, existing EMDs can still ride the wave of link and user base metrics that having an EMD used to be helpful in acquiring.

Redirecting any existing sites (EMD is an irrelevant variable for this case in my opinion) which you have purchased into your primary domain is not a problem assuming you aren't simply setting up a bunch of doorways and that the purchased/redirected sites are relevant.

I would love to hear some of the other opinions on this.

Vikas_Rana, did this help at all? I hope so.

[Personnel_Concept]

Thanks Tyler!

[Personnel_Concept]

"Google frowns on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the one they selected" - Google

"Having multiple domain names targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page" - Google

link - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2721311

[RyanKent]

Vikas, I am very familiar with the page you shared. I still stand by my response as correct. I believe you are either misinterpreting the guideline, or you have not fully explained the situation which is why I had requested an example.

Using the example I previously shared, if I purchased "SEOtips.net", "SEOtricks.net"  and 100 other domains then 301 redirected all of them to my site, that would not violate Google's Guidelines. There is no attempt to manipulate search rankings. My site will not rank any higher because I redirected these domains to my site, assuming these are new domains which have never been used.

You quoted the policy on Doorway pages. Please read Google's definition of a Doorway page. It is a single web page designed to rank in search engines, pull traffic for the terms related to the page, then redirect the traffic to the target site. That is not what is happening here.

I am perfectly comfortable with your selection of Tyler's response as the correct answer. Tyler's response gets a thumbs up from me. Nevertheless, the response I shared is accurate.

[Personnel_Concept]

Agree with you Moosa! Google has clearly mentioned that - "Google frowns on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the one they selected" - Google

So ofcourse redirecting 100s of them is definitely not a good idea!

[Personnel_Concept]

I understand your point, Ryan. I also understand that Google itself recommend 301 redirect from one domain to another in genuine cases. so yeah you made a valid point (just that your answer was bit aggressive but I still appreciate your help. thanks!).

Ok To be specific in my case- its in house, we already have two existing EMDs (not developed as sites) and we are planning to permanently redirect them to another EMD (even though it is EMD but still it will be developed as a proper brand site.).

So i guess you reckon its ok to do so?

[RyanKent]

Based on what you shared, absolutely.

My question is...why redirect the domains? If there is no backlinks to the site and there is no page on the site, the sole reason is for type-in traffic. If you have an established website with a long name, you could later acquire a short name and 301 redirect it for either marketing or type in traffic. For example, bankofthewest.com owns botw.com and it used to redirect to the main site. Now they use it for their mobile site.

[RyanKent]

Hi Moosa,

The answer will vary based on the specific situation.

If you buy domains which have backlinks then redirect them to your site in an attempt to pass PR to your site, you are attempting to manipulative search rankings. That is clearly a problem.

If you buy keyword domains and put up 1 page sites with the goal of ranking for those terms, then forwarding them to your site, that is also clearly a problem.

If your site is SacramentoVacuums.com and you purchase all the local area site names (RanchoCordovaVacuums.com, FairOaksVacuums.com, etc) and redirect them to your site for the possibility of type in traffic, that is not a problem. Even if you purchased 100 such domains...these domains do not have backlinks, they don't have a site, you are not attempting to rank any of them, you are simply trying to gain a bit of extra traffic.

If you are concerned, you could always 302 redirect the sites. That would be an unusual implementation, but I do not see any problem with it.