Please help me choose which is the better brand name or domain name?
-
I am helping a friend and getting involved in looking at launching a taxi service in a major city. Now this is for one of the major cities of world. A big part of the branding of the company or service will be the unique and memorable telephone number this company owns. This company is not expected to be anything huge, just a good small local business. However, we are trying to utilise online marketing which I feel have not been utilised by this cector that much..
The telephone number is something as good as 100 1515, but slightly better. These numbers are hard to get hold of and even when there is one available it's often very expensive. So a big part of the company will be getting that number seen everywhere.
As it's a regional business, just for that one city, and for taxi services having a good telephone number that people can easily remember is important. However, most people now use smart phones, and people will often search on their phones or ipads for "birmingham taxi" or "birmingham taxi service" and so on.
I have the opportunity, as an example to either go with "getbirminghamtaxi.co.uk" or "getabirminghamtaxi". So the choice is between "Get Birmingham Taxi" or Get a Birmingham Taxi" - the difference being putting the "a" in the middle like a sentence.
I also thought of exact match domain "birmingham taxi" or birminghamtaxi.co.uk but the owner wants between £3,000-£12,000 (so between $5,000-$20,000) for it.
I feel with a domain purchased for just £3 ($5) I would be able to test the market, and if I found it was successful, we could then consider acquiring a more expensive EMD.
I feel that services like private taxi hire firms are small tiny regional businesses, and they don't really do much on search and SEO. I feel if our one did, it would stand out, and I do think quite a few people search online for taxi's, and I know I do. I am also aware that there are now app's like Halo but there is room for a small business to thrive doing a lot online and offline marketing with a great number.
This is not for Birmingham. I have just made that up.
So I would welcome people's feedback in terms of which domain name would be best, with or without the "a"? If you have an alternative suggestion I would welcome that. Also if anyone has any other comments or feedback about this market, doing business, marketing, or any knowledge that you have that you would like to share with us - then that would be appreciated.
Thank you.
-
You can honestly go with either, in my opinion. But how are you going to differentiate yourself from all of the other services? What if you partner with a food delivery service.. pizza... kebabs... whatever, and have something ready at or near the time of arrival.
I'm thinking about the bar crowd. What do you think? That's a bit of differentiation in my book.
-
Thanks Gregory. Yes I thought of the domain with just the number. However, I think "GetBirminghamTaxi" works for me without the "a" and even as a name because when we say it verbally, we will often say let's get a London taxi or let's get a Birmingham taxi. So I have been leaning towards that from the beginning. I posted this question, in case someone points out something obvious that I may have missed. Sometimes people view things differently and can point things out that could be valuable to your business.
-
Since most customers will be typing on a phone, I suggest not using the "a".
But if a really cool phone number is part of the marketing plan, maybe you could use it as part of the URL. Something like Taxi1515.co.uk or BirminghamTaxi1515.co.uk - doing something like that would let you get a good URL for just the minimal cost of a registration...
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
-
Domain
hello there, I have a 12 years old domain with 35pa and similar domain authority pointed to my hosting which I will call domain A. in December 2020 I will lose the control domain A, as the person controlling the domain died and trying to find a solution but is not possible as it's far more complicated than I anticipated, the domain might be retained by someone else and not me. so I purchased a new domain I will call Domain B. my plan is to serve the info hosted from both domains but B as a principal, I think I can do a 301 in domain A but i wish still be visible in the URL until last minute. but i want to start to pass as soon as possible all the link juice. my problems is how can i serve the content from both domains without creating a 301 but and still be able passing juice link from A to B? is this possible? and from google getting all the indexation for Domain B. bot not for A
Local SEO | | fabguy0 -
Considering Switching Domain from .ca to .com for Service Area Business - What is the Risk / Reward?
Hello, Thank you to anyone who takes the time to share their thoughts on this. I will preface this by saying that I am very new to the community and have lots to learn, so please forgive any obvious errors on my part. That having been said am very happy to receive positive criticism and feedback 🙂 Quick Background: We are a high end mobile wellness business based in Toronto Canada offering in home/office servicing including: yoga, pilates, nutrition, meditation, chiropractors, etc... As we are expanding we are transitioning form new leads coming from business partners and word of mouth to driving new business online As such we have an new Squarespace site (which is the first site I ever built, so any feedback is welcome) and are venturing into social media, SEO, local citations etc... for the first time We have a significant content catalogue originally for client and instructor education that we are now repurposing for this new digital adventure but have not yet deployed While currently focused in Torotno, we have plans to expand to several other countries in the next two years. As the site is quite new and we have little content or incoming links I was thinking now is the time to switch to .com from .ca before we roll out Website: www.anahana.ca Risk Reward? & Other Issues? Both domains are currently verified with Squarespace, and it seems easy enough to switch. What could blow up by making this switch which I might not be aware of? Our emails and business card use the .ca, but I don't think this would matter too much 6-12 months out... is there something else I might be missing on this? .com and using subfolders or subdomains as opposed to country specific TLDs ? This is something I am still working on understanding, but from what I have learned thus far, if we are going to progressively roll out a large content library, is it not better from an SEO standpoint to have this all in one domain? Local SEO and legal considerations for TLDs when operating local Service Area Businesses. I am sure there are many other angles here that I am missing and am not really looking for any hard answer on much of this, but any general advice, suggested resources, and experienced insights would be extremely helpful. Thanks so much, cj
Local SEO | | CJ7770 -
Branded vs Non Branded Homepage?
So I understand that I'm never going to get google review stars appearing on my homepage. The only term I really want my homepage to rank for is the term 'dentist liverpool'. This figures. But what I'm seeing from my google analytics is that I can rank pretty much any keyword really well (with stars and a great serp entry) except my homepage. Which is languishing at position 3-5. Now I made some observations from the data and the only people who are landing on my homepage are branded searches. So people who are searching for us. Why cannot I just make a page and optimise it for 'dentist Liverpool' and go for the number one spot? That way all the branded people can end up on the homepage and everyone else looking for a dentist in Liverpool can land on my highly optimised 'dentist Liverpool' page? I think I might be missing something really obvious here and know i'd need to de-optimise the home page. But I find it so easy to rank for all sorts of keywords but our homepage (because it has everything on it) is just not getting to position one. It's not specific enough to that keyword. Also how awesome would it be to have the only serp entry with 250 google reviews and stars and sitelinks and all that cool stuff?
Local SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
Two websites or a sub domain or sub page?
Hi, Our company has three branches in Canada and opening a 4th in the United States soon. Our target market strategy will differ in the States and I would like to know your opinion if we should launch a second site under a slightly different brand or not. I don’t want to do anything that could negatively impact our site’s current organic ranks. I feel I have to give some history on our company so you understand the dilemma. It is a little complicated. So, in Canada, we rent large generators and all the equipment needed to distribute and transform that power. We don’t own the generators. We re-rent generators (broker) from our partners. What we own is all the distribution equipment that typically accompanies a generator rental. We make money on the generator also, but the real money is in the distribution portion. In terms of messaging, our current site is tuned to target the end-user, the same market that our re-rent partners target. As a result, our re-rent partners and our company will bid on the same project in many occurrences. Our strategy in the United States is to primarily target the re-rent market. That is a very small segment in comparison to the end-user. From a marketing perspective, all that is really needed to target that group is an outside sales team. There are maybe 40 re-rent partners we will target in our first U.S. GEO… Texas. In the States, we will not rent generators. We will not run ad campaigns that bid on any generator rental type terms. We will not offer the same level of turn-key solutions we offer in Canada. All of the equipment we manufacture will be very generic in appearance, think Acme. Branding will look completely different than what we have up in Canada. We want the re-rent companies we target in the States to feel comfortable we are there to support them not compete against them. Regarding website strategy, I see three options: 1. We create a sub domain or sub page of www.trinitypower.com that explains the services we offer in the States. This for me is the safest solution. 2. We launch a second domain www.trinitypowerrentals.com that has similar content in-terms of the type of equipment we rent, but speaks directly to re-rent partners. That may not be enough of a differentiator though and I fear two sites owned by the same company with similar content will have negative SEO implications, if not right away, a year down the road. 3. We launch a new website under a completely different company name. This still carries some risk as I understand it, even if we have different phone numbers, company registration info, etc…
Local SEO | | TrinityPower
Would love to know your thoughts. Thanks everyone. J0 -
Buying a .IE domain and forward to .com domain?
Hi, One of our clients currently owns a .com domain and they are interested in marketing into the Irish market. They have asked us if they should buy a .IE domain name and then forward it onto their .com one. I know that Google has been clamping down on people who use the 'Backdoor' method of buying 100's of keyword rich domains and forwarding them onto their website but would it really make a difference if they just bought one .IE domain? Keen to know if anyone has done this sort of thing before and their experience. Thanks
Local SEO | | O2C0 -
Another Keyword Driven Domain Question
So we have a client that has a ton of great links, solid social profiles, content with good keyword-to-content ratio (7.5-9%), etc. This site has been around for a while and performed well. Recently a new competitor showed up with a very long keyword driven domain and has been outranking our client (and everyone else) for a large quantity of keywords. We own a keyword driven domain that could be used, but should we switch? I am always for branded domains vs keyword, but in this case it appears to be working and undefeatable. We have waited for 6 months to see if it's a fluke, but it has only gained additional ranking. The site in question has bad backlinks, many spam items, and stuffed content on the homepage. We will not copy that format obviously, but should we take one more step and beat him at his own game? Our client has Yext Premium, MOZ local, AdWords, social paid campaigns, location targeting pages, fast load time, etc. Overall a good presence. He seems stuck around the 3-5 position on page one, and is looking to push into the top 3 consistently.
Local SEO | | David-Kley1 -
Please tell me why we can't outrank a competitor with such poor metrics
Hi ! New here I'm trying to help a customer rank in the 1st page on a low-mid competition term in a specific city. I did a comparison of both URL in MOZ "Compare link Metrics" & we beat them on 85% of the metrics. They are on the 1st page, often top-3, the closest position we can get is about 13-15. The only higher metric they have is Domain MozRank & MozTrust + equity passing link (??) We are running WordPress with Genesis, they are running a custom site. See attached printscreen of the report. Help ! b60HidT
Local SEO | | JohnF80 -
Do Press Releases help ranking?
Sorry to bring up this question again. I have done a ton of reading on it and most of it shows me that it is not a good idea: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-press-release-links-16136.html
Local SEO | | Mase
http://authoritylabs.com/blog/press-releases-seo-strategy/
http://www.theclinegroup.com/2014/07/09/google-killing-seo-press-releases/ But then there are a few articles showing some semblance of it having an affect. http://searchengineland.com/links-from-press-releases-do-have-ranking-benefit-despite-what-google-says-145139 Here are some from my company that were done by our last marketer. We're trying to determine if we should continue doing these. Probably launched close to 200 of these. http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/chicago-business-lawyers-weigh-if-motorolas-gift-to-city-violates-antitrust-laws-579439.htm
http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/new-york-attorneys-will-be-in-high-demand-if-data-security-law-passes-579440.htm
http://www.abnewswire.com/pressreleases/chicago-business-lawyers-weigh-if-motorolas-gift-to-city-violates-antitrust-laws_23357.html
http://www.abnewswire.com/pressreleases/new-york-attorneys-will-be-in-high-demand-if-data-security-law-passes_23358.html
http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/california-intellectual-property-lawyers-battle-to-protect-clients-ip-579154.htm What's your take?0