Local Keyword vs Business Name in URL

[Neustop]

I am working with a local business owner who has purchased multiple domains. One includes the geographic area she serves and the type of business she runs. The other includes her business name and the type of business she runs. She is unsure of which domain she would like to use as the main URL for her business website. When choosing a domain for a small, local business, would you consider it advantageous to have the main geographic area that the business serves in the URL rather than the actual name of the business?

What would be the best use of domain name which isn't selected from a SEO standpoint?

[Neustop]

It probably would have been faster to link to this: http://www.seobook.com/googles-matt-cutts-talks-down-keyword-domain-names than tell me to research it, but whatever. I'll link to it for the benefit of others. Thank you for your input, I will take it under advisement and continue to look into this before I speak to my client.

watch?v=rAWFv43qubI

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Remember that google can't distinguish between that of a brand or a small website. They work on algorithms, so throw out of the window what you think should be right and go do some research on it. Matt Cutts from Google was part of a discussion on this. You can't get any closer to the source and was quoted as saying that they have been giving too much away to sites with keywords in the domain. Read between the lines here and you have another change on your hands. I think my time trying to offer advice in this Q&A has reached it's limit so good luck on your search. Andy

[Neustop]

Would you happen to have a link to some additional information on this topic? I'm still not really seeing the down side to using the geographic domain based on what you're telling me.

Basically, what I've gathered from your posts is that by choosing the geographic domain they may wind up losing the added traffic boost that it initially picked up. However, because we will be addressing linkbuilding and on-page content with the business name, other keywords, and local area in mind, I'm really not seeing where I would be risking much by choosing the geographic area URL over the business URL.

Do keep in mind that we are dealing with a small, local business here, not a national brand. The brand name will not carry much weight outside of the local area they serve, and because they are just getting started it basically carries no weight at all at this point.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Yes, I guess there would be a backlash in the same way that panda was about to use triggers to allow them to weed out the site that are not playing ball.... Never try and second guess what Google will or can do... And I speak with more than just a little experience here... and more than 80,000 first page terms for my customers. As soon as I get wind that there is to be a change, I prepare well in advance for my customers so that they will not get a knock of any sort. I guess this is what keeps customers coming back.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

If Google says they have been giving away too much to websites with keywords in the domains, then you had better be sure that to improve their results, that they will do something with it. However, will they tell us? Probably not. But after doing this for just over 10 years, you learn not to mess around with the search engines. If you feel you want to go against a metric that Google will start using at some point, feel free to put your customer in that position, but it will be a cold day in hell before I would endorse or undertake something like that myself. Andy

[Bill-Duff]

If we all listened to what might happen, we would all still be living in caves and eating berries. Sometimes we have to cross a bridge when we arrive at, yes we need to be aware that the bridge is a swing bridge, but it's all about timing, we need to arrive in plenty of time. Google is not going to kill small businesses by penalising them for telling customers what they do in their domain name. How is Google going to tell the difference between a business name and a keyword loaded domain? Our office is near Heathrow, the local taxi firm is called Airport Taxis, likewise one of the local Indian restaurants is called The Curry House, what would Google do with these businesses, penalise their websites? There would be an almighty backlash.

[Neustop]

iNet, Please don't think that I disregarded your opinion completely. I appreciate the advice, but I'm pretty sure that for this client and in this situation including the geographic area seems to be the better option. What Google says and what Google does frequently seem to be two very different things and I'm not sure if this really qualifies as being a keyword-heavy URL. It's a two word URL, not keyword stuffed, and simply targets the geographic area that the business serves. She wants to be recognized as the number one provider in that area, so the name seems to have relevance on top of being a strong local keyword. If you still believe that I'm making an error, please explain to me why and I will perhaps reconsider my position.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I might as well have not bothered posting here Just to reiterate my point again, Google is going to start clamping down on those sites that have too' many keywords in the domain, and this has been confirmed by Google, so you follow that route at your customers risk. Those that take this route now are going to regret that decision very soon. Those that ignore the warnings of Google better be prepared to pay the price... And there will be one! Never known of SEO's that go against what Google is doing. Crazy world!

[Neustop]

Thank you for the insightful responses. I think that in this situation, I'm going to recommend to my client that we stick with the geographic domain as the main URL. The only question I have now is what to do with the leftover domains she has purchased. Would it be wise to forward them or create minisites/landing pages? Would it be considered spammy to build links to all of these domains regardless of whether or not they are forwarded to the parent domain? Would it be a waste of time?

[Bill-Duff]

Yes I agree, the ultimate decision is with the business owner. As we are all aware, smaller businesses require faster responses and typically have lower budgets, which are a key factor. Probably the most difficult factor is time, as we know, receiving content from small businesses when building a website is a challenge, getting them to update a blog, some social networking sites and even Twitter is all but impossible. They have good intensions but they do not have the staff or sufficient time to make it a success.

If Google wants to assist small businesses to compete online, they have to be sensitive to their environment.

[CPU]

Unless the company is a well known brand, which isn't likely as you have said they are a local business then the volume of searches will be higher for the location & business type as a keyphrase. Currently that type of domain name will have an SEO benefit. More traffic and higher rankings are the positives.

A lack of branding and the fact that the position regarding keyword matched domain names could change are downsides.

The final decision should rest with the business owner but I would present the positives and negatives too them as I have had some success with keyword matched domains. Aware of the potential changes in the future I will be stepping up the link building on the sites to try to protect them from any changes.

[Dan-Petrovic]

I support this view. Let's not do the same damage to our branding as Yellow Pages did to various AAA Aarwark Plumbing type businesses.

[Bill-Duff]

Okay, this is an interesting one. last year we had read many posts about keywords in the domain name, the industry seemed to be split more or less 50-50 if this was beneficial or not, so we decided to do an experiment on our own domain name. We will publish an article regarding this and post it more detail on SEOMoz later this month, but for now, our results are definitely in favour of keyword loaded domains.

Originally we used eCommerce-web-design-seo.com as our domain name, it said exaclty what we did. Just over six months ago, we changed this to our business name fusionsoft.co.uk, as well as doing this, we put a reasonable effort into seo to make sure that the test was fare. Over the last six months we have seen a huge drop in traffic, we are now going to change back to the keyword loaded domain.

Now, just to back this up a little further, we have a customer who runs a part time business, we built them a low budget website, the domain was their business name, Drysdale Couture, they had no money for marketing, we did all the basic onsite optimisation and set them up with a few local (quality directory inserts), they had no enquiries for 6 months. We suggested changing their domain name to a keyword loaded domain name, bespoke-bridesmaid-dresses.co.uk now they have a top 10 listing for variations of these keywords.

However, the counter argument is also a strong one, it is better to build a brand that customers will search for and find you directly, dependant on the nature of the business, building a strong brand can be expensive and take a long time.

Using a keyword loaded domain alongside good SEO Marketing will deliver results, however, the domain name should not be too heavily loaded and must be based on good search research, e.g. bespoke bridesmaid dresses.

I hope this helps.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I would avoid trying to run a website based on keywords or phrases as Matt Cutts has been quoted as saying that they have been paying too much attention to this in the past, so expect this to get a hit at some point. Those that have keywords in the name or that are made up of keywords will probably suffer a little.

Just go with the company name as this is the brand that people will remember and recognise.

Regards,

Andy