Would switching domain names be a good move?
-
Hi All,
I'm trying to decide whether to switch to a more relevant domain name for an SEO project.
For a while now I've already been doing the standard SEO work on an existing website, content optimization, link building etc but I can't help feeling I won't ever get the full benefits of SEO until I also change the domain name.
The current website is for a law firm in new jersey called sandz.net which obviously has no immediate impression it is for a law firm so I'm looking at setting up a new domain and doing 301s to a new site.
My concerns are that as its a highly competitive market, I've initiated the campaign to target local searches so I'm wondering just how beneficial buying a domain name with the term lawyer or attorney which actually be.
And of course the ideal domain names such as njlawyer, NJattorney .COMs are all taken so I would be looking at perhaps a .ORG with the intention that all printed material the firm has still contains their original name, sandz.net and by word of mouth they should tell people their site is sandz.net as its easy to remember but for the sake of SEO and links then these should all be focused on a new domain..
Any thoughts appreciated..
Thanks
-
Hi David,
I'm updating older, unanswered threads. I'm really curious to hear what you decided to do in this situation and what the effect has been. Can you give us an update and any lessons you learned?
Thanks!
-
I understand where you're coming from, I really do. However, you're always better off going the harder route. I know that isn't what you wanted to hear because your client is paying you to do a job.
However, how pissed are they going to be when one day they pull the switch on the EMD's and they lose their ranking overnight? You're back at square one and your client will feel like a bait and switch was pulled on them.
There is absolutely no reason why you cannot rank a brand website within a few months. It's just a matter of high quality content, on-page optimization, and then link building. Work in the social aspects and you'll easily get them up there with the big dogs.
If you chase the algorithm, you'll be left high and dry.
Just my 2 cents!
-
Hi David, Thanks for your reply.. Although thats not what I was expecting
As I'm up against BIG law firms with buckets of dosh and lots of content on site, wouldn't an EMD give me some leverage against the big guys as they tend to only use their exact firm name in their domain name choice.
And if Google does eventually down rank sites with keywords in the name, I could always switch back to the firm names as the domain name when that day comes?
-
Do NOT go with an Exact Match Domain. Focus on building up a brand. EMD's will one day be going by the wayside and you'll be left with nothing. Trust me, building a brand is the best method to use. You won't get the SERP boost an EMD will give you, but you can easily compensate by using super amazing content that is relevant and doing some nice link building.
Focus on the brand, amazing content, amazing links, and they'll be ranking in no time. Seriously!
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
-
Move domain to new domain, for how much time should I keep forwarding?
I'm not sure but my website looks like is not getting it's juice as supposed to be. As we already know, google preferred https sites and this is what happened to mine, it was been crawling as https but when the time came to move my domain to new domain, I used 301 or domain forwarding service, unfortunately they didn't have a way to forward from https to new https, they only had regular http to https, when users clicked to my old domain from google search my site was returned to "site does not exist", I used hreflang at least that google would detect my new domain been forwarding and yes it worked but now I'm wondering, for how much time should I keep the forwarding the old domain to the new one, my site looks like is not going up, I have changed all the external links, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fulanito1 -
301 vs 410 for subdirectory that was moved to a new domain, 2-years later
Hi all, I've read a lot about 301 vs 404 and 410s, but the case is pretty unique so I decided to get some feedback from you. Both websites are travel related but we had one destination as a subdirectory of the other one (two neighboring countries, where more than 90% of business was related to the 'main' destination and the rest to the 'satellite'). This was obviously bad practice and we decided to move the satellite destination to its own domain. Everything was done 2 years ago and we opted for 301s to the new domain as we had some good links pointing to satellite content. (All of the moved content is destination specific and still relevant) Few weeks back we figured out that google still shows our subdirectory when doing specific 'site:' search and looking further into it, we realized we still get traffic for satellite destination through the main website via links acquired before the move. Not a lot of hits, but they still sporadically occur. A decision was made (rather hastily) to 410 pages and see if that will make satellite subdir pages not show in google searches. So 3 weeks in, 410 errors are climbing in GWMT, but satellite subdirectory still shows in google searches. One part of the team is pushing to put back in place 301s. The other part of the team is concerned with the 'health' of the main website as those pages are not relevant for it, and want them gone . What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Changing business name from keyword to brand name, what are the effects on SEO?
I think it's best to give you an example to illustrate what I'm asking here. Current Brand Name: Keyword Driven Brand Name (keyworddrivenbrandname.com) New brand Name: KDBN (kdbn.com) What will the effects of this change be. I'm slightly worried that we have lots of links with the anchor text "Keyword Driven Brand Name" and we rank very well for terms like "Keyword Driven" and "Brand Name". I guess what I'm asking is, do we need to go and change all those anchors to KDBN and will this upset our search rankings. Or do we leave the existing anchors? But will Google see this as over-optimised anchor text and penalise our website? Decisions decisions! Also, should we leave the old brand name in our title tags, at least for the transitional period, i.e. KDBN | Targeted Keyword | Keyword Driven Brand Name Any help with this would be really appreciated, Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages0 -
What has a better chance of ranking alongside my main site for my company name, a subdomain or new domain?
Hi Moz, Do search engines really treat subdomains as separate domains in this regard? Or are we more likely to get more real estate on the first page with a new domain? Our goal is to have our main site and this new subdomain or domain ranking in positions 1 and 2 for our company name. This is going to be a careers site/portal. Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Merging domains into sudomains
I know that questions about this topic have been asked before, but I didn't really find an answer that I could apply to our situation. We have several websites that now exist on separate domains, even though their topics are closely related. We are moving each of these sites into a new CMS and are considering collapsing all of the domains into a sub-domain structure around the strongest domain. Important to note: All of the current domains have existed for many years and have strong site authority, and regardless of the domain decision, in this restructuring we will be bringing them all under a global header. I know that there are SEO risks to moving a site from an established domain to a new one, even with 301 redirects in place, but the team in charge of this move wants to know how much of a hit we would take and how quickly natural search traffic might recover. Maybe and mights aren't really satisfying their questions... Does anyone have experience with collapsing domains into a sub-domain structure and feel like sharing your results? Most importantly, was it worth it???? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JuliaG0 -
Brand Name in Domain name
I am thinking to make a site for amazon affiliate ,but hesitate to get a domain name related to brand name like samsungxxxxxxxxx.com .getting such domain name is good or bad ? advice me to proceed
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Sounds too good to be true?
Hi all, Speaking to an SEO company at the moment about doing some link building for me but I just can't shake this suspicion that they are a bunch of cowboys. My budget is £1000/month and they are promising 500-1000 high quality links/month. Common sense dictates that surely that would trigger an unnatural link building pattern and at £1-2 /link doesn't sound like they are going to be quality. Is there any scenario where these figures might stack up. Personally I think it's bullshit but thought I'd check it out before telling him to piss off. Thanx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0 -
New Domain Name For Site That Ranks Highly on Key Terms
Here's my problem -- which is actually a pretty good problem to have. My client is a speciality service provider in an extremely competitive field. It charges 3 to 5 times what others do for providing a super-premium level of service. It doesn't have -- nor does it want -- many customers. I can't go into details, but let's just say the business model is a bit like the charity or premium newsletter publishing model. It is extremely hard to recruit new members -- but once recruited, members tend to stay for a long time at high price points. Personal referral is key. As result of my efforts over the last 90 days, the client's SEO results have skyrocketed. After a couple of false starts, we have focussed on key terms the target demographic is likely to search, rather than the generic terms others in the industry use. We have also had great success with a social media strategy -- since the few people likely to be interested in paying such high prices know like-minded folks. For the first time, my client is getting "walk in" prospects. They are delighted! But they are not really walk-ins. They have already found the site -- either through SERPs or Facebook or Twitter. Now we need to get to the next level. Here's the problem: the client's domain name sucks. It is short, but combines an acronym with one of the words in its long-version name. It uses the British spelling version of the long name fragment, even though most Canadians now use American spelling. And it is a .ca, rather than a dot.com So I think we have to bite the bullet and change to the long, dot com version of the name, which is available and has the additional benefit of having embedded within it a key search term. I am basically an editorial/content guy and not a tech guy. The IT guys at my firm are strongly encouraging me to make the change...in very "colorful" language. We can certainly do 301 redirects at the page level. But I would like some additional validation before proceeding. My questions are: how much link juice might we lose? I've seen the figure of 10% bandied around. Is it accurate? might we see a temporary dip in results? If so, how long would it last? what questions did I forget to ask? What additional info do you need to offer informed advice ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanielFreedman0