My customer has about 50 domain names they own, what can I suggest they do with them to increase SEO?

[jboddiford]

This customer has purchased about 50 domains over the years and has them all redirecting to their main website.  What could I suggest they do with all of these domain names to increase SEO?

Any ideas are greatly appreciated...

Thanks!

[EGOL]

Sell them or let them expire, then use the income / savings to buy one of these to fuel your content attack.... or you could use the money to buy beer.

[SimonCullum]

Hi Joshua

These 50 domains that are on redirect won't hold any SEO value as they are, except if any are new redirects that recently hosted a reputable website themselves. If any were to host a new unique website with their own SEO quality attributes such as inbound links and then linked into the main website, it may only provide some temporary benefit as that would be likely be flagged up as link farming and would be more costly and time consuming than the following suggestion, so I really don't recommend doing anything such as this. Thought I'd mention it as something to avoid.

My suggestion is to not do anything with these domains other than continue to redirect them if they are desired to be kept. Instead, focus on improving the on-page and off-page SEO of the main website through investing in unique relevant interesting valuable content which in turn can form the basis of obtaining more good quality links.

Also consider some online and offline PR, plus further distribution of your content through channels such as Social. Hope that helps.

Regards

Simon

[jboddiford]

Thanks so much Simon,  Ya... I kinda figured there might not be too much value in the form of SEO but I just wanted to put it out to the group to check.  I'm new at SEO and am learning as I go... hoping to make a dent in my current customer's analytics with some basic changes, adding metadata and descriptions, keyword research, etc.

I'll hold off on doing anything too crazy with those extra domains... I've told the client that I'm going to need their help developing some relevant content and PR type of articles to help drive traffic to the site... so I'll probably concentrate on that at this point.

Thanks again!

Josh

[SimonCullum]

You're welcome Josh. Asking these kind of questions on a forum such as this one is a great way to learn more about SEO, so well done there.

There is a beginners guide to SEO which you may find helpful, it can be found at http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

The old saying that Content is King still rings true, so having a content plan would be a good step. It should be seen as an investment in the website and the business rather than an expense.

The SEOmoz tools are great, especially the Competitive Analysis tool.

Best of luck,

Simon

[AlanMosley]

Good answer.

The only time I would do anything with an extra domain name is for testing, and if you have a exact match domain, then maybe it may be worth using as a landing domain.