Switching URL from keyword heaven to actual brand name?
-
Our client has a site, we'll say it's delicious-lemonade.com (That's an example.)
Their brand name, however, is PowerSky. (That's an example, but the point is that it's the name of a technology, and has NOTHING to do whatsoever with being a drink. Someone would never guess what the product was, by the brand name.)
The client has this domain name for a long time. The domain name itself is a top keyword for their product.
We are building a new site for the client and have planned to use the brand name (PowerSky) as the primary domain, so PowerSky.com, with the product page being PowerSky.com/Delicious-Lemonade. And we are planning to redirect Delicious-Lemonade.com to PowerSky.com.
However, we are concerned about the SEO hit the site is going to take.
What recommendations can you make in this situation?
-
You have a couple of options. You can try asking this question again in public Q&A, as the site has a lot more activity than it did in April. Another option is to use a private Q&A question and ask this where only SEOmoz staff and associates can see it. The advantage there is that the question is private and not indexed, and the staff/associates are under an NDA and won't disclose the contents of the question so you can use real URLs if needed.
-
We are still looking for some insight. Since the answers we got weren't from SEOMoz staff, we just took them as more opinions.
-
Hi Grayloon,
I'm going through older questions that are still marked unanswered. Did you come to a decision about what to do, or are you still looking for some insight?
-
Sounds like you are doing a category instead of a product. You have a couple options. 1) Do what you are describing 2) Apache Mod Rewrite and 301 the old urls. I saw a video of Rand talking about option 2. He says it'll lose all it's ranking at 1st, but they typically see about a 50-60% drop in volume once it's back up.
-
Full disclosure: I'm no sage in SEO.
Do the appropriate 301 redirects for each page. Grit your teeth as you take a small hit. Then watch http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/what-signals-could-make-you-a-brand-in-google
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/phrase proximity
I'm curious about opinions regarding how the search algorithms treat multiple key phrases that may reside in one long tail key phrase. So for example: If I'm optimizing for "New York Litigation Lawyer", would that also give me rankings for "New York Lawyer"? My thought is that the former will be considered the primary keyword and rankings will improve mostly for that, but that the latter keyword could also possibly see some lift as well. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | nickturner9221 -
Is thumbnail text crawlable/lists of product names considered as normal copy in terms of keywords?
On a page that lists products (thumbnail text repeating the same word when you sell variations of the same thing) and also has copy at the bottom, are the product names crawlable? Is it better to avoid repeating the keyword in the copy? Can you get penalised for it?
On-Page Optimization | | LawrenceNeal0 -
Recommendation: Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.
Please clarify: In the page optimization tool, seomoz recommends using the canonical url tag on the unique page itself. Is it the same canonical url tag used when want juice to go to the original page? Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today. Please give example.
On-Page Optimization | | AllIsWell0 -
Branded keyword domain not appearing in Google
Hi, I have a site called www.emv-cards.com but the site has a very poor showing on Google for the search term 'emv cards' and this does not make sense to me. It has position #6 on Bing but is not in Google's top 50. Any assistance would be appreciated. regards, George.
On-Page Optimization | | sirgeorge0 -
Question about URLs
Hello! I have a client that wants to upload an URL like this: www.example.com/keyword/page-name.html The main problem is that www.example.com/keyword/ doesn't exist and gives a 404 error so I'd prefer not doing that...... What do you think about this? And if the client wants to go ahead, is there any solution? A 301 to the final page would help? Thank you in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | Juandbbam0 -
ECommerce URL's
This is based on a clothing retailer, eCommerce site. In an effort to reduce the length of our product names, we are considering removing terms like long-sleeve, short-sleeve, etc., but leaving that information in the URL. Now, the concern is that we would lose some traction in the SERP's if those descriptive words are left out as the product name is also our page title. Then I think keywords as broad as long-sleeve shirt wouldn't serve us well anyways. One idea we have is that the alt tag on the product image could still display the longer product name that would include long-sleeve, etc. thus having the keyword on the product page. Any ideas or suggestions? Hope this is clear. Seems redundant from a user standpoint to state long-sleeve, etc. in every product name. Thanks - your answers are always so helpful!
On-Page Optimization | | kennyrowe0 -
Keywords vs Tags In Wordpress
Whats the difference between Keywords vs Tags In Wordpress? Also sine meta keywords don't matter in a website do they matter on a blog?
On-Page Optimization | | splashmedia0 -
Existing good authority LP with multiple keywords, how to optimize for these keywords?
Hi Mozzers, Currently I am optimizing ONpage after I made a report for which keywords the website already ranks in the serps. I was surprised about the numbers of keywords the website ranks in Google. The website ranks for multiple keywords in 1 landing page. They get a lot of traffic, but has a position #5 or #7/#8, onpage grade is for most of the keywords a C or D and lots of them a F, so it's worth to optimize it. How should I do that when the landing page is domain.com/category and the 5 different keywords are partofcategoryname. Should I put all these keywords in the title and landing page body content as the onpage tool recommend me that? I was thinking about the option I described above OR to create a new landing page for the specific keyword each. However, the already ranked landing page has a PA of 38. When starting to build new landing pages is starting to build from PA 0. Anyway, it's definitely I chance to do onpage, I just don't know what I should do since there are 5 different keywords that already ranks for the landing page with good traffic. I want to let it rise in the serps to increase the traffic of course. Looking forward to recommendations! thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Falcopa0