Keywords & Domain
-
I need some advice.
We are a real estate company that offers real estate sales and rentals.
I have a domain (for example lets pretend there is an imaginary island called Pumpkin Island) - pumpkinrealestate.com (as many people just refer to pumpkin island as pumpkin eg. I am going down to pumpkin this weekend).
pumpkinrealestate.com will be a website that offers all the properties for sale, local real estate community information, buying process, selling process, etc for the Pumpkin Island real estate market (we are a brokerage).
I am also beginning to build out a new website that will be for our vacation rentals at "pumpkin island".
I have a domain called "vacationrentalspumpkinisland.com"
Question taking this factors in account:
EMDs work well in our area IF the content is good. So assuming I will have a good link profile and good content, on page seo and offpage - - -
pumpkinrealestate.com will have a decent amount of traffic naturally while vacationrentalspumpkinisland.com will have very dramatic increases of traffic during the winter, spring and summer (due to people planning vacations)
would it be best to have the vacation rental website under its own domain vacationrentalspumpkinisland.com and the sales site under pumpkinrealestate.com
OR
have the sales site as pumpkinrealestate.com and the vacation website a subdomain of it for example:
vacationrentals.pumpkinrealestate.com?? (maybe helping to leverage the traffic for both sites for benefit of one domain).
Puzzled and need some thoughts, advice or suggestions.
Thanks!!!!
CHris
-
Talking from the experience, if the content is good, link profile is legit then EMD always help you stay on top as compare to competitors who are using brand names in their domain name.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Chris, Robert here, Eli Overbey answered that question with a preference for the subdomain in his article at: http://elioverbey.net/subdomain-vs-new-domain-better-seo/ because:
- subdomains may inherit and pass ranking metrics
- subdomains give an impression of an consistent brand
- concentrating all your links on one domain
Please note that Eli’s answer might note be right for you. Let’s place this in the context of your question. You are starting 2 brand new enterprises. Therefore the transfer of existing ranking metrics from domain to subdomain is not that all that relevant. And you have to consider how much more prominent your real estate domain would be over the vacations rental subdomain to make it worthwhile.
Further note what Eli stated, URL length is an issue. In your case. it is reasonable to presume that both of your subdomain and domain will be quite long. So keep in mind the anecdotal testing on URL length that John Doherty did back in 2011: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/lessons-from-google-about-url-lengths/
You might also suffer from stuffing too many keywords in an URL if your sub-pages or blog posts happen to become, let’s say vacationrentals.pumpkinrealestate.com/10-unkown-scenic-locales-in-pumpkin. Search Engine Journal cites Google in their article at http://www.searchenginejournal.com/url-structure-seo/11801/
“Best SEO URL practice: it is recommended to have no more than 3-5 words in the file path (note: this is not really about the whole URL but the actual file path after the last / in the URL but should be mentioned anyway as it indirectly demonstrates Google’s overall treatment of the URL length).”
And Matt Cutts is cited to state: “Google algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.”
Therefore it is wise to consider also whether you will be having a lot of sub-pages or blog posts under your vacation rentals subdomain. Because while the sub-domain main page may pass the mustard, for Google, it is reasonable to expect that pages under it may not.
As far as branding is concerned, I like to think of the brand in terms of the social signals you are sending to the public and to the seach engine(s).
Therefore think of it thus: would you like to have a single social media channel for both of these properties? Let’s say for tweeting out the latest news items. Or organising a Facebook page that people can like to get the latest offer. If yes, then reasonably, having a single brand is important to you. If no, and these two properties require seperate channels then these two properties really are seperate brands (as brands these days are all about being social, right? - we face them through social media more and more). And therefore, that tends to suggest that seperate domains may be the way forward for you.
Finally, when it comes to concentrating links — consider how rare people linking to your site will actually be (you might be part of a legitimate real estate association that promotes each others offers) or you plan to do viral or mini-viral postings. It also might be that your vacation rentals subdomain might be getting more links than your main domain for more people may be interested in short-term vacation rentals in an attractive lucrative place where owning property is cost prohibitive for most.
Chris and everyone, this is my first post on Moz Q&A so if you like the answer — make sure to like/upvote it.
PS! Take a look at the screenshot attached. I did a search for “Maui Vacation Rentals” on Google.com in English from a continental US IP (Boston). As you can see, there are only 3 organic results beyond the fold. It is very visually striking how paid advertising from Google AdWords and Google Maps dominate over even those 3. And add to that the factor that 2 of 3 of these organic results are from TripAdvisor and HomeAway who, one might reasonably presume, might be prominent on your SERP pages for your exact domain match as well. So perhaps focusing on Google Maps / Google Places whatever you decide should be a key thing to do?
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
-
Low competition Related Keywords
Hi everyone, I have a blog with product review articles on the best wireless Bluetooth headphones. It is a vast niche and I am finding it hard to rank on this main keyword. Is it a good practice to work on the longtail, related keywords with low competition, so I can keep my blog in the serps? Do you think this will affect my ranking for the main keyword? Please advise, Thank you!
Local SEO | | Salman425520 -
Domain
hello there, I have a 12 years old domain with 35pa and similar domain authority pointed to my hosting which I will call domain A. in December 2020 I will lose the control domain A, as the person controlling the domain died and trying to find a solution but is not possible as it's far more complicated than I anticipated, the domain might be retained by someone else and not me. so I purchased a new domain I will call Domain B. my plan is to serve the info hosted from both domains but B as a principal, I think I can do a 301 in domain A but i wish still be visible in the URL until last minute. but i want to start to pass as soon as possible all the link juice. my problems is how can i serve the content from both domains without creating a 301 but and still be able passing juice link from A to B? is this possible? and from google getting all the indexation for Domain B. bot not for A
Local SEO | | fabguy0 -
Keyword rich domain names -> Point to sales funnel sites or to landing pages on primary domain?
Hey everyone,
Local SEO | | Transpera
We have a tonne of old domains we have done nothing with. All of them are keyword-rich domains.
Things like "[City]SEOPro" or "[City]DigitalMarketing" where [city] is a city that we are already targeting services in. So all of these domains will be targeted for local cities as keywords. We have been having an internal debate about whether or not we should just host sales funnel pages on these domains, that are rich in keywords and content......... ... Or ... ... Should we point these domains to landing pages on our existing domain that are basically the same as what we would do with the sales funnel pages, but are on our primary site? (keyword rich, with good and plentiful content) Then, as a follow-up question... Should these be set as just 301 redirects on these domains to our actual primary domain so the browser sees the landing page domain instead of the actual keyword-rich domain? ( [city]seopro.com ) Thanks guys. I know for some, the response will be an obvious one. However; we have probably way over thought this and have arguments for almost every scenario. We think we have an answer but wanted to send this out to the community first. I won't post what we are thinking yet, so that the answers can remain unbiased for now and we can have a conversation without it being swayed any one way. We understand that 301 redirects would be seen as a doorway page.
We are also only discussing in the context of organic search only.
If we ran the domains as their own sites, they would be about 3 pages of content only. Pretty static, but good content. Think of a PAS style sales funnel. Problem -> Acknowledgement -> Solution.0 -
Local SEO & Google Maps Question - 1 Company with Multiple Google Pages
Hey Mozzers! I'm working with a client who has 2 websites (different URLs completely), which one is for all parts and the other is for accessories only. They have multiple brick and mortar locations throughout the US and have done a nice job creating Google My Business pages for each and all verified. Their question is will it benefit them to create and verify another GMB page with same address, but place in "Suite B", a new phone number and apply the other URLs for the accessories site. The business name would also be different, but similar meaning Business 1 = ABC where as Business 2 = ABC Accessories. Their goal would be to try to have both rank or display to improve their local SEO. In theory it sounds like it will work given NAP would be satisfied within the GMB, but wanted to get the Moz community thoughts on this first before moving forward. Look forward to the replies. Patrick
Local SEO | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Adwords Express Keyword Ranking Hack
I heard a rumor that Adwords Express offers a tool that lets you check real time Marketing Google ranking results (colleague brought this up) Has anybody heard of this?
Local SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Domain Name Length "wiggle room"
So the general idea for domain names is around to keep it around 15 characters, but I'm considering getting a mycitywebdesign.com type domain specific to my location and it's 23 characters. No hyphens. The original site hasn't had any seo work on it, so the original won't lose any progress. What suggestions/experience do you have with this type of situation? Thanks in advance!
Local SEO | | blakewenloe0 -
Using hreflang on multiple domains when one has been penalized
Hi, I have two sites. One is a new .co.uk site which contains duplicate information to a .ie site. Currently, if I do a search for the company name in Google.co.uk it returns the .ie site. The .co.uk site needs some localisation done and some links (really is brand new). I was going to place hreflang tags as follows on both sites:- The order would flip for the .co.uk site from the above order. However, just to make things interesting, the .ie site was hit by Penguin and it hasn't recovered yet (and won't recover for another few months while I fix the issues). So the question is, what should I do? Do I go ahead an let Google know for sure that these sites are linked despite one of them having been penalized? Or do I let Google think that there is a .co.uk site with duplicate content to another .ie site?
Local SEO | | Serpstone0 -
Removing Sub Domain & Improving Page Performance
Hello Moz folks, This question is about my main website: www.web3.ca
Local SEO | | Web3Marketing87
(run on joomla) I just noticed a very strange occurrence - when I add ANY subdomain to the home page, it still resolves to the home page. example: test3.web3.ca Can this be bad for SEO, and is there a way to eliminate this? Second Question: Do you think there are two many outgoing links on the home page of Web3? Could reducing the number of links improve the home page's performance & rank? Thanks
Anton0