Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Paul Harris on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 08/28/2013).

A question about keyword as domain name

Dear Community,

I have recently launched "(keyword)(brand).co.uk and are currently on page 4 on searches for that specific keyword although only a month or two in. The content is good and I have several hundred highly relevant  product pages.

We have just bought (keyword).co.uk and were planning to use this domain name instead. I am already aware that panda and penguin have devalued having keyword as domain name but I believe it still holds a little value for seo and also it will add more `industry expertness` type thing to the site.

We would only keep the latter website live as the content would be identical so I was wondering if it is worth doing a 301 redirect or just starting again.
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Helen Vozna: I'd 301 redirect your old pages to the new website. Your content is indexed and has ; good rankings, it's better to save it. However, I do not understand why you want to lease your brand name. I think brand name in a URL gives more ; authority to the website in the eyes of visitors
  • Ranu Jain: Yes, Paul any specific reason to remove the brand name.

    If you have decided to use a new domain name then you will have to set so many redirects.

    Other important thing to note here is that there was an EMD update by Google. It was for low quality Exact Match Domain. ;As you said that your content is good but still you have to be concerned a bit.  ;Though there’s no evidence that all exact-match domains were or will be hit by the EMD update.
  • W.E. Jonk: As far as I know Panda neither Penguin targeted keyword rich domains or exact match domains (EMD). Google did roll out an EMD update that targeted low quality EMD sites. So if you have a low quality EMD site you could drop faster and further down in the search results. In other words, if you have high-quality content it shouldn't affect you [1].

    With regard to moving your site to another TLD best practise is to use 301's as you already said. Make sure to 301 on a page level. For example don't 301 all the old pages to the new homepage. To speed things up you can use the "change of address" tool in GWT [2] (Bing has a similar tool [3). With that you signal to Google (or Bing) that your site is moved, but keep in mind that there will a downfall because search engines have to notice the 301's and move all the "search value" to the new URL. This can take quite some time, especially for pages that are deep within your site.

    Whether or not you should move your site depends. Moving to a new TLD is not something one does for fun, it is a lot of work and in the beginning you lose some traffic. If both sites rank well and both have unique high-quality content it might not be necessary to move to a single site. However, on the other hand,  ;if you combine both sites the combined "seacrh value" might be boosting your ranking. Furthermore, it is also a business decision, in the sense that with a single site you serve every customer the same "branded" experience while with two site you "brand" one site to customer group while the other site is "branded" for a different customer group (for example a young audience versus a 40+ audience).

    [1] ;http://www.seroundtable.com/google-emd-16743.html
    [2] ;https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83105?hl=en
    [3] ;http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/how-to-use-the-site-move-tool-bb8f5112
  • Paul Harris: Thank you all for your comments. The only reason we are looking to move to (keyword).co.uk is so the keyword is not diluted by the brand for search engines.

    We have already got two other (keyword).co.uk sites in similar industries and both of these rank at position one on the first page for google uk searches for that keyword.

    Our goal is to be at position one for THIS keyword too although there is more competition in the new industry so I am prepared to lose some brand at the domain name level and just say within the website - domain.co.uk is operated by BRAND.

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 08/28/2013).