Is a Z almost as good as an S?
-
Possibly seems a strange question, but let me clarify...
I have a new site in mind and all the domain names I was considering for it have been taken (I want a .com or a .net if at all possible). However, I can get the domain with a z at the end rather than an s
Example: www.keyword-guides.com is taken, but www.keyword-guidez.com is available.
Am I completely wrong in thinking that it will still match well for anyone searching Keyword Guide, and should match fairly well (even though it is a partial match) for people searching Keyword Guides.
As the keyword is the most relevant bit of the domain, and as the first word on the domain is given the most weight, will having Z instead of S at the end make any difference at all?
Personally, I don't really like the Z option, but if it would have no (or little) impact on my SEO efforts, I could live with it.
-
Thanks for your input guys. I will definitely forget the Z option and carry on looking for a non-hyphenated alternative. Since reading your replies and taking on board your advice, I have found a couple of possibile alternatives and I am even considering a domain without the keyword in at all.
Sadly, EGOL, buying www.keywordguides.com is probably not an option. The budget for this project is tiny... I guess I am just going to have to be a bit more creative
-
www.keyword-guidez.com
You will lose traffic to keywordguidez.com, keywordguides.com, and keyword-guides.com
Not a good idea.
I would try to buy keywordguides.com. The price might be high and it might stretch my budget... but I would splurge on it. And only retreat if the price was insane.
-
You are already at a disadvantage using a hyphenated domain name. It's just another challenge using the "z" replacement.
Think about the user experience. How many people looking at your site will go to keywordguides.com when they are actually looking for keyword-guides.com? The same idea with the "z" replacement.
From a search perspective, you will not be an exact match. You will be "one off" which will put you in the same category as other mis-spelled words.
It is definitely preferable to get a .com, but if push comes to shove the options I would consider are:
-
search for other TLDs such as .org, .info, .biz, etc. From a search engine standpoint, the TLD doesn't matter. Your focus would be ensuring those who look for your site are aware of your extension.
-
create a brand. Twitter, Google, Myspace are all brands whose name has no indication as to the type of content is offered on their site.
-
www.keyword-guidez.com is a bad option. It's bad for users who are looking for your site, it's bad for creating a keyword phrase match, and it appears a bit spammy so even when users find your results in search engines they may be less likely to click on it.
-
-
While Google might account for spelling errors, and possibly the understanding that a "z" is sometimes used as an "s", I dislike it when the "z" is used, speaking as a consumer and business owner.
While not use an "a" at the front of the domain, or "my", or "your"? www.mykeyword-guides.com. Or even better, without the hyphen, mykeywordguides.com?
Going back to the spelling aspect of things, I have always disliked it when a business uses a "k" for a "c", e.g. Johnny's Used Kar Lot, and the same goes with the z.
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
-
Telling Google SERP's my correct currency.
Hi, I'm having a problem with Google SERP results showing my currency as USD, when it should be CAD. An example of a page with this problem is - http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/fgd400-sensaphone400-p/fgd400.htm - can anyone see where Google is getting USD from on there? I don't see it anywhere in the coding. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | absoauto0 -
Tips and Tricks on yoast's video seo upgrade!
Hello Guys, I am using Yoast for several websites, and videos. I have a video sitemap and for all videos i added: 1. Titles 2. Descriptions 3. Tags My question is: Is the there any way or do anything to rank these videos higher?
On-Page Optimization | | DexSmart0 -
Can soft 404's hurt my rankings?
This post mainly pertains to soft 404's but I recently dropped a few ranks in my main keyword which I have maintained prior to this my better rank for well over 2 years. I participate in NO BLACKHAT and obtain links naturally. I want to describe a few issues that happened prior to my ranking dropping and see what you guys think. I started to receive about a week prior to my ranks dropping DNS issues with GWT. It was weird because when I would use Goole Fetch on those pages they would return just fine so I was not sure what was happening there. I use Google page speed server which did in fact decrease my load time (YEAH!!) so that was cool. About 1 week prior to my rankings dropping I enabled godaddy's Website Accelerator as well thinking that could help even more. Because of this I thought maybe this had something to do with my DNS issues with Google so I decided to turn off my website accelerator with Godaddy and just leave my Google pagespeed service on. I figure I don't need 2 of them anyways IMO. Also at the same time I started to receive a ton (31,000+) html errors with duplicate metadescriptions and titles. I discovered I had an error with my code which was displaying 2 different sets of descriptions and titles for each of these pages. I since then have fixed the issue and waiting for Google to index those pages. Here is were I think I might have been hurting from the drop in rankings. Some months ago (maybe 2) I decided to redirect my 404's to my homepage. Yes I know this is not good now and I have created a proper 404 page which returns the 404 code. I recently started getting a ton of Soft 404 errors in GWT which is what brought my attention to this issue. My question is, could my action of redirecting my users to my homepage as a 404 which obviously was returning a 200 on a page that did not exist be possibly the culprit to my ranks dropping?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich1 -
Should I buy an established domain that has lost it's high PR due to being offline for several months?
I'm considering purchasing a domain that has sat idle for several months. It was a company's domain that they have owned since the mid1990's but they went out of business. Previously, it had a PR 5 but has since lost it's PR as it has sat 'inactive' with a 'server not found' warning for the past several months. That being said, is there any point in buying the domain (for SEO purposes)? Is there any recourse with Google to try and re-establish the site's credibility or would I be starting over from scratch?
On-Page Optimization | | martybuch230 -
Number ID's in URL's
If you have to place a number ID into a URL. Does it matter from an seo perspective whether it is placed in the middle or at the end? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | simmo2350 -
I have home tab in 2 menu's which calls the same hompage article. How do I get over this
I am getting duplicate content for this article. I need 'home' tab on two menus.
On-Page Optimization | | rajendraksh0 -
Footers... Good or Bad?
I know in the past footers have been seen as a bad idea. I need to get up to date. Does having footer links that point to your own site with anchor texts keywords create problems? or is it safe to have? Will it do anything to our google rankings? Is it going to penalize us? As well, how many is acceptable, do I want all 77 links or have 15 with sub-categories?
On-Page Optimization | | HCGDiet0 -
Is it good to have dashes in url's
When using keywords in url's for internal pages, isn't it a good idea to use dashes or underscores in the url between the keywords?
On-Page Optimization | | BradBorst0