Slight keyword variation domain name
-
I have recently changed a clients domain name from a long (23 characters) to a shorter domain name that has a keyword plus a single character variation. For example and without revealing the clients real domain name, let say they are in housing. Ithe first letter in the company name is "p" so i created the doamin name as www.phousing.com It has only been two days since i submitted the new domain name and did a 301 redirect to the new page. When i do a google search i get back the result: housing.com and "did you mean housing.com Will this domain name cause me problems? Any input is greatly appreciated!
-
"...by the time you told someone the address you where exhausted and the prospect was confused"
Best answer I ever heard!
-
Thank you Cyrus! To answer the question of why I changed their domain name in the first place,
- Original domain name had no relevance to the services they provide
- The domain name was 23 characters long, which I feel is way too long and allows for 23 opportunities for a client to misspell the name when writing emails, accessing the website, ect....
- The domain name was 7 syllables....by the time you told someone the address you where exhausted and the prospect was confused
- They had virtually no web presence, so the switch was simple enough. They had literally one link. The site was under 10 pages, so again, not a huge undertaking.
Again, thank you so much for the feedback. SEOmoz really has a great community!
-
Howdy,
Hmmmm... I have to wonder why you changed the domain name in the first place? There are certainly many legitimate reasons to do so, but it's a pretty drastic measure to do a domain migration and most of the time it's something most webmasters want to avoid unless they have to.
If the domain is close to a popular domain, you may continually run into the problem of Google trying to correct your spelling when folks search for your brand name - especially if the brand doesn't have a lot of visibility.
For example, if I registered the name mfacebook.com, Google would likely try to steer me towards Facebook time and time again (not to mention Facebook hitting me with Trademark issues
Will the domain name hurt your SEO? Probably not anymore than the normal risks involved with migrating a website to a new domain.
The bigger question that I think you want to address is: will Google recognize the keyword in the domain? Although Google does a pretty good job at discecting domain names (for example, they know that bluewidgets.com is "blue widgets") the algorythm isn't perfect. SEOmoz.org is a perfect example. For years Google didn't give us credit for the keyword "SEO" because "moz" wasn't a common word. So instead, we were clumped together in the "SEOmoz" (single word) category.
My best advice, if you want to take advantage of keywords in the URL for an existing domain, is to use them sparingly in subdirctories and file names, such as example.com/keyword.
Regardless, keep us up to date on your progress. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
Thank you very much for your response. I actually changed their domain name again just to avoid potential issues. I find myself frequently these days having to base domain and website development decisions on the fact that i am afraid google will penalize my sites. I mean there are legitimate whitehat methods that are in my clients best interests, but because an unethical person may use a method that is similiar for black hat purposes. Google is penalizing the good guys for the sake of restricting some bad guuys. For example i guess some people trying to trick the engines by putting a single character variable in a popular keyword name, but my clients case they wanted their companies first initial plus industry. They or i am not trying to "trick" the engines, it just made sense for them , but now i have to select an inferior domain name....
-
Hi
Your site is recently registered, whilst the other site with a very similar domain name is old then your site, the likelihood is that users are searching for that one rather than your new one, hence the occasional auto-correct. Given a bit of time this should resolve itself
Wait for some time & you will find your domain name.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Keyword comparison and importance
hello, how can i compare two keywords? let's say i have i those two keywords: a) πτυχιακες εργασιες β) πτυχιακές εργασίες how can i see in what way most people are searching?
Competitive Research | | anavasis0 -
Google Keyword Tool Alternatives
Hey All, So ever since Google shut down the Keyword Tool we have used the keyword planner and a few other tools only to find they aren't quite the same, I was wondering what everyone is using now to get there keyword research and average traffic estimates ? We previous used keyword tool for phrase match and now not much offers phrase match or provides us with what seems as accurate results. We have tried Word Tracker after a numerous amount of research to find a alternative to the keyword tool, and found that the results are very different from the Google Keyword Planner, 1 noticeable result would be of "Web Design Melbourne", in Word Tracker it showed the average search of 9,900 (per month or year I'm not sure) and we compared that to the Google Keyword Planner and it showed 3,000. I have looked over a number of tools and found they weren't quite what we are looking for (Word Tracker, SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner) so I have turned to the MOZ Community. So my first question for everyone would be: A) what do you use for Keyword research and average search estimates now (any good tools with phrase match)? B) If you have used Word Tracker have you found accurate results in your keyword research? If you have found any tools that have proved beneficial and useful please let me know 🙂 (paid or free) Thank you
Competitive Research | | KBB_Digital
Jake Crone0 -
Long tail keywords / Close variations of keywords / Duplicate Content
In a classified site, people usually search for the same item with different keywords which are often very close to each other and point to same set of results: e.g. honda civic for sale
Competitive Research | | razasaeed
used honda civic for sale
civic for sale
used civic for sale
used civic All the above keywords should actually lead to same results i.e honda civic for sale. Our competitor is creating a page for each one of these www.sitename.com/q/honda-civic-for-sale/
www.sitename.com/q/used-honda-civic-for-sale/
... and so on Basically they create a page for each high traffic keyword they encounter where as we have very structure search. How to compete with that ? They are ranking on all these long tail keywords because of separate landing pages though most of the pages are duplicate of each other. 98% same content (all are showing honda civics) Should we go that route OR optimize our single page focusing on keyword with highest traffic and hope google will rank us for the related keywords as well ?0 -
Why do keyword competition rankings differ between Google and SeoMoz?
I am a novice at keyword ranking etc. so I appreciate your patience! I checked a longtail keyword - how do i get out of this relationship - in Google AdWords and it came back 'low competition.' When I entered it in SeoMoz it came back as 'very competitive.' Any thoughts? I appreciate your help.
Competitive Research | | UncleTodd0 -
Will changing my domain name from a .co.uk to a .com affect my SEO?
Hi all, The .com for my domain name has become available (I am currently a .co.uk) so I am looking to move over my website to this but first would like double check if this would have any affect on my SEO at all? As a company we mainly target the middle east (Although based in the UK) but at the time of registering years ago the .com was not available. Do I have a 'history' logged with the current .co.uk domain or is my website solely dominated by the content? Also, if I do transfer what would be the easiest way of doing this just changing the DNS to a different location (will there be a duplicate content issue on both domain names?). Thanks in advance!!
Competitive Research | | starydynamo0 -
Site in top 3 with a 1-day old domain and no backlinks
Hi everyone, I'm trying to understand some searchresults, when searching in the netherlands for 'online casino':
Competitive Research | | iwebdevnl
http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=online+casino&pws=0 You'll see as position 3 result this website: http://bit.ly/qhRsUT, it's obviously that this site is there because of blackhat. But how did it come there such high for a keyword with high competition? I don't see anything wrong in the website? It's not like Google did something wrong, because it happened already a few times for this keyword with different domains from that owner. Regards, Yannick0 -
Keyword Ranks reported by SEOMOZ don't match actual searches
SEO Moz reported that various keywords I was tracking were not in the top 50 results on Yahoo or Bing, yet when I did a Yahoo or Bing search for those keywords (from multiple computers and not logged into any Yahoo or MSN/Bing account) I found the keywords easily. What's the scoop?
Competitive Research | | Cybernautic0 -
Is there a tool that could list all high PR pages of a domain?
Is there a tool that could list all high PR pages of a domain? Ideally, non subscripton based but if the tool is awesome then I wouldn't hesitate forking out for it.
Competitive Research | | rmteamseo0