Many companies are creating websites that are exact keyword matches in an attempt to rank on Google, eg, plumbersleeds.co.uk, plumbersinleeds.co.uk. Buying multiple domain names that just contain your keyword WILL NOT trick Google into ranking these sites on the first page. Yes, many years ago you could get away with doing this, but not today.

When companies create these exact keyword domain sites they are forgetting the most important factors in SEO what Google looks for when ranking websites.

Duplicate Content

99% of the time people just copy their content from their original site, eg, joebloggsplumbing.co.uk. This website would probably contain 100% unique quality content about the company and the services they provide. Instead of optimising joebloggsplumbing.co.uk for keywords like ‘Plumbers Leeds’, companies try and cut corners and trick Google by buying a domain such as plumbersleeds.co.uk and just copying and pasting their original website into plumbersleeds.co.uk, then just spamming the meta title and content with the keyword. So now there are 2 websites that are a carbon copy of each other and they think just because they have an exact keyword match domain name they will get ranked on the first page of Google automatically with performing any type of SEO…. how wrong they are.

Today, thankfully, Google has put a stop to exact keyword domain spamming. When these companies put these websites up and they get indexed by Google, they might rank highly, possibly on the first page, but eventually they will get removed further and further back in the listing, possibly kicked of the results completely. So for the short term of a few days or even a couple of month, they think they have tricked Google and start creating more of these exact keyword domains not realising they are also damaging their main site joebloggsplumbing.co.uk due to the amount of duplicate content appearing on the web.

Duplicate IP Addresses

When these exact domains are purchased the usual instinct would be to put them on the same hosting package as joebloggsplumbing.co.uk just because it saves money. They do not realise that the IP address for joebloggsplumbing.co.uk and plumbersleeds.co.uk, and any other site they add to their hosting, will be the same. This makes it even easier for Google to pick up on duplicate content and remove these sites from their listings.

So now after a few days with their website ranked, they will start creating more and more exact keyword domains, then start linking them together…… thus causing a link farm. Same IPs, same content, same whois info, how much easier can this be for Google to see they are trying to spam their listings???

Once reading this you may think, well if i put unique content on each website, separate the hosting so each site has a different IP address, register the domain under a different name this will solve the problem? In a way yes, but what about adding quality unique content regularly to all these sites and also an inbound marketing campaign? These HAVE to be done to have first page rankings that will stick. It will be a lot easier, cheaper and quicker optimising joebloggsplumbing.co.uk in the first place for the keywords!

Are There Any SEO Companies That Do This?

Unfortunately, yes! I have no idea how they still think with all the latest updates Google bring out to supply users with the best quality results, they still think they can trick them by creating exact keyword domains. Not forgetting they all have duplicated content, duplicate IPs, duplicate whois etc.

They buy multiple domains for your keywords, which all include what was previously mentioned, and all they do is drop an anchor link on the homepage back to your main site! There is no quality or juice within the link due to everything we previously mentioned, so there is no way you will ever get ranked!