High authority brand expanding product line, domain question
-
Hi MOZers,
I've been given a handy little domain puzzle to deal with and would love insight from the community. Here's the situation:
We're retailers of one specific, big, nationally known product. Let's pretend it's the Snuggee (IT'S NOT). People search for it and buy it from our site, or from Amazon or other retailers that we distribute it to.
We're about to expand to carry a bunch of related, but different products - so from a one-product brand to 5 or 6 different items, relating to different keyword searches. Imagine Snuggee people want to start selling a whole bunch of products that solve the same needs of warming the front of your body and making you look silly.
The owners want to change the main domain from [specific product] to [name similar to specific product, but is more general]. What concerns me is how to handle the fame of the branded product in terms of domain names. Current domain, based on that product, has a ton of links and a decent age. Owners are thinking to redirect everything to fresh new unestablished domain. While I know 301s will pass most link value, it will also be a home page that will be about a bunch of products - not just that main known one. In fact, we're considering making a URL for each product as landing page, of which old famous product would be one of 5 or 6 pages.
Two main options we're considering right now:
-
Keep old domain as a doorway page featuring just old product, with same look and feel, and from which any links would point to the new domain. Try to keep this as ranking for top result for this search, which should be easy.
-
Unify everything under new domain, with old product being featured on a separate page / subdirectory. Hope that new home page still can rank pretty well for our old product, even though it will be talking about other products now as well.
What we'd stand to lose would be the SERP for old products featuring too many big box retailers that sell our stuff and take a chunk out of our margins. The goal is to help us become known for many things, while still being always the best search result for what we're already known for.
Which of those two options seem best, or is there another I'm missing altogether?
Thank you!
-
-
Makes sense. Thank you for the reply! Now the obstacle is convincing the owners of the company to put some actual crawlable content on the landing page of old product.
-
This is a pretty complex question that goes beyond just SEO and extends to branding and business strategy, so there are no simple answers here.
I personally think having a single site is easier to manage, and since all the products are related, it could lead to additional sales as well.
Even though some link equity is lost through 301 redirects, I don't see 3rd party retailers outranking your new site for "snugees" just because you switch from "snugees.com" to "snugeebrands.com".
Just create a relevant landing page specifically for snugees, and it should continue to rank well, and the other products should benefit from the link juice that is being transferred over from the old site.
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
-
International SEO - Domains or Folders?
Hi, We have been approached by a potential client. They are a UK company whose website is hosted on a .com domain (the .co.uk forwards to the .com). They also have a German website hosted on a .de domain. Both the .com and the .de are hosted in the UK. We believe that the .de website should be hosted in Germany. You agree? Anyway, they now need to target the US market. They are planning on duplicating the UK (.com) website and creating a US version of the site on a .us domain. They would rewrite the content for the US site to avoid duplications, and add Href Lang attributes etc. They are also debating whether the new US site should be hosted in the US or the UK. We don't think this is the best strategy. Would it not be better to host both the UK and US website on the .com domain. using reginal folders? i.e. example.com/uk, and example.com/us. Obviously we would setup Href Lang accordingly and change the Google Search Console geo targeting options for each of the sub-sites (/uk and /us). Or we could suggest hosting the UK site on the .co.uk domain, and the US on the .com domain. So, what is the best strategy to target the US audience, whilst maintaining UK rankings? Many thanks for your time, hope to hear from you soon 🙂 Lee.
Branding | | Webpresence1 -
How to handle knock-off product leveraging your brand keywords?
Hello all, I fear this may be a bit of newcomer question but maybe you can help me out. My business is in a highly competitive market, and when you search for our branded name many of our competitors show up in search results well before us (who don't contain, or even reference, our brand name on their site). We're trying to take a proactive approach to content development and site enhancement, but I am wondering if there's anything on the defense-front that we can do to better own our brand ranking in SERPs. Thoughts? Suggestions? Should I be reading SEO 101? Thanks
Branding | | J-Me0 -
New Product. New Brand. Gmail/Authorship Questions. Need Advice.
I'm in the process of developing a new product and brand name and would like to create all the social media accounts (FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc), including G+ and want it to have it's own Gmail ID like ABCXYZ@gmail.com, so I can set up all accounts using this Gmail ID and if needed down the road, have someone else help manage the accounts so they have that login and my my main Gmail login. My question is, does Google frown upon setting up new Gmail IDs under the same name "Patrick McCoy" as I have my name tied to my personal Gmail account and my company's Gmail account "whiteboardcreations@gmail" both with G+ pages and URLs of /+PatrickMcCoy1 and /+PatrickMcCoy2 respectively. I'd like to have Authorship associated with the new product website and also want the new product to have it's own G+ Business Page to post updates, info, etc., which is why I'm getting a little confused on how I'd do it the right way, What would you do or does it really matter... can my new Gmail account of ABCXYZ@gmail just be /+PatrickMcCoy3 which is associated to my new product/brand name? Thank you and look forward to the feedback!
Branding | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
No Domain Link In Press Release, What About Yelp?
Hi Moz, I understand that using a PR for SEO benefit is old-school, black hat, and largely outlawed by Google. We are simply trying to get our name pushed further into the local market, i.e., using a press release for it's natural intention. Our company offers free quotes through our site and the scheduling of jobs with new clients is largely done online. I think it seems silly NOT to have a link to our URL in the press release, but rather than poke Google, we're fine omitting it. However, would linking our Yelp near the end be a big deal? Yelp no-follows their URLs back to the company site so there isn't a risk with pumping up a support link through PR and we can provide SOME clickable link to our information. Thoughts?
Branding | | kirmeliux0 -
International domain query
my client is a financial services company with some ccTLDs for brand name but does not own the .com eg: brandname.ch, brandname.ro etc we need to launch a brand UK site plus a global site. should we go for another name on the .com: brandname_financial.com_, and: brandname_financial.ch_, brandname_financial.ro_ etc or could we go for instead brandname.uk.com and brandname.eu.com? i'm worried the owner of brandname.com will build a site and out rank us.....however the alternative is a longer url but owning the .com hope that makes sense and any advice would be gladly received! Many thanks
Branding | | bisibee10 -
Lightbox to show our sixteen most popular products
We wish to create a minimalist Lightbox (without flashy transitions) for our home page that displays a matrix of 4 x 4 images - sixteen in all. Each image (approximately 240 wide x 360 high) needs to have its own descriptive text and a hyperlink to the appropriate page on our web site. We are trying to identify a simple yet effective SEO friendly add-on that will allow us to quickly change the Lightbox on a daily basis. Suggestions from the Moz community would be very welcome. Thanks
Branding | | JustInsulation0 -
Author Site And Book Site - Multiple Sites Bad Idea?
The question: I've been doing work for authors lately and a common question is if they should have a site for their book and a site for themselves. Separate sites with different domain names. At first I thought this would be a bad idea. Why spread information across two sites if they can be related and used together in one? But I see a lot of authors doing this and some with marketing companies. One site for the author with information about them, their books, their social media presence. Then another site for their book, with new social media accounts, other info, etc. What do you guys think? Has anyone tried both and seen any pros and cons? Is there a perfect answer?
Branding | | JoshBowers20120 -
Branding exact match keyword domain
We have a keyword domain name that we'd like to show up in Google stores or brand suggestion. We used this exact keyword domain name for years to sell our products but now want to take it one step further and have the domain name show up in Google suggested brands or stores. We just filed for a TradeMark in the URL (they have about 57,000 domain names with active trademarks in their database). How do we get Google to recognize this domain name as either a brand or a store? Has anybody seen an example of a store or brand with a .com or .net in Google brands or Google stores? It may be that don't even allow URLs to show. Thanks
Branding | | mozworks0