Should I change my listing title or even my domain
-
I have a domain for a lawn maintenance company. The domain is something like mycompanyyardcare.com
Even though this company do yard care most of the business that is trying to attract is Lawn maintenance. The keywords that most people type when they are looking for this service is "lawn care".
Should i change my domain to mycompanylawncare.com instead of mycompanyyardcare.com?
Other thing, in the listings or links that I'm creating in directories, the company name is Mycompany yard care & snow removal. Should I change to Mycompany lawn care & snow removal?
-
Title Change is the best idea. You should not change the domain name. It will harmful to your website.
-
Hi Joao!
This is a really good topic and you've received some very important advice from both Matt & Bryan.
Your situation is exactly why my ultimate preference is to have local businesses choose a domain name that reflects their real-world brand rather than focusing only on keywords. Your business could eventually expand to include, lawn care, yard maintenance, landscaping, snow removal, tree trimming, controlled burning and who knows what all if you are growing! You can't fit all of that into a domain name. But, if a business name is TidyYards and the domain name is simply TidyYards.com, then the business will have to focus on the strength of things like its content rather than hoping that an EMD will do the trick. I definitely understand that Google is still rewarding keyword-focused domains, but to me, this is a holdover from their less-sophisticated past that I believe will recede over time. In sum, I think building a strong real-world brand is more important than keywords in your domain. If you're considering starting from scratch, you might want to throw that idea into the mix.
-
You are 100% spot on about needing to be sure if you change this in one place, you must then change it in all. Good advice, Bryan!
-
Just keep in mind that there will be a number of other SEO ramifications if you decide to migrate domains. I can't say for sure not being totally familiar with your company/site, but in my opinion it would almost never be worth it to change domains for the reasons your considering. There isn't much of a bump from the domain name, and the search engines are getting much better at recognizing context, intent, and synonyms.
You may want to read through Cyrus Shepard's "Keywords to Concepts," which may help you understand the concept of topical search. It's actually possible that "yard care" is helping you with "lawn care," too.
You may want to incorporate phrases like "lawn care" into some of your site's copy, just to be safe, but I sincerely doubt it would be worth it to go through a domain migration just to change "yard" to "lawn" in your URL.
-
That really depends on what your analytics say. If the trade-off between the volume you do get for "yard care" would remove a lot of traffic, or your site is well-ranked for that, changing to "lawn care" may hinder you more than hurt. Again, this depends on your rankings, keyword goals, and how much a difference the switch might make. All that said, from what you're saying it sounds like the switch to "lawn care" may benefit you in the long run.
Another important note: if you're going to change the branding/name from "yard care" to "lawn care", make sure you do it everywhere. In every directory you're active on, all social media, and other branding. It's important that those things be universal.
One last note: While changing your keyword focus, I'd suggest still having content for "yard care" as a keyword so that you don't lose as much of the work as you may have put into it.
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
-
Local Landing Page Optimization and Multiple GMB Listings
Hello, We’re building out a site for our business that has close to 100 office locations in different cities. Many of these are ‘partner brands’ that we have acquired under our brand. Similar to a franchise model. We want to be able to help users find offices near their location. Each office will have it’s own landing page with a physical address and contact information. We know we’ll have to build out unique copy and markup customized to the office/location. We’ve already read through https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages as well. We’re also considering ‘silos’ to build out pages for each location. To preserve authority and avoid cannibalization; our thought was having each location as sub-folders off of our domain (i.e. domain.com/locations/Partner#1/). The other option would be using a sub-domain (i.e. Partner.Domain.com/) which we noticed competitors doing and treating each sub-domain as their own independent site. Is all of the above the correct strategy? Any further suggestions? Should we fill out a separate GMB for each office and should they all use the same brand name? (in other words “BrandA” vs. “BrandA” - Brooklyn Office). In addition to GMB; would each location need local listings created (also all under the same name)? Any help or insight would be very much appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance. Best,
Local Listings | | Ben-R0 -
Concern about Citations when business Addresses change!
This may be a beginner level question, but I am concerned about spending money on citations in case I have to move offices at any point in the next 6 to 12 months. Would I have to update my address on all the citations? If so, is there an easy way to do this cost effectively? Or do I leave the old address as it is and create new citations with the new address? What is better or cheaper to do? What is better for SEO? Thank you.
Local Listings | | RyanUK0 -
How to Have Multiple Listings appear on Google maps
Hi my client has two locations for his restaurants: Me Gusta Tacos He wants to have both his locations show up in the map pack, which they currently do when you type in Restaurants, Dinner, food near me etc... However, when you google Me Gusta Tacos the Google listing shows up on the right for one of his locations, but there isn't a Map Pack for his two locations. I wasn't sure if a map pack only shows up when there are 3 or more locations, for instance, a chipotle which I added an image below to compare too. HGOgln5 Jgdoi4Y
Local Listings | | Sociable_Bistro0 -
Local Pack Ads v. Organic Business Listings
Hey everyone, So I'm noticing lately that Google is showing ads via AdWords for my locations in the local pack. I am fine with that, but unfortunately it is now driving me a little bit insane wondering how much Google really cares about NAP, distance from centroid and or user, links to domain, completed business profile and so on. They will pull an ad into the top of the local pack for my location, yet, my actual organic business listing in some cases will not even show up until I hit the second page of business results. I get that it's Adwords, it's pay-to-play, but from most accounts, the differences in ranking for traditional listings results compared to business results on both desktop and mobile are pretty different. For example, by doing my traditional SEO best practices, I can rank high in traditional listing results even when my business does not show in the local listings. I have done this time and time again. I am able to accept that since we have 100 locations in the US and our lists were an absolute mess before I got here, that some of our NAP across multiple directories and listing sites are not exactly up to snuff which I have been working on. So I guess the thing is, if my location in Google's eyes is not good enough to be shown organically for the user even at the bottom of page of one of business results, why is it good enough to show an ad for my business location for that query as the absolute first result? Again, I know its Ad Words which basically allows you to cut in line like that special pass you can buy at a roller coaster park, but still. Isn't their goal to provide the best possible experience for their user? If they feel something is worth holding back my organic listing from the user, why is it fine with them to show the user that same location with the top possible local pack spot in an ad? I guess this is more of a rant than anything but I wanted to know if anyone else is dealing with this or anyone has any info they have found that could help shed light on this? It kind of just kicked everything I thought about trust, authority, links in order to rank in the local pack organically out the window. Thanks! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree0 -
Google map listing #2
My website ranks well locally and nationally, but shortly I will be adding a second site to my business. We will be ranking it for different key words but the same location. My question is, is it possible to verify another google + & google maps listing for this site? And, what does google think about having two sites for the same business? Huge thanks in advance for any answers 🙂
Local Listings | | MissThumann0 -
Changing Business Names
Hi All, I am working with a client that is changing its business name and website domain. Obviously, they want Google Maps to display their correct information. I know that in order for this to happen, they will need to do some citation clean-up and update their Google+ Local page, but does anyone have any opinions on the order in which these things should be done? Thanks!
Local Listings | | PapercutInteractive0 -
Best practice for setting up multiple Google Places listings?
Hello, My client has just opened up two new smaller offices which I now need to have listed on Google Places as the primary office is. How is this done (using best practice)? Thanks
Local Listings | | Martin_S0 -
Does anybody have any data on what percentage of people actually click on a Google Places / Google+ listing VS call the business direct from the SERPs?
I've had a few SMB clients who have experienced drops in website traffic once their Google Places listing has gone live. It's hard for the average SMB to understand that this may not be a bad thing because they actually may be received more leads direct from the local SERPs. So while I can try to explain this to my clients, it'd be nice to have some broad data on how searchers interact with Google local listings. I'd love to learn what percentage of people call direct from the SERPs instead of clicking through to the business' website link. Obviously, the percentages would vary across different verticals, different devices & depending on whether the search query was branded or non-branded. I'm after some rough average data, so if anyone could point me in the right direction, that'd be great! 🙂
Local Listings | | Dave_Eddy0