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
-
Multiple keywords in one article?
Hi guys! I will be soon getting my article published in local newspaper (online edition) with DA 50. They told me i can choose whatever anchor text I want. The article is about towing business and my keyword is going to be also "towing". Is it smart to add another keyword in the same article (which is similar and is also a money keyword) ? Thanks!
Local SEO | | Suksinho0 -
2 Websites Targeting Similar Keywords
One of my clients is set on setting up another website targeting some of the keywords/services on the main site. One of the services they offer gets traffic from natural search and also Adwords but doesn't convert well for this service. For other services (which are often utilized at the same time by the customers) the site converts well. My client feels that... "people are not converting on the main site because they click on the page and realise that we are a wider company. From this they probably work out that we don’t actually produce Green Widgets and we just buy them in. Therefore we will be more expensive than a company who does manufacture Green Widgets (although there are only a few in the country who actually make them)." The new site "...will have more of a manufacturer and specialist feel. There will be a small mention of other services. People visiting will think we are specialists and that we make them, whereas at the moment they may feel that they are just being cross sold a product. We have also noticed that we are not being found earlier enough and we are contacted to do other work only to find that another company is providing the Green Widgets." I did something similar back in the day, but here we ran a local website and a national website covering the same products. We tried hard not to duplicate the keywords we targeted minimising this as much as possible. I don't think we cared much about the local site as the national one went crazy busy. In essence, my client wants to do the following: Main Site...
Local SEO | | GrouchyKids
Blue Widgets Bristol
Red Widgets Bristol
Green Widgets Bristol (This would be retained) New Site...
The new site would focus on Green Widgets In time the new site would include content for...
Green Widgets
Green Widgets Bristol (As per the main site)
Green Widgets Cardiff It would also make mention of Blue Widgets and Red Widgets as possible addons. The new site would be at the same address but have its own companies house registration, emails and phone numbers. My feeling is that we should take an above-board, risk-free approach and remove the Green Widgets service from the main site to ensure it doesn't upset Google. In other words go out of our way to minimise targeting of similar/same keywords across the 2 sites. My client strongly disagrees showing evidence of others using similar tactics (we have had the EMD debate as well). I am also concerned about Google Places and how this might be viewed here. Opinions please, also any idea of what if any action Google would take if we push forwards?0 -
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 -
Adwords Express Keyword Ranking Hack
I heard a rumor that Adwords Express offers a tool that lets you check real time Marketing Google ranking results (colleague brought this up) Has anybody heard of this?
Local SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Domain Forwarding and Rankings
I recently purchased two custom domains (www.greenvillencshredding.com and www.shreddinggreenvillenc.com) that are being forwarded to a page on my site (http://www.crmi-online.com/shredding-greenville-nc.html). The purpose for this is because I am trying everything I know to get my rankings above my competitor for shredding services in our market of Greenville,NC. I thought that purchasing a custom domain might help but I have not seen any results and they are ranking in the bottom 50's. Any suggestions to help get my rankings up for my service/area? Thanks a bunch!
Local SEO | | CRMI0 -
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 -
Keyword Question - Metro Suburb
My question is about keyword selection for a small divorce law firm located outside of a major city. My firm focuses only on family law matters, such as divorce, child support, child custody, and paternity. Divorce cases generate the most revenue. We are located outside of the Orlando, Florida metro area, in a small town about 15 miles west of Orlando. My keyword research shows a significant amount of traffic for keywords including Orlando, such as Orlando Divorce Lawyer, Divorce Attorney Orlando, and Orlando Divorce Attorney. For my location, Winter Garden, Florida, the search volume is reported as "0" using Moz's Keyword Difficulty tool. When I use other tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, the reported volume for my physical location and surrounding cities, other than Orlando, shows a volume of "0." We do get potential clients contacting us indicating that they found us via a Google search, and I know that we are ranking well in local search results. That's the good news. However, we are trying to increase the volume of potential clients contacting us, and it seems that the way to do that is to rank well for searches including the word "Orlando." I know that ranking in the local results for Orlando is out of the question because my office is not physically located in Orlando. However, it does not seem to make sense to target keywords for organic search including my location and the surrounding cities because the search volume appears to be next to nothing. So my questions are as follows: Even though the search terms with high traffic seem to be quite competitive and my office is not located in Orlando, should I still target keywords including the Orlando location? How should a small business approach this strategy as far as keyword usage and organization of the website? Should I have a city landing page for Orlando or should I target my main pages using keywords including "Orlando" and build city pages for the smaller, surrounding cities? Thanks in advance for the help. My website is located at http://www.thegrossmanlawoffice.com
Local SEO | | ajgrossman0