Can we have differnt Domain name and Busienss name?
-
Can we have different domain and Business name for website?
I want to create real-estate website. I want to registered domain name ‘Nycityhomes.com’ and want to my business name (in logo as well) is ‘Sunny Associates’. Can we do that for local SEO?
-
Hi Alexander,
Google says that one website is better than two, and I almost never recommend that any local business publish more than one website, because of the risk this puts them at for NAP inconsistency, duplicate and merged listings as well as often creating thin/duplicate content risks.
Google's opinion, as voiced by John Mueller, can be found here:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/rOb2jIctBLQ/discussion
So, honestly, my advice is to go with just one site, Alexander.
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for a great advice. What If I create 2 websites, first with brand name "SunnyAssociates.com" (business portfolio website) and 2nd "Nycityhomes.com" with SunnyAssociates logo?.
Nycityhomes.com will have all the property listing and SunnyAssociates.com will have my business details, about us, services, company history etc.
-
Hi Alexander,
Great question. There is no one, right answer to this question. On the one hand, it's true that having keywords (like 'homes' and 'ny') can give you a bit of leverage in the search engine results. On the other hand, having a generic keyword-oriented domain name always stands out as having been chosen largely for search engines rather than out of company pride or with the user in my mind.
My personal preference is generally to go with the brand name. This is name the you're trying to promote as 'the' authoritative resource in your field and a branded domain shows a lot of confidence and pride in your brand. After all, Moz.com doesn't contain a keyword. The domain name for this company isn't terrificinboundmarketingresource.com. Rather, Moz has put in the years and effort to build a brand that stands for something with its community and, at this point, it would actually be negative rather than positive if the domain name was keyword-oriented rather than brand-oriented.
So, I would encourage most businesses to reflect on the fact that their domain name is going to be their home base for years to come, and that having one that matches what the phone receptionist says when she picks up the phone is a good plan for building a recognized brand. You're going to have to make a superior effort to surpass competitors in the SERPs, anyway, and while some SEOs may feel that any little bit of leverage can help (such as a keyword-oriented domain), chances are this won't be enough to help you pass up the competition in a tough market.
An alternative is to build some keywords into a domain name, like sunnyassocnyhomes.com, but that can start to get rather long and messy. Some people are good a finessing this. You could try brainstorming a bunch of domain name ideas and see if you can come up with a good brand-keyword combo so that you're showing both pride in your brand and sensitivity toward keywords.
In the end, this is a highly personal choice. One last thought. When I'm looking at real estate and I see domains in the results, I'm personally more likely to click on Century21.com, that's earned its place in the SERPs through building a strong brand, than I am to click on homesforsalemycity.com, because I feel immediately suspicious that this may be just another low quality aggregate site (so many of which clutter up the results and provide little satisfaction). So, were I to see SunnyAssociates.com coming up for my search, that would signal to me that your brand has earned its place in the SERPs based on merit, rather than having squeaked into the mix with keywords.
Hope these thoughts are helpufl
-
Branding a business name with the domain is is always key but if you like that domain name that go with it, i would buy sunnyassociates.com if its available and point it to your other domain name so you have both in case one day you decide to use it.
-
Actually for marketing on the web, it is smart to do that. If you domain has keywords that are important to your marketing keywords, it is better. Sunny Associates could be anything, whereas a real estate website called "nycityhomes.com" is of good value immediately for the keyword or phrases like NY City Homes for Sale or Rent. On your expansion pages you might even have some that look like this. www.nycityhomes.com/new-york-city-homes/rent.php or manhattan.php My company name is Diversified Freight, and I have that domain, but I also have www.freightetc.com which has the keyword "freight" in it. The only thing with the example above is you don't want your URL's too long so watch that. I am fairly new on here, and have a lot to learn myself, but you can never go wrong with a domain that directly uses your keywords needed in the market place!
-
I don't see why not, I can think of many examples where the business name does not match the website address.
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
-
How to handle multiple domains?
Hello, We are working on migrating a website to a new web server. In addition to the primary website domain, there are several other variations that are owned. Is okay if we point all of our domains to the same IP address as our primary domain, and then setup 301 redirects to the primary domain? Are there any risks in doing this? There may be about 100 domains. Many of them are different country TLD for same primary .com domain, others including misspellings of primary .com, and some that are not so related to primary domain. Thank you in advance for your response!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | srbello1 -
My client wants to change domain name... Redirect help!
Hello, I have a client who wants to change domain names. The site is designed using WordPress, there are many plugins that will redirect links but they have to be same domain links. When I change the domain I would like to redirect all the old links to the same pages on the new url. How do I accomplish this? The plugin redirection or Yoast will not allow a redirect from one domain to another. Thanks for any help on this matter. I have 200+ Urls to redirect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
XML Sitemap on another domain
Hi, We've rebuilt our website and created a better sitemap index structure. There's a good chance that we not be able to append the XML files to existing site for technical reasons (don't get me started). I'm reaching out because I'm wondering if can we place the XML files on another website or subdomain? I know this is not best practice and probably very grey but I'm looking for alternatives. If there answer is DON'T DO IT let me know too. Thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
Buying a domain banned by google
Hi , I came across a super domain for my business but found out that it was a great domain with 100s of link backs but is now banned by Google search engine meaning Google does not index content from that domain. Since the domains linkbacks are from my domin does it make sense to but that domain and redirect those link backs to another (301) and hope that the new domain gets some juice ... I know it is sounding crazy and may not be the best thing to do ethically but still wanted to check if its possible to get some juice.. Rgds Avinash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Avinashmb0 -
Move webshop domain to the brand domain?
Hello, A client of mine has a brand with a website for over 10 years now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders
About 4 years ago the have opened a webshop on an other domain (like www.brandnamewebshop.com). At this moment the brand domain has a seomoz authority of 45.
The webshop domain authority is 25. The question:
Would it not be better to transfer the webshop to the brand domain because of the domain authority? If so, how can this be done the best way? With a 301?
I also think: what a loss of energy of building the authority on the other domain.
Is it an idea to use both domains for a webshop and rewrite the content? Or is there an other way to still make use of the built up domain authority? Would it really help the other domain when I make a 301 redirect (and make use of the pointing links to the webshop domain?). I hope somebody have some experience with this...
Looking forward to the possibilities! Gerjan0 -
Does using a sub-domain lessen the effectiveness of your main domain?
For example a website without a blog and is a simple html site with no blogging capabilities. We go out to Blogger or Wordpress and set up the blog portion of the website using something like blog.yourdomain.com. Does this make a difference SEO wise? Is is more effective to be sure that you are using the main domain and not a sub-domain? I have heard both sides before but can't seem to find the concrete answer. Thanks for any advise out there.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d25kart0 -
Tips to Merge Two Domains?
Hi all, my client assigned me to merge both their two domains. To cut the long story, at the moment they have, for example, domain1.com and domain2.com. Practically, they sell quite the same products but with different content and layout. This has been happening for several years: domain1.com came first then domain2.com a couple of months after. They noticed that domain2.com has now more traffic than domain1.com. Another reason is they want to use one placeholder to avoid brand confusion (as expected because the products are actually the same). So, they are planning to merge the brand into domain2.com. I think this is just the same as moving domain, isn't it? I have been preparing all things as per SEOmoz SEO Guide: How to Properly Move Domains and Google's moving your site . Do you have any other tips to include? I want to make sure that the domain moving will be successful and the link juice on domain1.com can be transferred to domain2.com . Many thanks for your help! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ci3reR0 -
Are sites that leave out www from domain at a disadvantage to domains with www in url
I know this has been discussed but was wondering what would be the best approach from an SEO perspective. I quite like the idea of setting up websites with domains without www but always worry that setting up domains without www has a disadvantage because user are use to referring to sites with the www included. Thus one of my fears are that users would link back using www version which will mean even if you do a 301 redirect that some of the link juice would be lost. I know some famous sites have used this convention such as http://searchenginewatch.com/ so think it would be possible but still concerned that for new sites it would be better to rather stick to conventions. What are your opinions about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SABest0