GMChost.com Webmaster Guide

The question has been raised, if shorter domains are better for "human consumption" and search engines favor longer domains, what do I do? The answer is simple: Advertise your shorter domain but submit your longer domains to the search engines. Many hosting services will allow multiple domains to point to the same Web site. Generally this service is free, or available for a small fee.

However, if you're going to have multiple domains, it's best if you can take full advantage of other factors favored by the search engines. Many engines rank home pages much higher than sub-pages, all other things being equal. If you have five domains, each pointing to their own uniquely optimized home page (versus all pointing to the same home page), you suddenly have five times the chance to rank in the top 10. You also avoid the problem of the engine seeing two domains pointing to identical pages. In that scenario, some engines may reject one domain at random as being duplicated content.

Obviously if you had five domains you could rent five full Web sites, but that can be cost prohibitive for many of us, and can be over-kill for some types of sites. Therefore, I put out a request in last month's special issue for hosting services that would host multiple domains that point to multiple home pages and/or sub-pages inexpensively.

Here are a few services that I received. Please note that I do NOT endorse these hosts nor do I know how reliable they might be. However, I know that it can be difficult to find hosts that have pricing schemes that are geared toward search engine marketers on a budget. Therefore, I'm providing a few you might evaluate:

WebQuarry

http//www.webquarry.com

TJ Productivity Inc.

http://www.tjpro.com

NetSight Internet Solutions Limited.

http://www.NetSight.co.uk

Again, the above are only examples that were sent to me. I have no affiliation with them, nor have I tested their services. Certainly if you are happy with your current host, I'd approach them first to see if they'd be willing to host additional domains for a price you can afford. If they can't do anything that is affordable for your situation, then consider keeping your main host at someplace you know is reliable, and hosting your extra domains you optimize for the search engines at a less expensive host. Your doorway pages could then link to your main site if desired. (For a definition of doorway pages, see our December 1998 issue: http://www.webposition.com/mp-1298.htm)

Try to set it up so that each domain can point to its own home page. Ideally, being able to have separate sub-pages on each domain would allow you to optimize the most doorway pages per domain.

Caution: Do not use multiple domains for the purpose of dominating all the top slots of a given keyword. Your goal should be to occupy just one or two of the slots for a keyword so that you're not accused of spamming. Occupying only one or two positions for a single keyword is also only fair to Web surfers who may be searching for more than one choice.