Anyone Tried Domain Farming for Local SEO?

I’m planning to create about 10 websites using Wix for my bicycle rental business in my city. The goal is to buy multiple domains so when people search for bike rentals in my area, they find several sites that all point back to our business. Think this approach could work?

If you haven’t managed to get one site ranking well yet, I’d suggest focusing all your energy on that first. Get one site to the top, then expand to dominate.

Alistair said:
If you haven’t managed to get one site ranking well yet, I’d suggest focusing all your energy on that first. Get one site to the top, then expand to dominate.

I’m in a similar boat. My page isn’t ranking for my main keywords either. I thought adding other domains might help, but am I going about it wrong?

@OptimizedObsession
No need to switch domains just because a page isn’t ranking. Focus on optimizing it. Have you looked into what your top competitors are doing well and where they’re falling short?

Alistair said:
@OptimizedObsession
No need to switch domains just because a page isn’t ranking. Focus on optimizing it. Have you looked into what your top competitors are doing well and where they’re falling short?

I haven’t done that yet, but it sounds like a smart approach. I’m new to all this, so I’m learning as I go. Do you have an SEO audit tool you recommend?

@OptimizedObsession
You can start by seeing how much content your competitors have, the kinds of backlinks they use, and the type of domain they have. For your site, work on building authority with relevant content and strong backlinks. Screaming Frog is free for small sites, and SEMrush or Ahrefs work well for backlink audits.

People have been building private blog networks (PBNs) to dominate niches for a long time. It still works, but keep the domains separate and avoid interlinking—just link back to your main site. You could make each site look like it’s run by different companies.

You can find good domains at auction, but using a tool like Domain Hunter Gatherer to find expired domains is cheaper. You save on auction fees and can access the domain right away.

@Eugene
@OP if you’re interested in this approach, check out the ‘Grumpy SEO Guy’ podcast for some useful insights.

It could work, but it’s a lot of work with diminishing returns. For local results, if you’re not in the top 2 or 3, you won’t get much traffic. Also, local searches are dominated by the map pack. If you don’t have a verified address for each location, traffic will be low.

I do this for several businesses, but one site per city might be too much—you’ll end up competing with yourself. I have a few strategies that work well for me. I sent you a DM if you want to chat more.

Can you get a verified Google Business Profile for each location? Without it, you might struggle since local search mostly shows Google Maps results, not organic search.

It shouldn’t hurt, despite what people say about duplicate content. I run a few multi-domain sites myself. If your hosting supports PHP, you can mirror your main site to other domains with a simple PHP read command. Any changes to your main page will show up on the mirrored sites, and all links still point to your main site.

@Rafael
Haha, downvotes from the ‘duplicate content’ crowd who watched one YouTube video on it.

@Rafael
It usually works better if you vary the content a bit. I keep some content the same but make certain parts unique for each site.

Go for it. For Local SEO, it can work because people search with the city name. Just pick a strong domain name and build blog backlinks for each site.

Kameron said:
Go for it. For Local SEO, it can work because people search with the city name. Just pick a strong domain name and build blog backlinks for each site.

But won’t Google penalize or limit my reach if they catch on?

@Hudson
Just make sure each site has unique content.