Is this Domain Change Worthwhile?
-
Hi-
I have a client who has setup a new criminal law firm in the last few months. The URL is like:
['somename' is the same # characters as their company name]
I have run a successful AdWords a/c for them and many of the big traffic and conversion keywords include 'criminal lawyers'. From a SEO perspective, the long goal is to get traffic for 'criminal lawyers' and keywords that phrase match that.
So I am considering migrating them to www.somenamecriminallawyers.com.
I have researched this issue and understand the technicalities involved in moving. My question here is 'is this change worthwhile'.
I think it is worthwhile because it really is in a sense rebranding them to be more clearly in a specific business domain, ie. criminal law. Also, they are a new outfit so they don't have a lot of backlinks yet. And mainly, they will get a SEO boost to their core keywords 'criminal lawyers'.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts-
Jules
-
Great. I'll investigate the localization options and 'criminal law'. Thanks a lot for the help!
-
Absolutely. Too often with law firms and other pro practices their first pass is all about the site and name being an icon to their current or soon to be greatness. You have to focus on what do people query in the search bar (and get them to understand that is what you do): Felony theft, DWI/DUI Defense/Criminal assault, etc.
Typically, with local firms, I find the terms with localization are best with the query term. So, Omaha-criminal-lawyers.com, omaha-criminal-defense.com, etc. Out of curiosity I checked the following in adwords with keyword tool: Criminal defense, dwi defense, criminal lawyer. (I used Omaha as I have no clients there).
What came back was interesting: Criminal Lawyers has many more queries than criminal defense, but when you look at one Google through out along with mine - criminal law, it gets as many queries as criminal lawyer/lawyers and is much less competitive.
You will have to look with the local added, but I think it is a good change as long as you url to url 301 for all that are applicable from old to new site.
Hope it helps, PM me and let me know how it works out.
-
Thanks Robert that all makes sense and is useful.
I presume you do think the domain change is worth the effort?
Thanks-
Jules
-
Jules
We work with quite a few law firms and I understand what you are wanting to accomplish. Since they are criminal lawyers, I will assume they are not trying to go nationwide with say...mesothelioma. Most criminal firms work within a city so my suggestion would be to use the city name as opposed to their name(s). This will also help with optimizing them locally (Google Places, Bing Business Portal, Yahoo Local).
Given they are a "new outfit," now is the time to make a change. Assuming you already have some ranking and some links, you do not want to have to redo that. You want to 301 redirect from url current site to url new site. This will preserve what you have. The only negative would be losing the authority or rank you now have so this will handle most of that (you will get roughly 90%).
On new site, make sure each attorney has a local listing as well as the firm. Being you are already doing Adwords, I would think the rest will be easy for you.
-
Jules
We work with quite a few law firms and I understand what you are wanting to accomplish. Since they are criminal lawyers, I will assume they are not trying to go nationwide with say...mesothelioma. Most criminal firms work within a city so my suggestion would be to use the city name as opposed to their name(s). This will also help with optimizing them locally (Google Places, Bing Business Portal, Yahoo Local).
Given they are a "new outfit," now is the time to make a change. Assuming you already have some ranking and some links, you do not want to have to redo that. You want to 301 redirect from url current site to url new site. This will preserve what you have. The only negative would be losing the authority or rank you now have so this will handle most of that (you will get roughly 90%).
On new site, make sure each attorney has a local listing as well as the firm. Being you are already doing Adwords, I would think the rest will be easy for you.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does Google Delay or Graduate SERP Changes?
You can request re-indexing of a single page via Google Search Console. It would seem to me you could use this feature to experiment with on-page changes to see the rank change to determine which changes have the most effect. For the sake of this thread, lets temporarily forget that the relative importance on various on-page factors has already been reverse engineered to a degree so we already have a general idea to som extent. It would seem to me if I were Google, I would introduce either a random delay period, or, temper rank change after reindexing. What I mean by that latter point is say a reindex takes a page from position 20 to 10. If it is 'tempered' so to speak on Day 2 after reindexing it might be at 18, day 5 it's at 16, day 7 it's at 16 until it reaches the actual "real" rank. Both the delay and or the tempering of rank change would make it difficult more difficult to reverse engineer relative importance of on-page factors. OR, does Google realize there are large SEO firms doing SEO over several years for many sites that can examine aggregate data to determine these factors so Google doesn't delay (aka sandbox) or temper rank changes due to manual re-indexing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Semush0 -
Can’t put a finger on, what is causing 12 year domain, SEO optimized and decent link profile to rank lower than other less superior domains.
Can’t put a finger on, what is causing 12 year domain, SEO optimized and decent link profile to rank lower than other less superior domains. I have dissected the site and link, content, etc profile using ahrefs tools, still no luck, and unfortunately they do not have a community to ask anyone opinion. Hoping someone on Moz will be able to provide me with a secondary opinion or something I obviously missing here. Looking for any constructive feedback/professional opinion with fresh look on what maybe the cause of our down rankings and what may be a cause of it. Any feedback is very much appreciated. Search Term: 3030 aventura condos / One of our link samples (SE Position #6): https://goo.gl/FbYj4V Competing Domains (SE Position #1): https://goo.gl/fLPKX5 Competing Domains (SE Position #2): https://goo.gl/GqXGse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Im_Jake0 -
Why is wrong domain being indexed?
We have 2 domains: revolve.com and fwrd.com (unrelated to each other, but hosted on the same server). If you do a site search for revolve.com but enter a designer brand that is only carried on FWRD (not on Revolve), the domain "revolve.com" pops up in the SERP, which is redirected to FWRD.com. Ex. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Awww.revolve.com isabel marant Why is Google indexing the revolve.com pages, which don't actually exist? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Legal Client Wants to Change Domain Name... What's the best way to pass authority from old domain?
Hey Mozzers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhiteboardCreations
I received a call on Friday from a 6 attorney law office who have been my client for a long time. They have an established brand/domain in their market which isn't very big, but has a lot of competition. 2 of the attorneys are leaving to start their own firm and they want to remove a letter from their name abbreviation, thus their domain name as well. So, the other partners want to change the domain to reflect this. They want to buy a EMD [city]lawyers.com for about $1,600 along with some others to protect their new brand and name. I have a good idea as to what I need to do, BUT would love to hear advice from the community for this type of drastic change. 301 redirects? New Google Analytics code or same just different profile? Webmasters verifications? Content from old site? Old domain forwarding or keep active for a little bit? Is not the time to get them an SSL? Also, what should I prepare them for in terms of website traffic expectations and Google authority drops or remains the same? I know their Moz DA/PA will drop to 1/1, but anything else to look out for? Thank you in advance!
Fellow Pro Member - Patrick1 -
Changing the XML Sitemap address
For technical reason we are having to change our XML sitemap URL's from domain.com/sitemap.xml to domain.com/sitemaps/sitemap.xml - What checklist do I need to do to make sure this transition goes smoothly and is there any problems that I might come across?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Page and Domain Authority
How much Page and Domain Authority we need to look for to secure a backlink.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ross254sidney0 -
Merging Domains
Up until last week, we had separate domains for each of our 3 products. We've now merged two products to sit under one URL. The merge coincided with a CMS upgrade which effectively killed all of our old URLs save for the homepage. Is it best for me to 301 the old homepage to it's new place, as well as the rest of the old site's top pages to according pages on the new site? Or is there a better solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | taylor.craig0 -
Best Way to Consolidate Domains?
Hello, My company has four websites in the same vertical and we're planning to integrate them all on our main company site. So instead of www.siteone.com, www.sitetwo.com, www.sitethree.com, etc. It would be www.branddomain.com/site-one, www.branddomain.com/site-two, etc. I have a few questions... Should we redirect the old domains to the new directories or leave the old domains and stop updating them with new content... Then have the old content, links, etc. 301 to the same content on the new site? Should we literally move all of the content to the new directories? Any tips are appreciated. It's probably pretty obvious that I don't have a ton of technical skills... my development team will be doing the heavy lifting. I just want to be sure we do this correctly from an SEO perspective! Thanks for the help, please let me know if I can clarify anything. E
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0