Branding-Advantages of New Domain
-
Our current domain (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) is spammy, using 2 hyphens and several keywords. So we are planning on migrating to a new domain. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We are Manhattan commercial real estate brokers specializing in office and commercial leasing.
For 5 years we have owned an alternative domain but never migrated the site to it. The alternative domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. But I am not sure it is a good choice since it contains one hyphen.
Any suggestions for creating a strong URL for rebranding? It appears the really good names are already taken.
Thanks, Alan
-
Hi Patrick:
Thanks so much for your detailed and thorough response!!!
While I have some doubts about our brand name, we were solely considering changing our very spammy sounding URL that contains the two hyphens. But from what you say, even if we do that, we may have a limitation in that the company name "Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc." contains the match anchor text of "Manhattan Office Space". So if we need to stay away from match anchor text in both the domain in the URL, this rebranding is going need to go a lot deeper than anticipated. My thoughts were solely to replace www.nyc-officespace-leader.com with www.metro-manhattan.com but this is still problematic. Perhaps a domain of www.mmos.com (abbreviation of Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.) would be better? Or www.lastNameerealestate.com possible?
Thanks for the resources on the migration. I understand that special care must be taken regarding NAP information for the move to be successful. But I would think this is less of an issue if we are only changing the domain name.
Could we keep our company name and solely change the URL or this an incomplete job?
Are there any resources you can think that would help us think up both a new corporate name and domain name? Maybe we should consider tackling both at the same time as www.nyc-officespace-leader.com plus the corporate name of Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. don't sound like the most SEO friendly combination.
-
Hi there
You are right to assume that hyphens come across spammy in your top level domain. If it were me, I would pick a domain name that is going to branded and easy to remember. The issue I am having is your brand name sounds like exact match anchor text, meaning I would search "manhattan office space" or "metro manhattan office space" in search without even knowing your company is called that.
So, whatever branded domain you choose is going to see a bit spammy, but I as long as your local SEO and citations are consistent with the brand and NAP information, you should be okay as crawlers will recognize this as your business name.
I would also make sure that you take the time to go through this web site migration guide and a backlink audit to either remove toxic links or update the ones you wish to keep.
You have a lot of work ahead of you, but this will get you started in the right direction! Good luck!
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
-
Switch domain's CRYPTO focus to B2B
Hi everyone! I have my tough question, hope you'll help with your recommendations! I have a domain for blockchain company (DA 38, 590 linking domains), which started as an ICO project, but rapidly grew to a recognized B2B company with a few B2B clients. What we want is to attract more B2B prospects via Google Search, but the problem is when our prospects google our brand name (which also happens to be our domain, so this domain must be kept) they see mainly ico/crypto SERPs (as the result of ICO ad campaigns, online publicity etc). And they get prejudice towards us and don't trust us in the first place. What we already managed to do is to add some B2B news and links in 1-10 SERPs for our brand name, but still old ones (crypto related don't go so fast). Our management wants our prospects to be able to clearly see the difference between the current company domain (which must be remade to B2B focus only) and the new domain (our token-oriented, since our product is on blockchain). Question: is it possible to do such differentiation in the eyes of Google (and thus our prospects)? if yes, what is the best way to do that? 2 separate domains, not linking to each other or any other way?
Branding | | MariY
Do you have any other ideas?0 -
Should a company's online tool be hosted on their own domain?
Our company is developing a web-based tool that will provide good value for its users and generate leads for us. The tool is large enough in scope and different enough than the main service that we provide that we're considering putting it on its own domain. I have two questions: 1. Does it behoove a company to put their online tool on a separate domain if the tool is large enough in scope and different enough from their website's core function / business's core service? (Examples of this would be Hubspot's Marketing Grader or Open Site Explorer before Moz rolled it back into its domain.) 2. If yes, should the domain name a) describe the function of the tool or b) build a brand for the tool itself? Thanks for your help!
Branding | | APM-SEO0 -
Separate experience on the same domain?
So my company is interested in creating a scholarship for medical students as a way to create more brand awareness and earn some quality links from universities and colleges. The problem is, we are a little stuck on where to place the scholarship within the structure of our site. First of all, our idea is to make the scholarship application process interactive and social. Candidates will create a short video where they answer one of the scholarship questions. Those videos will be displayed in a Reddit-style feed (sort of like Inbound.org) allowing people to vote for the ones they like. Videos with more links will rise to the top. The popularity of the videos will factor into the decision of whom to award the scholarship, but it will not be the sole determining factor. To do this properly, the scholarship should be its own experience independent from our main site. There will be several pages (profile, application, about the scholarship, the Reddit-style feed, etc.) so it wouldn’t really fit within our existing site. BUT if we put the scholarship on a subdomain we miss out on the link juice. Could we keep the scholarship pages under the main domain (mainsite.com/scholarship), but have it be its own experience with its own navigation? Will that look bad in the eyes of the search engines? We’d essentially have two sites on the same domain. Any help would be much appreciated.
Branding | | ba_seomoz0 -
Using keywords instead of brand name on G+ to rank for local terms.
I noticed something this morning, when performing a search on Google UK for "Intensive driving courses southend" the first position is awarded to a driving school that is using exact match keywords instead of brand name on their G+ page to rank for local terms. See this for yourself here: https://www.google.co.uk/#q=intensive+driving+courses+southend Until then, my site had held position 1 for this term for well over a year. Every gut instinct I have tells me that this will not work forever and its not something I should implement, however I'm interested to hear if anyone else is using this tactic, and how its working for them? How can I compete with this "grey hat" tactic?
Branding | | Silkstream0 -
International domain query
my client is a financial services company with some ccTLDs for brand name but does not own the .com eg: brandname.ch, brandname.ro etc we need to launch a brand UK site plus a global site. should we go for another name on the .com: brandname_financial.com_, and: brandname_financial.ch_, brandname_financial.ro_ etc or could we go for instead brandname.uk.com and brandname.eu.com? i'm worried the owner of brandname.com will build a site and out rank us.....however the alternative is a longer url but owning the .com hope that makes sense and any advice would be gladly received! Many thanks
Branding | | bisibee10 -
High authority brand expanding product line, domain question
Hi MOZers, I've been given a handy little domain puzzle to deal with and would love insight from the community. Here's the situation: We're retailers of one specific, big, nationally known product. Let's pretend it's the Snuggee (IT'S NOT). People search for it and buy it from our site, or from Amazon or other retailers that we distribute it to. We're about to expand to carry a bunch of related, but different products - so from a one-product brand to 5 or 6 different items, relating to different keyword searches. Imagine Snuggee people want to start selling a whole bunch of products that solve the same needs of warming the front of your body and making you look silly. The owners want to change the main domain from [specific product] to [name similar to specific product, but is more general]. What concerns me is how to handle the fame of the branded product in terms of domain names. Current domain, based on that product, has a ton of links and a decent age. Owners are thinking to redirect everything to fresh new unestablished domain. While I know 301s will pass most link value, it will also be a home page that will be about a bunch of products - not just that main known one. In fact, we're considering making a URL for each product as landing page, of which old famous product would be one of 5 or 6 pages. Two main options we're considering right now: Keep old domain as a doorway page featuring just old product, with same look and feel, and from which any links would point to the new domain. Try to keep this as ranking for top result for this search, which should be easy. Unify everything under new domain, with old product being featured on a separate page / subdirectory. Hope that new home page still can rank pretty well for our old product, even though it will be talking about other products now as well. What we'd stand to lose would be the SERP for old products featuring too many big box retailers that sell our stuff and take a chunk out of our margins. The goal is to help us become known for many things, while still being always the best search result for what we're already known for. Which of those two options seem best, or is there another I'm missing altogether? Thank you!
Branding | | advancedSemiotics0 -
Splitting our main website in Two... What is the fastest way for the new sites to become a brand in Googles eyes.
In a couple weeks our main website (which generates all of the revenue) will be split into two because of a long term branding / identity crisis. So my question is, how can i make sure (besides obvious 301 redirects) that these 2 new fresh urls become a brand as quick as possible in googles eyes? So far i am thinking of things like: press releases, blog posts with brand mentions. I am not ignorant and expect this to happen overnight, but we need a strong foundation to build on, which is why i am asking Anyone got a list / case study / advise so I can really blow it up on launch week? Thanks 🙂
Branding | | Hyrule0 -
Google Displays Domain / URL Above Description?
I am seeing a new SERP format from Google. (new for me at least) In the past the title tag would display as the first line of a listing, followed by description and domain / URL. Today I see the domain / URL as the second line. This is placing an emphasis on "Who". If you have a big brand or a great URL this might be helpful to your CTR. Are you seeing this? What do you think of it?
Branding | | EGOL0