Is there SEO value in owning a stable of domain names?

A client of mine recently asked me a good question and I’d like to share with you my response to her …

    "Hi Steve, Quick question…we own about 50 domain names. Right now, some of them point back to our website and some are just parked. And some of them are up for renewal in the next few months. So, I want make better use of these by directing them to our website. My question is this…we have some domains like www.johnsmith.com and www.jsmith.com, etc. and I’m wondering if these are valuable or not. Should we keep these? Is it always better to have as many domains that point to your site as possible or are names like these worthless in the web/SEO world? Any insights would be appreciated."

Hi, Good question. Empty domain link pointers are worthless in terms of SEO. Search engines only credit inbound links from real websites. The only value in a pointer is if someone types that address into a browser and your site pops up. In that respect there IS a traffic driving value in a domain name that contains a popular industry phase like realestate.com. I would also add that if domains point to the main site, they should do so using a 301 redirect.  If they don’t, there is always a chance somebody will link to them and cause duplicate content and not pass page rank to the main site.

Just in case you’re wondering, I would not advise using the domains to create some phantom websites just on the premise of creating a real link into your site. That ship has sailed. It’s a very spammy thing to do and it’s not worth the effort.
 
I’m not going to advise you to sell or keep domains because you may want to maintain possession for competitive reasons or possible future use. The bottom line is, It’s probably going to cost you anywhere from $300 - $600 per year to maintain ownership of those domain names. If you think a domain could be valuable to your business or someone else like a competitor in the future — hang on to it as a speculative investment. It’s ok to park it or point it to your site.

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Filed under: Search Engine Optimization

Posted by Stephen Turcotte on September 22, 2006 10:41 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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