I have been thinking of purchasing around 20 domain names. I would like each of these domain names to "land" on a specific pages of my site.

The domain names would contain specific keywords.

Will this hurt me in the seach engines (ie. google)?

Zinc.

I'm not sure you need the different domains. If you use the keywords in the names of your folders and pages you'll probably get the same effect you're trying to achieve.

Design your site for users and not the search engines.

Originally Posted by gringo

Design your site for users and not the search engines.

Then also you think 20 domains will just help your user do that but be remembered to use a permanent redirect from the domain to the respective page.

Originally Posted by shabbirbhimani

Then also you think 20 domains will just help your user do that but be remembered to use a permanent redirect from the domain to the respective page.

Could you please explain further... Permanent redirect? as apposed to??

Originally Posted by gringo

Design your site for users and not the search engines.

I do have my site fully designed. It is easy to navigate (I think). It is a site for financial services (ie. insurance and investments). I have noticed when typing in keywords into google that the URL's often come up with parts of the url highlighted. So, if you were to type in "life insurance canada" (without the quotes) into google you get:

Canada LifeA Canadian mutual life insurance company.
www.canadalife.com/ - 2k - 31 Jan 2006 - Cached - Similar pages 


Insurance for Canada and the United States by RBC InsuranceSpecializes in life, health, travel insurance, and annuities for middle income families in Canada and the United States. Site offers individual, family, ...
www.rbcinsurance.com/ - 30k - 31 Jan 2006 - Cached - Similar pages 


Insurance Quotes & Information (Canada/US/UK)Quotes and information on life insurance, health & dental, travel insurance, and more.
www.cheaplifeinsurance.ca/ - 10k - Cached - Similar pages 


Term Life Insurance CanadaTerm Canada offers free online term life insurance quotes for Canadians.
www.termcanada.com/ - 7k - 31 Jan 2006 - Cached - Similar pages

and each keyword that is in the url is highlighted.

Originally Posted by vangogh

I'm not sure you need the different domains. If you use the keywords in the names of your folders and pages you'll probably get the same effect you're trying to achieve.

there are three to four keyword url's that I wanted to use which would make my normal url too long. I will still be using my main url for advertising purposes but using these urls strictly to "help" with SEO. I realize that it won't do it completely but I have used other SEO techniques like meta keywords, descriptions, title optimization as well as structuring the content. I just figured this would help me get a little better rankings because if I bought life-insurance-canada.ca then I have all the keywords in my url so if someone typed in the keyphrase "life insurance canada" I should pop up #1?

Am I wrong???

Your url alone isn't going to make you pop up #1. It will have an effect, but you'll still most likely need to do more seo if you want to be #1. There really isn't going to be one magic thing you can do to improve you rank. All your seo changes work together to improvee your site. And some of the things you do for a search engine may have a negative impact on your visitor. You're always better to design and develop for your visitor since ultimately that's who your site is for.

Another option is to use subdomains instead of new domains. I don't know what the url of your main site is, but assuming it's life-insurance.com then you could set up domains as canada.life-insurance.com and still get in the keywords you want.

It's ok if your url gets long as it points deeper and deeper into your site. I wouldn't recommend a long domain url, but there's nothing wrong with specific pages ending up with longer urls. As a site visitor I actually like that since it gives me an idea of the structure of the site and what I may find that I missed in the navigation.

The idea with the permanent redirects is that if you have 20 domains the search engines will see your pages as 20 different sites and so the seo benefit you gain on one page won't help any of the other pages. Permanent redirecting tells a search engine that the different domains are really the same site.

There are other forms of redirection, but permanent (or 301) redirection is the way you want to go.

Thank you Vangogh,

Very insightful feedback. I'll give you an idea of what I wanted to do and maybe you can give me better feedback.

I used to run a site called insurancetime.ca (I ended up letting it go because I now do more than just insurance). I felt it was catchy enough, but obviously insurance can mean many things ie. mortgage insurance, life insurance, car insurance, business insurance, etc. It was just too general.

My main goal is to increase the traffic for the following:

- Term Life Insurance
- Whole Life Insurance
- Universal Life Insurance
- Critical Illness Insurance
- Disability Insurance
- Mortgage/Creditor Life Insurance

Now, although I get your point for the subdomains I felt it would be very time consuming to have 6 different subdomains just to land on a page each so that's where my idea of the domain names came in. For I could go out and buy term-life-insurance-ontario-canada.com and then I could buy whole-life-insurance-ontario-canada.com and so on and so on. I could even go so far as to buy term-life-insurance-hamilton-ontario.com and so on. So I would have MANY domain names. Ultimately, each one would point to something like http://www.insurancetime.ca/termlife or something like that.

I would like to do this for the following topics:

Insurance
Investments
Mortgages

I can only setup 25 subdomains with my package. Also, it seems to be more work to setup a subdomain instead of just a domain name redirect.

I don't know much about this though... Am I on the right track.

Also, I am aware that the domain name won't be the only factor in popping up #1. But I am currently popping up in the top 10 on Yahoo so I figured it might help me there as well as help me get in the top 10 on Google. Am I on the right track here? Keep in mind I have used some other techniques like optimization of the title, description, keywords, and content.

Also, can you either show me or direct me where to go to find out how to do a permanent redirect???

I do understand what you're trying to do, but I think you really will be just as well off giving your pages meaningful names. I realize some of the urls will get long, but I think that's fine.

Take a look at the url of this page for a moment. This site seems to be doing pretty well in search engines. I know that's how I found it.

The start of the url is the domain name for the site as you would expect. next comes 'google-forum' since that's the particular forum we're in followed by a string of numbers which I think are just assigned by the database. The last part of the url is the topic you typed in for this post. In this case it's short, but if you look at some other posts you'll see they get longer.

I've structured my own site to show urls in a similar way. I start with my domain name and then each of the main navigation links is in it's own directory with the pages there. So for example if you want to get to my page on seo you would go to:

http://www.yellowhousehosting.com/se...timization.php

it does get quite long, but generally people won't be typing that in to the address bar. They'll either click a link on my site or click a link somewhere on another site. If it's on another site chance are the link look more like:

search engine optimization or seo

All three go to the same place, but other than the full url the links aren't particularly long. All the keywords are still in the url so I'll get the same benefit as having a new domain with those keywords pointing to the same place.

Do you mind if I ask what keywords are bringing your site up in the top 10 in Yahoo?

Yahoo tends to be more affected by on-page factors such as titles and content. Google while still considering all the same on-page factors puts a little more weight on incoming links to your site. I think improving your incoming links will have a greater benefit for your site in Google than adding all the keypwords in your url.

It also just seems like a lot of work to have to maintain 20 domains instead of 1. There's nothing really wrong with what you're doing. I just don't think it's going to have the effect you think it will. It certainly won't do anymore than the way I'm suggesting setting up your urls.

In fact using the 301 redirects tells search engines that your keyword rich pages are really the non-keyword rich pages. I'm not sure, but I think when they evaluate the url for the purposes of ranking they'll be using the non-keyword rich urls since that's what you're telling them is the real url for the page. (i'm just speculating on this, but it seems reasonable)

Wow, you are very knowledgable on the subject. I appreciate your input.

I will be glad to share the information with you, the only reason I have not entered in my real domain name over the forum is I don't what it to pick it up in google if someone types it in the search bar.

click here to actually get to my site.

Right now I have mainly structured the site around my mortgages. So, if someone was to type in something like:

Scotiabank first time buyer - in yahoo I get 5th spot... This is actually a good one to show you as #2 is www.first-time-buyer.ca

bad credit mortgages in hamilton - I am 6th
bad credit mortgages in waterloo - I am 4th
bad credit mortgage approvals - I am 7th

self employed mortgage approvals - I am 1st
self employed mortgages - I don't show up but the 1st listing is www.selfemployedmortgages.ca
self employed mortgages in hamilton - I am 3rd

--

I'm sure you get what I am talking about. Some of the keywords I would use just wouldn't make sense to put in my url unless it was the domain:

I would probably like to add keyword-keyword-keyword-ontario-canada with the ontario-canada being in every domain just so that it gave a better result.

For example -
For self employed I would do something like:
www.self-employed-mortgage-ontario-canada.ca

I wouldn't want my regular url to read:
http://www.domain.ca/selfemployed/mo...ontario/canada because I don't think that "looks good".

Also, if I talk to someone and I say go to my website at www.domain.ca/whatever it is easier than saying go to www.domain.ca and click there and there and there.

Does that make sense or am I over thinking this?

Actually you are barking up completely the wrong tree

keyword domain names and pagenames only help in one situation. This is when you have a link that uses the url/page name as anchor text.

Originally Posted by zincoxide

Could you please explain further... Permanent redirect? as apposed to??

You should be using a permanent 301 redirect rather than 302 Temporary redirect.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Actually you are barking up completely the wrong tree

keyword domain names and pagenames only help in one situation. This is when you have a link that uses the url/page name as anchor text.

I am not sure what you mean by a link that uses the url/page name as anchor text... But, just out of curiousity... Why do certain domain names come out highlighted during certain serches in google??

Zinc.

like http://www.webmaster-talk.com/google...2969-urls.html this

the bolding of words is purely a display function to highlight the search terms

Okay, good to know.

Thanks for all they help, I guess the concensus is not to do it and just re-structure my hiarchy. I'll do that.

One other question then... If I change my hiarchy is there a way that I can set it up that if someone goes to the "old" url that they will enter the new hiarcy instead?

I think that buying individual domains that are based on the same site is a little bit messy and Google may not like it.

It is best to just stuff your keywords into your file names / url path.

zincoxide you'll want to set up 301 or permanent redirects from your old urls to your new ones. That will let the search eninges know that those old urls are now your new urls and you'll be able to keep any seo benefits you've built in the old urls.