Should I move to EMD

[charliedev]

Hi,

I have been reading a lot of moz posts and the forums and gathered a lot relevant information, but I want to check if I have grasped the best practice.

I have a company in the UK with an extremely basic 2 page website which is basically just a contact details website. The domain name is the company name which is long contains 2 words seperated by a hyphen and one of the words is hard to spell, it is a .CO.UK. The domain only appear in google search results under a company name search, not via any relevant keyword. The company has recently undergone a change and now competes in a very niche market, with only a handful of UK competitors.

I have created a new website which targets this niche market, with much improved content, the site has not gone live yet. My question is should I move the domain? I have bough 2 new .CO.UK domains which are EMD and are in my opinion the target keywords, much shorter then the existing domain, contains no hypens and easier to remember. I know google is not supposed to be as weighted to EMD as previously. We don't expect much traffic, but should we stick with our existing domain (company name) or move to the EMDs and use 301 redirects?

Any help appreciated, I'm happy to share URLs, not sure if this is normal practice or frowned upon?

[jasongmcmahon]

I'd go for the EMD, for the reasons stated above, since you've gone to the expense of buying an EMD.

But, strictly speaking, if you market your product correctly people would search for that, not the company name. Also, Goole auto-corrects mistyped domains, so a hard to spell wors is no longer an issue.

[EGOL]

Thanks for sharing your opinions on these.

I agree.

[MikeRoberts]

See those are ones I'm okay with but also would want that to be a brand name as well... Because if I owned Laptops.com then I'm changing the branding on the site to Laptops.com. That's just straight money there.

The true issue with EMDs was not that they are intrinsically sketchy, manipulative or deceptive... its that people took it waaay too far.

[EGOL]

Mike's message reminds me of how specific an EMD can be.  CheapQualityLaptops.com and EgolsLaptops.com are examples.

I would not go that far.   My ideas of an EMD are root category names such as Laptops.com, Widgets.com, CoffeeMakers.com.

[MikeRoberts]

I'm more a fan of Branding than I am of EMDs. In my opinion, building up a following and name recognition is better than having a domain name perfectly targeted to your core keyword. I mean, unless you can have both. While CheapQualityLaptops.com might have good estimated traffic, might be the keyword you want to rank highly for, might be everything you think you need in life.... More people will remember Apple, Razer, HP, Dell, Compaq, Alienware, etc. because they built up the name recognition. Imagine if Apple's website was AffordableMacintoshComputers.net  instead of Apple.com or if Verizon Wireless went with _PersonalPortableCellularDevices.org _... who knows, maybe those have good traffic. But a year, two years, five years down the road, people should remember you for your company's name not your keyword rich domain name. They'll be more likely to link to you with your company name and tell people to look up your company name in searches online.

[EGOL]

This is a matter of opinion, I think.  So, this post is simply what I do and what I think..

All of my important sites are on EMDs.  Some of them cost a bit of money.  I just acquired my latest one about a month ago.   I believe that EMDs are easy for people to remember.  They lack hyphens and hard to spell words.  If they match your industry or product line then I believe that they enable a better conversion rate and give credibility (others will really disagree with that - but I believe that is the EMD envy in them saying that because they want to get any domain that they want for $12 and really begrudge paying more - especially when the previous owner is not running a site on that domain).   Final words... be sure to get a .com or the most common TLD in your country.

EMDs used to have a strong ranking benefit.  That is no longer true.  I believe that the ranking benefit is tiny at the moment.  The EMD envy people will tell you that the ranking benefit of an EMD domain is negative, but they are deluded on this too.