Keywords & Domain
-
I need some advice.
We are a real estate company that offers real estate sales and rentals.
I have a domain (for example lets pretend there is an imaginary island called Pumpkin Island) - pumpkinrealestate.com (as many people just refer to pumpkin island as pumpkin eg. I am going down to pumpkin this weekend).
pumpkinrealestate.com will be a website that offers all the properties for sale, local real estate community information, buying process, selling process, etc for the Pumpkin Island real estate market (we are a brokerage).
I am also beginning to build out a new website that will be for our vacation rentals at "pumpkin island".
I have a domain called "vacationrentalspumpkinisland.com"
Question taking this factors in account:
EMDs work well in our area IF the content is good. So assuming I will have a good link profile and good content, on page seo and offpage - - -
pumpkinrealestate.com will have a decent amount of traffic naturally while vacationrentalspumpkinisland.com will have very dramatic increases of traffic during the winter, spring and summer (due to people planning vacations)
would it be best to have the vacation rental website under its own domain vacationrentalspumpkinisland.com and the sales site under pumpkinrealestate.com
OR
have the sales site as pumpkinrealestate.com and the vacation website a subdomain of it for example:
vacationrentals.pumpkinrealestate.com?? (maybe helping to leverage the traffic for both sites for benefit of one domain).
Puzzled and need some thoughts, advice or suggestions.
Thanks!!!!
CHris
-
Talking from the experience, if the content is good, link profile is legit then EMD always help you stay on top as compare to competitors who are using brand names in their domain name.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Chris, Robert here, Eli Overbey answered that question with a preference for the subdomain in his article at: http://elioverbey.net/subdomain-vs-new-domain-better-seo/ because:
- subdomains may inherit and pass ranking metrics
- subdomains give an impression of an consistent brand
- concentrating all your links on one domain
Please note that Eli’s answer might note be right for you. Let’s place this in the context of your question. You are starting 2 brand new enterprises. Therefore the transfer of existing ranking metrics from domain to subdomain is not that all that relevant. And you have to consider how much more prominent your real estate domain would be over the vacations rental subdomain to make it worthwhile.
Further note what Eli stated, URL length is an issue. In your case. it is reasonable to presume that both of your subdomain and domain will be quite long. So keep in mind the anecdotal testing on URL length that John Doherty did back in 2011: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/lessons-from-google-about-url-lengths/
You might also suffer from stuffing too many keywords in an URL if your sub-pages or blog posts happen to become, let’s say vacationrentals.pumpkinrealestate.com/10-unkown-scenic-locales-in-pumpkin. Search Engine Journal cites Google in their article at http://www.searchenginejournal.com/url-structure-seo/11801/
“Best SEO URL practice: it is recommended to have no more than 3-5 words in the file path (note: this is not really about the whole URL but the actual file path after the last / in the URL but should be mentioned anyway as it indirectly demonstrates Google’s overall treatment of the URL length).”
And Matt Cutts is cited to state: “Google algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.”
Therefore it is wise to consider also whether you will be having a lot of sub-pages or blog posts under your vacation rentals subdomain. Because while the sub-domain main page may pass the mustard, for Google, it is reasonable to expect that pages under it may not.
As far as branding is concerned, I like to think of the brand in terms of the social signals you are sending to the public and to the seach engine(s).
Therefore think of it thus: would you like to have a single social media channel for both of these properties? Let’s say for tweeting out the latest news items. Or organising a Facebook page that people can like to get the latest offer. If yes, then reasonably, having a single brand is important to you. If no, and these two properties require seperate channels then these two properties really are seperate brands (as brands these days are all about being social, right? - we face them through social media more and more). And therefore, that tends to suggest that seperate domains may be the way forward for you.
Finally, when it comes to concentrating links — consider how rare people linking to your site will actually be (you might be part of a legitimate real estate association that promotes each others offers) or you plan to do viral or mini-viral postings. It also might be that your vacation rentals subdomain might be getting more links than your main domain for more people may be interested in short-term vacation rentals in an attractive lucrative place where owning property is cost prohibitive for most.
Chris and everyone, this is my first post on Moz Q&A so if you like the answer — make sure to like/upvote it.
PS! Take a look at the screenshot attached. I did a search for “Maui Vacation Rentals” on Google.com in English from a continental US IP (Boston). As you can see, there are only 3 organic results beyond the fold. It is very visually striking how paid advertising from Google AdWords and Google Maps dominate over even those 3. And add to that the factor that 2 of 3 of these organic results are from TripAdvisor and HomeAway who, one might reasonably presume, might be prominent on your SERP pages for your exact domain match as well. So perhaps focusing on Google Maps / Google Places whatever you decide should be a key thing to do?
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
-
Low competition Related Keywords
Hi everyone, I have a blog with product review articles on the best wireless Bluetooth headphones. It is a vast niche and I am finding it hard to rank on this main keyword. Is it a good practice to work on the longtail, related keywords with low competition, so I can keep my blog in the serps? Do you think this will affect my ranking for the main keyword? Please advise, Thank you!
Local SEO | | Salman425520 -
What's the best way to create keyword tracking lists for local SEO?
I have a question for the local SEO crowd: when it comes to creating keyword tracking lists, what are your best practices in reference to tracking from a set location? Do you typically create national keyword lists that include the location operator in each term or are you better creating a list of locally-tracked keywords around a business' location and dropping the location operator from the keyword? Or some combination of the two? To clarify, if I had an example business of a realtor in Chatham, MA, would I want to track -"realtor in chatham ma" (national)
Local SEO | | formandfunctionagency
-"realtor in chatham ma" (with the location set to Chatham, MA)
-"realtor" (with the location set to Chatham, MA) Or some combination of all of the above? Right now, I track waaaay too many keyword variants on my local campaigns! Hoping there's a better way from some more-seasoned Moz users. Thanks in advance!2 -
Is dynamic keyword insertion a viable local SEO tactic/strategy for your content?
Hi mozzers, I have a meeting tomorrow with the dev team to discuss about dynamic keyword insertion implementation on a new site. This site currently holds 40 geo specific microsites with several service pages each carrying unique content. These pages(about 400 pages) are seen by VP of marketing as hard to maintain and inconvenient when wanting to change content across these pages. The VP is looking to automate content as much as possible without hurting our local SEO efforts. The dev team will be asking me if dynamic keyword insertion could a viable strategy for these 40 locations without harming local SEO. Currently we have a robust local SEO strategy in place and wouldn't want to change it unless dynamic keyword insertion is a viable option and won't hurt all the seo efforts that are in place? If this is not a viable solution, any recommendations on any other solutions we could use to satisfy the VP? If you have used DKI for your local SEO efforts, please share your thoughts and results that you have seen. Any real case scenario data/knowledge would be really helpful. Thank you!
Local SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Keywords not ranking at google.COM, only at google.com.br
I have a website registered with .com.br. And I have noticed that some (not all of them, some are ranking the same way at both "Googles") of its keywords are ranking only when I search at google.com.br, but if I search the same term at google.COM, those pages aren't ranking. What could I do to rank not just at google.com.br, but also at google.com. My chrome, for example, redirects searches automatically for google.com. If this happens with a large number of people, the impact in my website's visits would be very harmful. Please, help me.
Local SEO | | Ricardocpereira0 -
Is it worth tracking both "keyword" and "keyword near me" for a nation-wide directory?
We're a directory of industry-specific services, so a lot of people find their way to our site by searching something like "tire repair near me." For every keyword we rank for, ("tire repair"), we also rank for the "near me" version, ("tire repair near me"). I'm looking for opinions on if is worth spending ~50% of the keywords included in my plan to track these "near me" keywords, or if we would be better off tracking some of the most important "near me" keywords, and some of those same base keywords on a local basis for major population centres, (for example "tire repair nyc"). What does the forum think?
Local SEO | | 4RS_John0 -
Local Search - Google Mobile Results (Web&App)
Hi, I have a client with multiple locations. One of the locations manager is searching for branded and non-branded keywords on his mobile phone and not able to locate the business (within the parking lot of the location). Our ranking reports via a local search platform and manual checks indicate the location is actually ranking well. and we're seeing progress in GA. Has anyone deal with something like this before? This is a location that recently opened to the public. The concern is around mobile web and app results. I'm looking for some guidance around how to approach the situation. I'm sorry I cannot provide more details on the client.
Local SEO | | burnseo0 -
Domain Name Length "wiggle room"
So the general idea for domain names is around to keep it around 15 characters, but I'm considering getting a mycitywebdesign.com type domain specific to my location and it's 23 characters. No hyphens. The original site hasn't had any seo work on it, so the original won't lose any progress. What suggestions/experience do you have with this type of situation? Thanks in advance!
Local SEO | | blakewenloe0 -
Dynamic websites & SEO
Hello Mozzers, I would love some advise from some seasoned SEO people PLEASE. The company I work for are replacing their static website for a new dynamic website which affectedly serves blocks of generic content based on the users activity. Currently we rank really well, especially for local long tail terms - however I am very unsure and apprehensive as to how this new approach will affect our rankings. Can Google index content pulled together on the "fly"? Can anyone recommend an article, website, white paper - explaining how to limit the change to SEO? Kind regards Ben
Local SEO | | Bendall0