Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best Domain Name for Life Coaching Site
-
Hello,
I am an NLP health coach. I am starting to work with both life threatening illnesses and minor diagnoses. NLP is a type of personal development. I'm wondering what your opinion of the best domain would be, keeping in mind branding, SEO, and usability/rememberability. The term "NLP" is not well known. I will be doing both phone coaching and in-person coaching. My other website (BobWeikel.com) is not very strong because of the lack of keywords in the domain, but it's easy to remember.
Options are:
BoiseHealthCoach.com (I'm in Boise Idaho)
or whatever you suggest.
-
-
Keywords people get to me with are
NLP Boise
NLP Life Coach
NLP Health Coach
and related terms.
I want them to find me eventually with terms such as
NLP Coach
Health Coach
Life Coach
-
What are the keywords people use when looking for your service?
-
Let me zoom up to the 30,000 feet level to offer a much broader perspective than a techie/geeky approach that draws on general principles. The reason is simple: your situation is very particular.
As i'm sure you are aware, NLP is hugely controversial. Many consider it a discredited and crackpot theory roughly on a par with the flat earth society. I'm not saying that's true....only that those doing a quick Google search might reach that conclusion.
The Wikipedia article on NLP has a bone of contention for years. It is currently edit-protected and includes the sentence:
"NLP is unsupported by current scientific evidence, and uses incorrect and misleading terms and concepts."
In a former life, I was the editor of a fitness publication. We published an article that drew on some NLP concepts. It provoked a furious response -- up to, and including, suggestions from otherwise rational people that all those responsible for publishing the article should be fired and blacklisted!
Again, I'm not saying I agree or regret publishing the article.
But given all the above, I can see no arguments in favour of including NLP in your domain name and many against.
I am also not suggesting you hide who you are, what you do, or what you believe.
Only that there is a time and place for everything.
-
Hi Bob
On the SEO side, keywords in domain names don't directly matter as much as they used to, especially with Google. That's the general consensus these days.
On the Usability side, it still helps if there is a keyword or two in the domain name, it helps with that remember-ability as you mentioned plus can help with Click Through Rates if it 'does what it says on the tin'.
What the keyword(s) is depends largely on whether Brand or Product/Service is your most important selling point.
If 'Bob Weikel' is your brand that you'd like to be the main selling point, then include those words.
If 'Health Coach' is what you'd like to be foremost known for, then go for that.
And of course, your suggestion of 'bobweikelhealthcoach.com' includes both brand and service and isn't too long, though more difficult to remember perhaps than either or. Perhaps drop the Bob and become known as 'w****eikelhealthcoach.com' as a suggestion.
There's no definitive right or wrong, it's what best matches your business purpose & goals.
If you haven't already read it, have a read of a Domain Guide here on SEOmoz which may help you further.
I hope all that does help you out,
Regards
Simon
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
-
City Name in URL structure
I have a client whose site was built when they only served one market, and they now have that city in the majority of their URLs. I'm suggesting we redo the URL structure to remove this location from the main URLs (think homepage, about, etc.) since they have now expanded to three markets. They are seeing a lot of great organic traffic in that original market but are struggling in the new ones they've added so I'm helping to optimize their site. How critical do you think that removing that location from the URL is? I know we would need to implement 301 redirects, but wanted to get thoughts on this.
On-Page Optimization | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Snippet showing as domain name with apostrophe, instead of page title when searching for the domain name.
Hi, We have an issue with one of our websites, with the snippet dispaying differently in Google serps when searching for the domain or the website name rather than a search term. When searching for a search term, the page title shows as expected, but when searching for the site by the domain name either with or without the tld, it shows the snippet as the domain name with an apostrophe at the end. Domain is subli.co.uk Thanks in advance for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | K3v1n0 -
What is the best way to execute a geo redirect?
Based on what I've read, it seems like everyone agrees an IP-based, server side redirect is fine for SEO if you have content that is "geo" in nature. What I don't understand is how to actually do this. It seems like after a bit of research there are 3 options: You can do a 301 which it seems like most sites do, but that basically means if google crawls you in different US areas (which it may or may not) it essentially thinks you have multiple homepages. Does google only crawl from SF-based IPs? 302 passes no juice, so probably don't want to do that. Yelp does a 303 redirect, which it seems like nobody else does, but Yelp is obviously very SEO-savvy. Is this perhaps a better way that solves for the above issues? Thoughts on what is best approach here?
On-Page Optimization | | jcgoodrich0 -
URL Domain Used in Meta Description
Today I was asked if using a domain url in your meta description can have a negative impact on your website. This description includes a list of the homepage url, but directs visitors to a different internal page of the website. My concern fell with directing visitors to a different page of the site, but promoting the homepage in the description/snippet. With Penguin 2.1 release on the 4th, I'm very cautious of my links/urls. What are your thoughts behind this? What are the possible, if any negative impacts this could have on a site? This URL does have a brand name as so the Title.
On-Page Optimization | | flcity150 -
Best practice for Portfolio Links
I have a client with a really large project portfolio (over 500 project images), which causes their portfolio page to have well over the 100 links that are recommended. How can I reduce this without reducing the number of photos they can upload?
On-Page Optimization | | HochKaren0 -
Hyphens in Domain Name
I have a client who is a business broker. I have just begun working with them, and they are trying to determine the best domain name to use - they have several. business-broker-alabama.com vs businessbrokeralabama.com Which one of these has more value? I know that search engines have somewhat devalued keywords. The first one probably has a little more SEO value, but is going to be a drag in terms of marketing -- saying "business hyphen broker hyphen alabama" is going to get old for them. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | csmithal0 -
Www1 and www domain
hi, I have a client who has an e-commerce business. My client does not want to fill the pages with too much content and has set up a www1 version with the same domain-name as the www. The plan is to create a lot of content and push www1 in ranking and then sending users (via links) to the www for ordering. Although there will be no duplicate content published on www and www1 this seems like an odd strategy, especially since the www already has a good page rank, and I'm not sure about how engines view a www.domain.com and www1domain.com situation even with unique content in each. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | vibelingo0 -
Best Practice for Deleting Pages
What is the best SEO practice for deleting pages? We have a section in our website with Employee bios, and when the employee leaves we need to remove their page. How should we do this?
On-Page Optimization | | Trupanion0