301 redirect www.brandname.com to www.brandname-keyword.com
-
It seems I've been reading about 301 for hours now, but I still didn't find an answer to my question, so I'm hoping someone can help me out here.
I'm starting a new webshop which is relaunching a semi known brand within its specific niche, say kids toys. Now my question is - since the brand name is relatively known and it is only 5 letters short, the website will be www.xxxxx.com. However the brand name itself doesn't say anything about the products we sell, so I was thinking to buy www.xxxxx-toys.com and 301 redirect www.xxxxx.com to this new site, but still use the shorter version in all marketing material since it's a lot easier to type and remember.
Apparently Google doesn't give extra juice to sites with keywords in the domain name anymore (?) but it would still say something about site to new customers unaware of the brand name.
Any advice?
-
"Therefore what weighs more - a domain name with a lot of years behind it or a domain name with the no. 1 keyword included in the domain name."
I'd go for the domain name with lots of years behind it every time. Put your site under this.
_ "writing thousands of unique product descriptions, and I was actually wondering if it is really worth the effort?"_
How many other companies are selling the same product, using the stock description? IMO it's worth spending time creating unique product descriptions along with your other SEO activities - the more ways you differentiate yourself, your site and your products the better. There are no short cuts, all areas need attention however long it takes.
-
The domain was originally registered in 1996.
I do realize most of the seo work will be on-site optimization, creating great quality content and doing quality link building.
We already bought some related domains including "www.xxxxx-toys.com" and therefore have the option to redirect either to the other - there is hardly any work involved doing so at the present moment. Therefore what weighs more - a domain name with a lot of years behind it or a domain name with the no. 1 keyword included in the domain name. Most people will search for the generic "toys" and not the specific brand. And it is one of those products like a "pencil", most people just want to buy a pencil, very few search for square pencil, although we are definitely targeting those niche keyword combinations as well. With Google no longer favoring keyword-in-url its just a matter of making people aware of the type of product we are selling - and keyword in url is still highlighted with bold. Which way to go?
Robert - you mentioned the importance of creating unique pages for e-commerce product pages. I have to say that in one of our other webshops this is presently one of the more time consuming creative tasks that we do - writing thousands of unique product descriptions, and I was actually wondering if it is really worth the effort?Its not we're writing the news, most products are sold on other webshops. Is a unique product description vs generic text from manufacturer worth the countless hours that could be spent on other seo tasks?
Anyone did some longterm split tests out there?
-
JaneVO
If you take a look at all you could do within SEO in terms of having your branded site rank, where would using a 301 redirect to a site with brand + one keyword rank in terms of return on effort and resources?
All to often in SEO, I see us trying to use a single device to change an outcome; wouldn't we be better served to understand the broader picture, evaluate all the options, then focus our resources on those mechanisms that give us the highest return? Do you believe that a single keyword with the brand will return more to you than:
initiating product Schema if you do not already have it,
insuring that you have set your meta descriptions to captivate the searcher and bring them to your site,
insuring that in an eCommerce site you have pages that are not duplicates of all others selling the same product,
learn enough about analytics to know how to measure your results in a way that allows you to make outcome changing modifications
create a great blog that captures great links,
develop infographics around your brand that speak to the buying audience and provide links to the site and products,
Believe me when I tell you that I can keep adding to this list for another hour. You are the only one who can take a step back, survey your niche, and develop a plan of action that cuts away the low return items and maximizes the return on effort and resources.
Think about it,
Robert
-
Ah right. I'd still go with putting a site straight onto the domain you have bought.
How old was is the domain / how long has it been registered before you bought it and what are the DA/PA of the domain?
-
There is no existing www.xxxxx.com website (we bought the brand and the site is currently redirecting to our unrelated main website). So I'm deciding on a brand new main domain name.
-
Keyword specific urls no longer have the value they once did, although I suspect that they do give some advantage when trying to rank for a specific keyword.
Personally, I wouldn't look to change an already established 'mini' brand url just to include keywords. There are lots of massive websites that started off small, ranking well and generating brand awareness. You wouldn't necessarily know what they are selling either judging by their domains, but it hasn't hindered them. Look at Amazon, play.com, or even Google - no keywords in the domain - just great sites with great products and customer service.
I would continue with the brand, improve onpage and content where needed, keep marketing the way you have been and carry on.
You could always build a separate blog on a different c class with the keyword rich domain.
-
How old is the existing www.xxxx.com website? How many pages are indexed?
If its a new site, with only a few pages indexed, and you are thinking of rather using www.xxx-toys.com then it will be a fairly hassle free process.
When your dealing with many pages, it can be a bit more time consuming and complicated,
Greg
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
-
Google is putting brandname: in title tag
Hello, I was wondering why this is happening? In html for example the title tag is something like this: keyword 1 | keyword 2 | Brand name. Title is 67 characters.. When I search in google, I see the site but it shows brandname: keyword 1 | keyword 2 Is this bad? does this mean that google doesn't like the title tag that is in the html? I tried looking it up on google, but they were outdated and I honestly didn't really see an answer to what it means when this happens. Does the brandname: affect rankings?? Have any of you dealt with this, or noticed this?
On-Page Optimization | | donnieath0 -
Home page keyword in url
I have been looking into SEO for a few weeks now trying to perfect a homepage. Going through various sources on MOZ, and other examples out there on the internet, I keep seeing that you should have your keyword in the URL of the page. The homepage is the page most people want to rank the highest in google searches, however, you cannot put the keyword in the URL as most home page URLs are simply /. Should I actually make the home like this: www.example.com/key-word-example? I would imagine this would not be the normal for many users and would seem like it's not the home page.
On-Page Optimization | | Matthew_smart0 -
Am I spamming my Keyword?
Hi All I am trying to rank my site for many key phrases but the pretty much always contain the word "Sussex" The biggy with a lot of competition is "Caterers Sussex" and similar variations when I view source on their page I find that Gastro catering's code uses "sussex" 92 times in it code. My site www.SussexChef.com uses the word "Sussex" 590 times, the competitors site mentions the word less in its code and is dominant for all my desirable key words. Am I spamming my keyword by using Sussex too often when naming my image file? Is there anything in this or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks for your help Ben
On-Page Optimization | | SussexChef830 -
Appropriate Keyword Usage in Document
Moz on page grader - Text content is very important for modern SEO. In order to optimize your chances of ranking higher for the targeted keyword(s), we recommend using the targeted keyword(s) at least 4 times. Recommendation: Add at least 4 instances of the targeted keyword(s) to the document text of this page. Is there any preferred word count for the web page/blog? for example it is not good to add keyword 4 time in 200 words content. and We need to add exact keyword 4 times in the content?
On-Page Optimization | | marknorman0 -
In need of guidance on keyword targeting
Hello I'm in need of some guidance as my head has gotten into a spin. Here's the website - www.onsite-sm.co.uk
On-Page Optimization | | Hughescov
Here's the keywords - concrete repair, concrete repairs, concrete repair contractors
Here's the question - The homepage doesn't really rank for anything specific and the concrete repair page isn't really strong enough to rank for the above keywords. What should I do? Thanks for any help.0 -
Keyword usage in eCommerce Sites - Danger of keyword stuffing?
Hi all, I'm having a little difficulty deciding the best approach for selecting my product titles as I've encountered a few issues. I understand how important it is to try and use the keyword in your product titles, but about the category page that lists all of these products? One of category pages, for example, has 16 products on it. Each has the product title followed by the keyword. I have also used the keyword in the category title, URL, breadcrumbs and two or 3 times (because it was natural) in a paragraph that describes the category etc. Due to the little amount of text on the page, and the sheer amount of times that the keyword is being used, it looks like I am keyword stuffing (By Moz On Page Report Card). I think it came to 23 uses of the same keyword altogether. This is the pretty much teh same throughout every category page on my site, and think I was penalised by Google for this reason. I'm a relatively new site and have done everything by the book as far as I know, so everything is pointing at this to be the cause of the drop/disappearance in ranking. How do I rectify this problem? It's important for the products to have the keyword in, right? As this is one of the SEO practices that is given more weight when considering rankings. I have thought a potential way around this, which is to split the keyword between an exact match, and a variant of the keyword in the titles - only very slightly though. So my product titles would look like 'Product A Exact Match Keyword', 'Product B Variant on Keyword' etc. Could this work? Can anybody advise on the best thing I could try? I have attached an image to give you an idea of the layout of my category pages - Apologies in advance about my embarrassingly rubbish photoshop skills! I wasn't able to upload directly, so I have attached a link. Thanks for reading, John 4iIkmSx
On-Page Optimization | | John_Francis0 -
Www redirect
I get the following message when I try to start a new campaign. "We have detected that the domain www.shewula.nl and the domain shewula.nl both respond to web requests and do not redirect" In the q&a I found answers to this problem and tried to fix it. No success yet. This is what I have in my old ht.access file: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.shewula.nl$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/STICHTING_SHEWULA/ RewriteRule (.*) /STICHTING_SHEWULA/$1 [last] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^shewula.nl$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/STICHTING_SHEWULA/ RewriteRule (.*) /STICHTING_SHEWULA/$1 [last] I changed it to ( got it from the answers 😞 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^shewula.nl
On-Page Optimization | | thomasfasting
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.shewula.nl/$1 [R=301,L] This gave me a 500 internal error in the server header checker tool. Does anybody know how I can fix this? The website is in a folder in the root of my other website www.fastingfotografie.nl Could this give me a problem? Thanks. Thomas0 -
Site Stucture Advice - Keyword Dillema
I am creating a new site and am looking for some advice on how to structure the site Using Google's keyword search tool it seems like I have a dilemma in that about 50% of the keyword pairs are contained in 10 keyword pairs that are similar The first two pairs have about 49% of the traffic and only differ between plural / singular, not quite sure how to handle that, or if google has a method to make these more or less synonomous The last 8 pairs are roughly similar in distribtuion As an example (not my case, just for visualization) Mountain Bike Classes Mountain Bike Instruction Mountain Bike Workshops Mountain Bike Training Etc ... which all more or less give the same results (yes some difference but they all deal with learning how to ride a mountain bike, again this is not my exact case, don't care a whit about mountain bikes 😉 I don't see giving each of those kinds of pairs their own page since the content would be pretty much the exact same, making it substantially different would also be problematic (if I am thinking about this correctly) I have a clean slate to work with from a site perspective so I am wondering how people here would, or better yet have handled similar situations
On-Page Optimization | | bThere0