Using 301 to Experiment with Different Domains?
- SEO |
I've got a new website. The domain was registered 2 months ago. The domain was chosen since it has the keyword phrase I initially targeted in the right order without hyphens. Let's say the keywords are "pretty good phrase" Let's call it. prettygoodphease.com I bought 100 directory links for it. It's currently got 17 linking root domains, 2400 total links according to open site explorer.
I did more rigorous keyword research recently and found a keyword phrase that is very similar but has about 3 times the search volume according to the google adwords keyword tool. Let's say this phrase is "even better hrase " and the domain is evenbetterphrase.com This is the primary phrase I now want to target.
It is a site targeting a city area so the city name is one of the words in the keyphrase and the competition is much lower than the global, non-city specific phrase.
I also have my own brand name domain which I've only used for e-mail and never hosted a website on. It contains none of the keywords or any words similar or close. It is one word (my last name). However, this domain is over 15 years old, yep, registered in 1996.
Since it is so new and the backlink profile is pretty weak I assume it is not too late to move it to a different domain and 301 redirect it without running into issues. I was thinking this could almost serve as a good test to see how much the domain name makes a difference.
So I've got 3 domains to choose from:
a) prettygoodphrase.com (in use now, 2 months old with some backlinks)
b) evenbetterphrase.com (brand new, not being used)
c) brand.com (my brand, 15+ years old, never hosted a site on it, just used for e-mail, my preferred domain name if I had the choice)
Can I 301 redirect domain (a) to domain (b), wait for a crawl and re-index and see where I end up, then 301 to domain (c), wait for re-index and if same or better rank stay at (c), if worse rank, go back to (b) ? Essentially this will show me the effect of the domain name on the rank, keeping in mind supposedly 301 only carries 90-95% link juice.
I did more rigorous keyword research recently and found a keyword phrase that is very similar but has about 3 times the search volume according to the google adwords keyword tool. Let's say this phrase is "even better hrase " and the domain is evenbetterphrase.com This is the primary phrase I now want to target.
It is a site targeting a city area so the city name is one of the words in the keyphrase and the competition is much lower than the global, non-city specific phrase.
I also have my own brand name domain which I've only used for e-mail and never hosted a website on. It contains none of the keywords or any words similar or close. It is one word (my last name). However, this domain is over 15 years old, yep, registered in 1996.
Since it is so new and the backlink profile is pretty weak I assume it is not too late to move it to a different domain and 301 redirect it without running into issues. I was thinking this could almost serve as a good test to see how much the domain name makes a difference.
So I've got 3 domains to choose from:
a) prettygoodphrase.com (in use now, 2 months old with some backlinks)
b) evenbetterphrase.com (brand new, not being used)
c) brand.com (my brand, 15+ years old, never hosted a site on it, just used for e-mail, my preferred domain name if I had the choice)
Can I 301 redirect domain (a) to domain (b), wait for a crawl and re-index and see where I end up, then 301 to domain (c), wait for re-index and if same or better rank stay at (c), if worse rank, go back to (b) ? Essentially this will show me the effect of the domain name on the rank, keeping in mind supposedly 301 only carries 90-95% link juice.
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Matt Ward -
Thanks
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