Should I Use Multiple Domain Names?

You can point thousands of domain names to one website — that's technically easy. But should you? The only time that it's beneficial to have more than one domain name is if you want to have one domain for search engine purposes and another for your printed materials. For instance, you might want to have www.portlandchiropractor.com as your primary domain name for the search engines, and www.drjoesmith.com as your domain that you put on your business card.

Why don't multiple domain names help with search engine optimization?

Because Google's database is very smart. When Google indexes a domain name, it stores each page in its database. After storing it, Google's computers go through every word of text on your page and compare it every other page stored in Google. If you have multiple domains, Google will think that these are all different sites — until it analyzes your pages and sees that they're identical to the pages on your other domains. Google sees this as  Duplicate Content. It may index all of your sites, but only one will be considered the canonical (or primary) domain. The rest will (if they show up in the Google search results at all) be way down in the search results — like page 20 or so. So, while it's tempting to have 20 domains targeting different keywords, they're not going to help you one bit if they're all pointing to one site. (If each of the domains is pointing to a unique site, that WILL help you, provided you have unique content on each site.) If you have any questions about  chiropractic domain names and how we can create a powerful chiropractic website for you, give us a call at (800) 295-3346 or contact us.