Buy a .com to forward to a site's page?

[jacal1]

Imagine you have the domain apples.com (wouldn't that be nice!). Your site does well, and has sub pages for each type of apple especially the page for "macintiosh apples".

Now the name macintoshapples.com comes up, and you see that this set of keywords has moderate traffic like 4000/month.

Will it benefit you to buy it and forward it to your page on those apples?

Or do you really have to build a brand new site around it to get much benefit?

Thanks!

 

[chipmeade]

Not only think of what the traffic itself is worth to you but what would the lost traffic would cost. Definately buy the name if it is an important part of your apples site. You will have to draw the line somewhere but the more important and close to your current efforts, the more worthwhile. I would redirect to that specific page, even if you are not going to get the full SEO benefit of the name as a stand alone. Consider that loss as an investment in your "apples.com" brand. You will still get the additional traffic, just not as much presumably. Remember a rising tide lists all boats.

An instance where a separate (but equal) website might be worthy would be for say a car dealership where their is value in the brand AS WELL AS the keywords. "MillerFord.com" and "DallasCars.com" Develop both but marry the brands a page or two deep. Get the generic benefit of the keywords in search with the geo name while also getting exposure for your established traffic generating "Name Brand"

 

[draggar]

You have 3 choices:

1) Buy it and forward it. This is the simplest (and cheapest way) but you would be 100% relying on type-ins and backlinks. This may be your best option starting out and you should be able to see referrals from the new domain and later decide if you want to keep it like this or build on it.

2) Buy it and build it. This way requires more work but would help you build the site and type in / backlink traffic would build from there

3) Don't buy it.

There is also the big factor of price - is the new .com worth the price?

 

[Biggie]

note:

keywords don't have traffic, domainnames do

there is a difference.

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Buy it and put an ad for apples.com on it. If it had good content and was doing well in the search engines, I wouldn't want to interfere with it much.

 

[jetbrains]

For me, I would buy it and forward to sub page because I only need traffic.

 

[Mark Talbot]

Be careful on how you forward it. It can burn both domains in the serps if not done properly. (If there still is a 'proper' way anymore)

 

[asfas]

Be careful on how you forward it. It can burn both domains in the serps if not done properly. (If there still is a 'proper' way anymore)

Can you elaborate on this ?

 

[Mark Talbot]

http://www.seo.com/blog/multiple-domains-seo/

http://www.yourseoplan.com/experts-domain-masking/

Just a couple of examples.

Not saying it cant be done. Just be careful.

 

[DexSmart]

If you have the budget go and buy not just .com get .net , .org all versions if possible.

 

[RUUR]

If you have the budget go and buy not just .com get .net , .org all versions if possible.

Dex or anyone else for that matter:
In light of all the new gTLD's does anyone still feel owning the .net and .org hold their weight? Yes, they are nice to have, but when taking a look at the successful tech/web companies many of them own the .com and a .co and do not own or operate a .net or .org

Before people chew me out over raising this question, I'm simply basing this idea off of facts not hypotheticals.

Example(s)
Twitter Inc.
Owns:
- twitter.com
- twitter.co
- t.co
-twitter.org
Does Not Own:
-twitter.net

Interesting Fact about Russia's Largest Search Engine Yandex
Yandex.net points to yandex.ru
Yandex.org points to Yandex.com