Standardising of Company Name Across The Web Question

[ruislip18]

Good Morning All

There are two variations of our company name on the website.

Sometimes the name is listed as "name and name" and sometimes listed as "name & name"

The domain is obviously www.nameandname.co.uk

I believe I am correct in saying that we would be wise to go through and standardise, using one form or the other?

Secondly, my main question is would we be wise to use "name and name" as the default, as the word "and" and not the symbol "&" is in the domain itself?

Many Thanks

[Linda-Vassily]

It would be very unlikely that using "and" instead of "&" throughout your site would confer any advantage and it might confuse your customers, if that's not the way they are used to seeing your name. So stick with the & you use in your branding.

As always when these types of questions come up and you are not sure of the answer, go with whatever is the best user experience and you are likely to be rewarded. (Also, take a look and some big sites like Lord&Taylor and see what they do—they don't give up their branding just because there is "and" in their URL.)

[ruislip18]

Hi Guys

Could someone just clarify the fundamental question when they have a second?

If we use "and" in our domain name, would there be an seo advantage to using "and" throughout the web, rather then "&"?

Many Thanks

[ruislip18]

Hi All

Thank you for the responses and indeed the consensus in the team is that & would be preferred as mentioned for visual reasons.

I just wanted to double check the technical relationship between the domain and the branding, both online and offline as mentioned. From a technical perspective, is it best to advertise with the word "and" for seo because that is what is in the domain name?

Many Thanks

[Linda-Vassily]

How is the name written in other types of official correspondence—letterhead, signage, etc? The look of the name should be standardized across all sources, but that's a bigger issue than just SEO.

In terms of search, using "and" or "&" in searches will likely give you different (but very similar) results—try searching your company name with each one and see what Google already thinks of the two variants.

Using symbols like "&" can be more eye catching than just letters so that can be a benefit on a crowded search results page, depending on what else is there.

[Alick300]

Hi,

IMO you should go with name & name and my only reason is it would be nice in writing  & creating logo and there are many organization who picked '&' instead of word 'and' in domain name in similar situation.

It is just an opinion

Thanks