New small business.. brand or keyword rich domain?
-
With so many keyword rich domains in circulation is there actually little option for small business right now other than to use keyword rich domains themselves e.g. (businessname)(keywords).com instead of brand e.g. (businessname.com) where competitors are using keyword rich domains and ranking high?
It could be a mis-perception on my part, but, unless you have a very old non keyword domain name, if you don't have a keyword rich domain name in a competitive market you will struggle to succeed unless you have a serious SEO budget.
Unless you are the next Google/Facebook/Pepsi isn't branding just a load of BS ?
We are ourselves are in a predicament about which domain to use for our own website design business. We have a brand name domain name which is a 4 char domain but we also have a brand+keyword domain and are not 100% which one to use as our primary domain.
Perhaps we can use the brand domain as our primary domain and then use the brand+keyword domain as an appropriately constructed single page promotional site, perhaps with unique content which links back to the brand domain? Good idea / Bad idea?
I guess the overriding question is, if the content is good enough is the domain name you choose irrelevent to some extent?
-
Great answers guys, I think my mind is now straight and how to move forward, not just with our own strategy but our client strategies as well
-
After Google's latest Exact Match Domain update, I do not think that you should be concentrating on keyword rich domain name. Moreover, keywords rich domain has problem with branding. For say, if you have a domain like this -
You will find it really hard to promote your brand presence. And even when you are building links with Branded keywords, Google may consider it as an attempt to game SERP by building excessively with exact matched key phrases.
-
Hi Neil,
I would definitely use a branded domain. You want to be memorable amongst the many websites out there - the very small benefit you get from SEO from a EMD is not worth it in my opinion (plus EMDs are gaining less traction in the Google algorithm as time goes on).
Take for example the domain that I manage - http://www.kitchenwaredirect.com.au. We chose this brand name because it was keyword rich (kitchenware). However, if we had our time again we would definitely chose a shorter, more memorable name. People often call us Kitchen Direct, Kitchen Warehouse Direct etc as well. We've just launched a new site at http://www.avago.com.au - we went for a memorable, short name.
In short, if your content and SEO strategy is good enough - go for the branded domain.
Good luck!
-
Yes, that is a super logical way of thinking about it. Good work!
-
Thanks Owen,
I certainly like the idea of using the brand domain and from marketing standpoint makes more sense. Also, should our services evolve the keywords that exist in our keyword rich domain at present may become less relevant and hinder progress
I guess from a SEO point of view we can use brand.com/keyword-rich-page-name.html which will work just as well in a lot of cases.
-
Big question. Exact match KW domains aren't quite as valuable as they were in some instances. I would lean toward using a branded domain, as it will be more cohesive with your overall marketing. It may also help the user in that they could have an easier time remembering your URL which could increase direct visits, and you may get higher CTR via organic due to recognition.
Ultimately, yes I believe it does come down to content - but why not use what works best for your overall marketing scheme...
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
-
Forwarding a .org domain to a .com domain: any negative impact to consider?
Hello! I have a question I've been unable to find a clear answer to. My client's primary domain is a .com with a satisfactorily high DA. My client owns the .org version of its domain (which has a very low DA, I suppose due to inactivity) but has never forwarded it on. For branding/visibility/traffic reasons, I'd like to recommend they set up the .org domain to forward to the .com domain, but I wanted to ask a few questions first: 1. Does forwarding low-value DA domains to high-value DA domains have any negative authority/SEO impact? 2. If the .org domain was to be forwarded, am I correct that an SSL cert is not necessary for it if the .com domain has an SSL cert? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms1 -
Top domain(s) not at all showing up for branded keywords
Hey guys! Hope you're all doing well. I need your smart brains for a problem the company I work for is currently facing in the realm of SEO. They wanted to hire someone to find the problem, but I thought I would reach out to you guys, first, to at least try and narrow down the long list of things we could look at/investigate. I put the info (briefly) on 3 slides, and would really appreciate any and all insights you can offer me: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12d0YH7BNdCIpJ86d95uBOtOWphWQ3NB1kwDYeOzIt-U/edit#slide=id.g19145c9fa5_0_0 Thank you in advance!
Technical SEO | | michelledemaree0 -
Does the domain extension effect domain authority and ranking
We have produces a website on a .company domain extension. We have produced a good sized website with unique content. However the DA remains at 1. There are no high priority issues in the page crawl. We suspect that the domain extension may be causing a lower DA. Is this a ranking factor?
Technical SEO | | easydomains0 -
Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?
My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Technical SEO | | usDragons0 -
Domain name SEO
I would like to hear your opinion about which between robotics.kawasaki.com and www.kawasakirobotics.com is more effective for SEO of keyword robotics and kawasaki. We have been using kawasaki.com domain name for more than 15 years.
Technical SEO | | Iwashima0 -
41.000 pages indexed two years after it was redirected to a new domain
Hi!Two years ago, we changed the domain elmundodportivo.es to mundodeportivo.com. Apparently, everything was OK, but more than two years later, there are still 41.000 pages indexed in Google (https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aelmundodeportivo.es) even though all the domains have been redirected with a 301 redirect. I detected some problems with redirections that were 303 instead of 301, but we fixed that one month ago.A secondary problem is that the pagerank for elmundodportivo.es is 7 yet and mundodeportivo.com is 3.What I'm doing wrong?Thank you all,Oriol
Technical SEO | | MundoDeportivo0 -
Redirect to new domain
We are moving our website from http://mysyncpad.com to http://syncpadapp.com The old site ranks pretty well for some specific keywords, will a 301 allow the new site to rank as well or will it be penalized by good for the transfer?
Technical SEO | | fifthlayer0 -
Domain Masking with New Keyword-Rich Domains
Hello, friends. We have an ecommerce site and we also own several keyword-rich domains but haven't done anything with them yet. Is there any value in using domain masking to point them to either product pages or special landing pages on our primary ecommerce site? Here's an example: Primary site is widgetzone.com Keyword rich URL is acmewidget.com (which is totally blank and isn't indexed) It could point to our category page for Acme Widgets: widgetzone.com/category/acme-widgets or it could point to a new landing page: widgetzone.com/acme-widgets My concern is that because the keyword-rich URL hasn't been utilized at all there's really no point in redirecting it. I'm of the mind that it's either going to be ineffective at best or a duplicate content issue at worst. What do you guys think? As a follow-up, if we don't redirect these domains, what should we do with them? Just try to sell them off rather than create totally new sites?
Technical SEO | | jbreeden0