Naming a brand & domain

[TVape]

Hi Experts,

We are selecting a brand name and domain for a new ecommerce website. The major keyword in this industry is lets assume xyz. It is by far the most searched keyword in this industry, but it just sounds horrible for branding purposes.

For SEO purposes how important is it to keep that keyword in the domain / brand name? can we make up for the lack of that keyword in the domain / brand name if we decide to pick a brand name that does not have xyz in it?

Thanks for the help

[jonnyholt]

Yes but i would strongly suggest just having one website and then 301 redirecting the other.

I got caught a year ago with 4 different websites all with the same content and links between them and that is straight negative SEO.  Brand that baby, and then light it up with SEOmoz tactics : )

[RepLoc_Tim]

Agree with your conclusion.  Go with your brand and build the asset.  Exciting!

[TVape]

Looks like I created quite a discussion around this topic, by asking this question. Give that all the answers are indicating that we do not need to lean towards having the exact keyword in the domain, am I safe to assume that we can 100% focus on brand and disregard the url?

From what i read here, is it fair to assume that in 1-2 years time and given our good SEO practices both alternatives (brand.com or keywordmixedwithbrand.com) would return similar results?

What would you guys say is the conclusion?

[BlueprintMarketing]

I agree with you however if you're going to put a lot of the time into the website I would put it all into one.

However I do not disagree with you that is something that could be done, but I believe it would cost more money. To have an exact match that I believe Google is going to take away all the power from in the next year.

However having a high-quality exact match domain linking to you is definitely a plus.

I am glad we agree.

All best,

Tom

[jonnyholt]

so my motto for SEO is if its too easy, Google wont like it... Meaning, if buying your-target-keywords.com used to mean you would be ranked first, thats not the case anymore.

is there anyone here that disagrees with the below example.

commercial-construction-company.com with great content and links (meaning SEO)  = samscontractors.com with great content and links (meaning SEO)

basically the name doesnt matter so long as its an honest website with great content.  On the flipside, your missing out ob a branding opp and when was the last time you saw "keywords.com" at the top of page 1?

[PhilGraham-SlateInboundMarketi]

Thomas,

EMD's are still ranking really well but the real key here is to put great content on them. I believe Google is going after low quality spam type EMD's (which many are) but I've never had an instance of a legit high quality content EMD getting penalized in any way and I don't think Google is going in that direction.

There isn't anything wrong with an EMD itself, they might get "watched" more carefully but as long as you put high quality content on there it should be beneficial. Also, and this should go without saying, avoid bad linking practices with the EMD as well.

I'd still buy and use the brand name domain but I'd definitely grab the .com/net/org EMD's and probably redirect the .net/org to the brand name and build a high quality blog on the .com EMD.

[RepLoc_Tim]

Keyword does not have to be in your Brand name or your domain.  You can compensate on deeper pages as needed.  You unique brand name will separate you from everyone and better build your asset.

I have seen similar situations to what Jonathan described (even in some of my own online projects/ businesses).

Having said that, while EMD's are being carefully watched now, I do not think they will automatically hurt you.  What hurts you is not providing value to your target market on your domain, regardless of whether it is a brand or EM domain.  Most people that squat on an EMD blog never put high quality, high value content.  At best they typically throw crap articles on them occasionally.  This is just adding pollution to cyberspace and we should all fight pollution;-)

This is reinforced by the link Thomas included:

"One common misconception is that EMD means that sites with search terms in their domain names no longer will rank as well as in the past. I’ve not seen evidence of this so far, and it’s certainly not what Google said.

Google specifically said EMD was designed to go after poor quality sites that also have exact match domain names."

[BlueprintMarketing]

Thank you Cesar.

I appreciate that my grammar is terrible I was born in Germany and English is my 2nd language I am using a dictation software to write this so I apologize to everyone who has to read my writing sometimes it can be a little bit off to say the least.

Any help is very welcome, and thanks so much I appreciate that.

Sincerely,

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

"HOWEVER...I'd also buy the keyword.com/net/org domain if it's available and I'd probably create a blog on there that will eventually link to your main site. Doing this will get you some additional traffic but also prevent a potential competitor from grabbing an EMD and outranking you in the short term. "

Phil I wanted to clarify something with you. I have added the link below from  search engine land talking about exact match domain penalties I believe you will agree with me that you want to focus on one domain and one domain alone it's all right to 301 redirect your other brand ( Meaning identical domain to your brand name but with .net .org) domains to the same domain that will be your brand/regular domain.

You and I both know exact match domains still work but honestly if you look at the trend there dying any new exact match domain will get nothing because Google will index it for the 1st time and when the algorithm has to make a decision on if firewood.com will rank for firewood I bet it will. However one day very soon it's going to drop. And 100% of that content that could've been put on the original domain with the new brand name associated to it will be unavailable as you do not want to take the content that has been indexed on a different site that was possibly penalized and Google knows was linking to your site and put it on your website.

I would say the smart thing to do would be put the content on the site you want to rank do not create what Google will call a link network by buying exact match domains and having them link to you is violating googles rules now I'm not saying you're going to get caught, but my money would be on Google.

It's a $40 billion a year in revenue company if anyone thinks that they can beat them at their own game now that they're stepping up this increased anti-spam anti-manipulation effort I have had to take on clients that literally have not done things that I would've considered all that bad and Google has penalized them they are now having to spend quite a bit of money with no assurances that they will ever be listed at their former rank Ever again.

today you have to earn your place I would not ever create a blog on an exact match domain that I own because even if you private the Whois, and even if you don't run on the same server there is authorship and you're not going to get a domain to rank without authorship of a blog. Yes you could make up a name but he would have to make up a Google + account and build authority for that exact match domain to have it be worth anything. I understand that you might get a couple people linking to because they clicked on that and then you might have a giant banner saying click here and it would have to link to the real site.

My opinion is if you find exact match domains feel free to purchase. However do not ever use them just take them off the market if you feel that their threat to you. However I can assure you that they're not know the long run.

now if you are just saying buy .net, .org & .co I am 100% with you should do that for the  brand domain you choose as your company name.

The only reason I recommend .co is I was too dumb to buy myself and had some guy tried to sell it to me for 4 grand after I bought my domain through an auction.

I want to let you know that there are many ways of getting the domain you want even if the registrar shows it's not available however you want to check it out and make sure there's no bad links pointing to it.

Here is a little bit about how exact match domain works that Google and the penalties put on people only from time to time that's why we see some people get away with exact match domains and others not.

Another reason I would focus on building strong content on one site do not waste your time with other sites and please remember this if you purchase your domains and their .net .org etc. from a registrar that allows you to "forward" the domain to the new site.

At a cost of up to $75 a year depending on the registrar I know quite a few do it. The bad part is even with that they Do not do that most of the time it is a simple link not a 301 redirect you want to be sure that you're using a 301 redirect.

I would simply use something that you know you can control all your domains from and has a tier 1 provider sending your queries out. it sounds crazy to pay for DNS but this is saving money if you use the less expensive options I'm listing below.

The best way to do that is used a quality hosted Anycast DNS service you can use DynECT my favorite, but expensive 10 domains costs $30 a month.

Or use a much less expensive service.

DNS made easy excellent extremely fast, and you get 10 domains for only $25 a year

There are two free options one is hurricane electric the others cloudflare both are better than standard DNS by quite a bit hurricane electric is more techie cloudflare is very simple I put more DNS information at the bottom if you care to read it

I would use DNSmadeeasy.com if you don't use Dyn.com as they give you customer support and are truly very high quality.

http://searchengineland.com/the-emd-update-like-panda-penguin-expect-further-refreshes-to-come-135446

**Last week, Google announced the EMD Update, a new filter that tries to ensure that low-quality sites don’t rise high in Google’s search results simply because they have search terms in their domain names. Similar to other filters like Panda, Google says EMD will be updated on a periodic basis. Those hit by it may escape the next EMD update, while others not hit this time could get caught up in the future. **

EMD is more likely hitting domains like online-computer-training-schools.com, which is a made-up example but hopefully gets the point across. It’s a fairly generic name with lots of keywords in it but no real brand recognition.

Domains like this are often purchased by someone hoping that just having all the words they want to be found for (“online computer training schools”) will help them rank well. It’s true that there’s a small degree of boost to sites for having search terms in their domains with Google, in general. A very small degree.

But such sites also often lacked any really quality content. They were purchased or created in hopes of an easy win, and there’s often no real investment in building them up with decent information or into an actual destination, a site that people would go to directly, not a site they’d just happen upon through a search result.

Some of them lack content at all (are “parked”) or have content that’s taken from other sites (“scraped”). Google already went after parked domains last December (and made a mistake in classifying some sites as parked in April). It’s already been going after scrapers with Panda and other efforts.

Extended DNS information if you care

or use cloudflare.com  rather not I would turn on the orange cloud would depend on what hosting company I was using and what site architecture was building my site with. Regardless you can use cloudflare's and Anycast DNS with unlimited domains for no cost. When you turn off the orange clouds next to the a records and came records it is just a very fast DNS system.

Sorry for the extremely long-winded response.

I'm sure you meant brand domains point those that your new one not to buy an exact match and create content on it.

I hope this is of help,

Thomas

[cbielich]

"Think about this okay. does Coca-Cola remind you of soda because of the branding or because of the way it sounds?"

-- touché

P.S. I corrected your spelling

[jonnyholt]

I have always found it is much better to buy the URL that has the name of your company in it.  I once created a website for a friend who had a carpet cleaning company and at the time knew nothing about SEO.  I registered the keywords.com which happen to be "austincarpetclean.com" and the major problem I found with that is that people never knew who they hired to clean their carpets, and sometimes left my friends company bad reviews when my friend hadn't even done the job.  The word "confusing" is a major issue when it comes to the post 2012 Google.  NOW if I had registered the name of his business say it was "Jones Carpet Cleaning" at www.jonescarpetcleaning.com I would still have had some keywords, and would have branded it correctly.  Hope this helps.

[PhilGraham-SlateInboundMarketi]

Branding is super important. I would build your site based on a brand name and not your keyword for sure.

HOWEVER...I'd also buy the keyword.com/net/org domain if it's available and I'd probably create a blog on there that will eventually link to your main site. Doing this will get you some additional traffic but also prevent a potential competitor from grabbing an EMD and outranking you in the short term.

Hope that helps.

[AbhishekJain60]

What you are trying to talk about is Exact Match Domains(EMD). There is a popular article here on SEOMoz about this http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-exact-match-domain-playbook-a-guide-and-best-practices-for-emds

If you wanna create a brand for yourself then do not use EMD if it doesn't contain your brand name.

Apart from EMD there are many more ways to increase organic traffic, so EMD isn't a necessary these days(especially after Penguin, Panda and all the animal updates in the world Google knows about )

Create your brand(legacy), seo will take time but in the end it will be worth it

[BlueprintMarketing]

Think about this okay. dose Coca-Cola remind you of soda because of the branding or because of the way it sounds?

Because of the way was branded. Now your company name and it rhyming or being the same as thing is a word that would normally describe your industry word is not something that you have to do. I could go on listing thousands of companies that do not match or have anything to do with their actual Industry names. Think about all the companies that have been named after family names they have nothing to do with that so if I had insurance and I'm made myself Esurance that might give me a little boost however Google has devalued exact match domains so much that they care more about branding and the way you brand whatever you call it is way more important than what you name plus Google doesn't know what the insurance is yet until the brand comes out and it is associated by relevant inbound links and content on your website to mean insurance that's when Google says I have now a idea of what this brand and domain means. Long story short don't worry about it name it what you want

Hope I was of help,

Thomas