Slight keyword variation domain name

[WebbyNabler]

I have recently changed a clients domain name from a long (23 characters) to a shorter domain name that has a keyword plus a single character variation. For example and without revealing the clients real domain name, let say they are in housing. Ithe first letter in the company name is "p" so i created the doamin name as www.phousing.com It has only been two days since i submitted the new domain name and did a 301 redirect to the new page. When i do a google search i get back the result: housing.com and "did you mean housing.com Will this domain name cause me problems? Any input is greatly appreciated!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

"...by the time you told someone the address you where exhausted and the prospect was confused"

Best answer I ever heard!

[WebbyNabler]

Thank you Cyrus!  To answer the question of why I changed their domain name in the first place,

1. Original domain name had no relevance to the services they provide
2. The domain name was 23 characters long, which I feel is way too long and allows for 23 opportunities for a client to misspell the name when writing emails, accessing the website, ect....
3. The domain name was 7 syllables....by the time you told someone the address you where exhausted and the prospect was confused
4. They had virtually no web presence, so the switch was simple enough.  They had literally one link.  The site was under 10 pages, so again, not a huge undertaking.

Again, thank you so much for the feedback.  SEOmoz really has a great community!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Howdy,

Hmmmm... I have to wonder why you changed the domain name in the first place? There are certainly many legitimate reasons to do so, but it's a pretty drastic measure to do a domain migration and most of the time it's something most webmasters want to avoid unless they have to.

If the domain is close to a popular domain, you may continually run into the problem of Google trying to correct your spelling when folks search for your brand name - especially if the brand doesn't have a lot of visibility.

For example, if I registered the name mfacebook.com, Google would likely try to steer me towards Facebook time and time again (not to mention Facebook hitting me with Trademark issues

Will the domain name hurt your SEO? Probably not anymore than the normal risks involved with migrating a website to a new domain.

The bigger question that I think you want to address is: will Google recognize the keyword in the domain? Although Google does a pretty good job at discecting domain names (for example, they know that bluewidgets.com is "blue widgets") the algorythm isn't perfect. SEOmoz.org is a perfect example. For years Google didn't give us credit for the keyword "SEO" because "moz" wasn't a common word. So instead, we were clumped together in the "SEOmoz" (single word) category.

My best advice, if you want to take advantage of keywords in the URL for an existing domain, is to use them sparingly in subdirctories and file names, such as example.com/keyword.

Regardless, keep us up to date on your progress. Best of luck with your SEO!

[WebbyNabler]

Thank you very much for your response. I actually changed their domain name again just to avoid potential issues. I find myself frequently these days having to base domain and website development decisions on the fact that i am afraid google will penalize my sites. I mean there are legitimate whitehat methods that are in my clients best interests, but because an unethical person may use a method that is similiar for black hat purposes. Google is penalizing the good guys for the sake of restricting some bad guuys. For example i guess some people trying to trick the engines by putting a single character variable in a popular keyword name, but my clients case they wanted their companies first initial plus industry. They or i am not trying to "trick" the engines, it just made sense for them , but now i have to select an inferior domain name....

[SanketPatel]

Hi

Your site is recently registered, whilst the other site with a very similar domain name is old then your site, the likelihood is that users are searching for that one rather than your new one, hence the occasional auto-correct. Given a bit of time this should resolve itself

Wait for some time & you will find your domain name.

Hope this helps.