Does redirecting a keyword-rich domain (City+Keyword.com) to your local business site help with SEO?

We see this question all the time. Business owners have acquired what they think is an excellent, keyword-rich domain name in their area. So they buy it and forward it to their site! Does this help with SEO? Should you do it? We tackle this question in this week’s Answer Friday!

I love this question!

So we have tons of clients that will buy keyword-rich domain names.

So maybe they have a lawn care company. They, own X lawn care.com. That’s their brand.

But then they’ll also see an opportunity to buy Indianapolis lawn care.com.

So let’s say they serve Indianapolis. That is the city plus keyword. That’s called an exact match domain.  (www.indianapolislawncare.com)

The question is, should you 301, redirect (Or Forward) that domain name and what value do you get from it?

So, yes, in most cases, you can, there’s almost no risk associated with that unless the domain has been used for spam or bad things in the past, and you can check those things out using like Ahrefs or Semrush to see what the backlink or what the domain history there is.

(You can see a perfect example of a backlink due diligence here)

But in most cases, it’s not the shot in the arm of SEO that we hope for.

It’s just kind of one vote of confidence on that keyword or on that domain.

Now, if you build a bunch of links to that domain, you can send a lot more value through that a lot faster.

Then it’s a little more advanced in the technique, but overall not a terrible strategy, but it’s not the hope for everything.

You probably want it to be either hope that helps.