How to use a Multiple Domain Strategy to dominate with SEO
In some industries, like finance and health care, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is extremely competitive and near impossible for new companies to rank for some terms.
For example:
- “Best Crypto App”
- “Crypto Currency”
- “Best Credit Card”
These are all extremely competitive terms that companies like NerdWallet, The Fool, Benzinga etc. already rank well for. They have teams of SEO professionals working to keep and maintain their top search rankings.
Some companies, like Red Ventures, take this to another level and have built a multi-billion dollar business using many different websites to rank for the same keywords
Then, they monetize the traffic in several ways, including selling it back to the brands who are trying to rank for the same terms. For example if you search for
“Best Airline Credit Cards”
They own three of the websites that rank in top position on the first page of Google for the term.
So how can you complete in an environment like this?
You have to use a multiple domain strategy to make sure you can compete and outperform your competitors.
What is a multiple domain strategy?
A multi-domain strategy is when you use multiple domains to rank for your target terms. There are two core ways to do this. The first way is to partner with a company that is already ranking for the term. The second, is to use more than one of your own websites to target the term.
I’ll explain both below.
Partner Multi-Domain Strategy
A partner multi-domain strategy is when you use a website you don’t own to help you rank for a search term. For example, if “Best Crypto App” is a valuable search term for you, you would check to see what companies are ranking for the term.
Benzinga.com ranks well for this term and hundreds of other variations. The term has a 90 keyword difficulty (KD is a number from 0-100, 0 being easy, 100 be very difficult) so you most likely won’t be able to rank for it. This is where partner multi-domain strategy comes in.
These are a few of the other keywords that Benzinga’s “Best Crypto App” page is ranking on.
If you are not a publishing site that competes with Benzinga, you should reach out to them and see if they would add you to the list. Usually, they will need some sort of payment or affiliate deal, but in the end it will be worth it.
You should allocate a portion of your marketing budget for these types of partnerships. They help you skip the line and rank right away for important terms or those where it’s challenging to rank. This will also give you time to create content to target the keyword within your own website domains.
Multiple Domain Strategy Owned Sites
The second way to execute a multi-domain strategy is to use more than one website that you own. For example, for the search term: “New York Casino, “ we used our clients two domains:
- rwnewyork.com
- rwcatskills.com
To help them dominate important search terms like
“New York Casino”
We extended that into Google Ads with paid search. Allowing us to Integrate Search with Multiple Domains for maximum affects. See picture below. The yellow is Catskills website and the green is the New York website. The numbers are the position they rank on the first page of Google for the term. The second image on the right is if you scrolled down the first page.
Integrated Search & Multiple Domain Strategy
To take this to the next level you can use Google Ads to help support the Multiple Domain SEO Strategy. Integrated Search is when you use SEO and SEM or Google Paid Ads to target the same keywords. Our founder developed this strategy in 2014, and it helped his clients at the time like Western Union dominate Search Engine Results Pages(SERPs), even though their competitor (PayPal) outspent them in Google Ads by 10 to 1.
We have now evolved and mastered Integrated Search. Let’s return to the example of “New York Casino.” If you use Integrated Search & a Multiple Domain Strategy then you get this:
We used both domains to rank in position 1 and 2 in Google Ads, as well as having the pages rank organically(with our paying Google) using SEO. This ensures that our client dominates the search results using multiple websites in both paid and organic. By doing this, we push all competitors under the fold and give our client the best chance of absorbing the brand awareness, website traffic, and revenue (in this case hotel booking and a casino visit) for the term.
You should use a combination of Integrated Search and a Multi-Domain strategy across your most valuable keywords to get the best results. I highly recommend you include this into your marketing strategy.
If you need help let us know.