Should I redirect a direct keyword url?
-
We are a manufacture of a product and we own the url of our business/product name (samples) "www.thewafflemaker.com" and our company name is "The Waffle Maker". We do all of our business on "www.thewafflemaker.com" and rank #1 for about 16 of the top 20 keywords related to "Waffle Makers".
However, we also own "www.wafflemaker.com" without "The" in the URL. Right now we have it set up as a single page that contains information about the product and a link to our sales site. Should we build this site up or have it just redirect to "www.thewafflemaker.com"?
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you!
-
We really dont have the time or resources to keep up with both sites. We get about 150 organic hits to the "www.wafflemaker.com" site and only see about 20 of those come to our main site.
Maybe a redirect is best since our sales site is set up to reel the buyer in.
Thanks for the input Ryan
-
If you have enough content and time to manage the SEO on the 2nd domain, I'd say go for it. What you want to avoid is duplicating your content, or cannibalizing your own keywords on the main site.
If you don't have any new keywords you want to pursue, don't have the time to properly SEO the domain, or don't have enough content for a second site, I'd say go for the redirect.
EDIT: You should also know that exact match keywords in domains is one of the less important ranking factors, and most agree it will continue to become less important.
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
-
Changing domain name, witch is better - brand name.com vs keyword + brand name.com?
Hi, I just made one decision and now I'm bit worried, if I did right one. I hope that you can give me feedback and advice regarding it. I'm in hookah market, so I do not have any possibilities to buy adds, so SEO is really-really important to us. I know a lot of things what has to be done to perform better, but currently I have just few really important questions. In international market the main keyword is "hookah" and everything related to that. We are small company and our brand is not that well known and do not have high volume traffic on website. Hookah in front of that we tough will give better understanding to audience about what is the page. Which domain name is better for SEO and also branding purposes? Currently we were using the first one without keyword, no we switched to the second one (just about week ago). https://hekkpipe.com https://hookahhekkpipe.com Regarding it, some really important questions: Would the longer version of domain helps us better rank with important keywords to us or not? When we will write good content, which domain is more likely shared? I'm bit afraid that first one and that we made a mistake changing the domain name. When the 1st one, then how big difference does it potentially make? Thank you
Branding | | Karel_K0 -
Negative Keywords for SEO
Hi Mozzers, I have a client that has a totally legit retail business and they are getting lots of traffic organically that is adult in nature and totally off subject. The reason for this is their domain name contains keywords which while work well for their brand, when reordered and couple with a another keyword (such as picture or image) they get traffic for searches that have nothing to do with them and are pretty awful in nature. If this was Adwords I'd add a negative in of course but how can I stop bad traffic coming to the site organically? Any ideas? Cheers B 🙂
Branding | | Bush_JSM0 -
If I bid on my brand name, will it make the keyword more expensive for my competitors
Our brand name is being bid on by out competitors. If we bid on our own brand name, for which we rank #1 for all our profiles and website, will we make our competitors cost per click higher?
Branding | | Catherine_Selectaglaze0 -
Rebranding/Url Structure Change
Hi Everyone, First off thanks for taking the time to looking at my question. I was wondering about rebranding and URL structure changes. Right now my company is planning on changing their domain and doing a massive change to their site which includes a url structure change. The idea is in September they will be changing the site to be a combination of wordpress and ruby on rails (currently the site is ruby on rails). The homepage and design on the site will be completely different and parts of the site will be in php and other parts will be in ruby. The URL structure will also be changing completely at the same time. Each page will be completely different in structure, including the homepage (currently now it redirects you to a subfolder page that is your local page [i.e. nyc if you are in new york]). Then, the following month, they will be changing their domain name to a different domain. I have asked them to do this in stages. First the domain, second the rebrand, and third the URL restructuring or we could lose SEO traffic but they asked a freelancer his opinion and the freelancer said that you could do the rebrand change with the URL restructure and then domain later and while you're SEO may disappear, it'll definitely return in 3 to 4 months. Could you tell me who is right and what the correct method is to make this change?
Branding | | MattJD0 -
Is there any downside to have a product name (branded keyword) that has a top keyword in it?
The company I work for recently purchased another company. We are currently re-branding their product into our solution offering and are working on coming up with a new product name, while keeping SEO in mind. The product names that we are thinking of also includes a non-branded keyword that we actively look to rank for. We currently rank relatively high for this keyword. Is there any negative to having a product name that has a non-branded keyword in it. My first thought is that it is great because that non-branded keyword will be used repeatedly on our site when we mention the product. Things that I don't know though are: will it appear we are keyword stuffing does Google recognize that its a branded keyword and doesn't rank us for the non-branded aspect Any feedback or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Vince
Branding | | IFSNA0 -
It's been 2 Months and Google STILL shows my Old URL, why? (help please)
First i just want to say the 301s, change of address and nearly all outer links are changed to the new url since early september. Let me give you an example... Query: Custom Sweatbands Ranking URL: www.stbands.com/custom-sweatbands/ **Correct URL that it is 301'd to for over 2 months now: **www.customonit.com/custom-sweatbands/ More... new sitemap has been submitted since the beginning. The old website www.stbands.com doesn't even exist anymore, in fact at the beginning of this month I got pretty angry and blocked search engines via the robots txt for the old domain. Any way I can get Google to catch on? Thanks in advance!
Branding | | Hyrule1 -
Google Displays Domain / URL Above Description?
I am seeing a new SERP format from Google. (new for me at least) In the past the title tag would display as the first line of a listing, followed by description and domain / URL. Today I see the domain / URL as the second line. This is placing an emphasis on "Who". If you have a big brand or a great URL this might be helpful to your CTR. Are you seeing this? What do you think of it?
Branding | | EGOL0 -
Domain Name Masking Redirect for Brandname to Keyworded Domain
Hi mozzers I have 2 domain names, brandname.com and keywordname.com and but have a question related to web vs print marketing on deciding which domain to use or redirect. We already have established unique content first on the Keywordname.com site over the last 6 months and it has started to climb well in google rankings. But now we'd like to do some print advertising and think it would make more sense to use Brandname.com when refering to our website. So the 2 question are: Should I 301 redirect brand.com to keyword.com (preferred as all content and rankings on keyword.com) or vice versa, as I realize I can only have one site to avoid duplicate content. And is it possible to use domain name masking on brand.com if redirecting to keyword.com to avoid risking our rankings, or is masking bad for seo? Thanks!
Branding | | emerald0