Should a company's online tool be hosted on their own domain?
-
Our company is developing a web-based tool that will provide good value for its users and generate leads for us. The tool is large enough in scope and different enough than the main service that we provide that we're considering putting it on its own domain.
I have two questions:
1. Does it behoove a company to put their online tool on a separate domain if the tool is large enough in scope and different enough from their website's core function / business's core service? (Examples of this would be Hubspot's Marketing Grader or Open Site Explorer before Moz rolled it back into its domain.)
2. If yes, should the domain name a) describe the function of the tool or b) build a brand for the tool itself?
Thanks for your help!
-
I guess I would have to see the site and the tool to understand your point as it does not make sense if you would make a tool that is unrelated to your core business as that would take away from your core business structure.
I would do some testing with some of your users / audience to see what they think. It may or may not be jarring to them and could help you with your answer in what direction on where to go.
-
Thanks, CleverPhD. Very well thought out response.
Our concern is that having a tool that is unrelated to our business's core service and our website's core function will be confusing for people who land on the tool, and therefore make them less likely to use it than if it were on its own domain. From a user experience standpoint, we are concerned that some visitors wouldn't want to use a tool that does X on a website that revolves around Y. It's possible that some of the visitors who find this difference jarring will be unlikely to remember our brand/domain name and visit our website again in the future. Anecdotally, I've bounced off tools on sites I gauged to be unrelated to the topic I was researching.
But, as you pointed out, the SEO, branding, PR and cognitive load benefits of keeping the tool on our domain are quite strong. It seems you could easily argue these benefits would outweigh the negative impact of the possible user confusion I described in the above paragraph.
Again, thanks for your help.
-
CleverPhD, you nailed it in detail.
-
This is similar to the question, blog on a different subdomain vs a folder. Most SEOs would agree that putting a blog in a folder is better as any links to the blog builds the domain authority of the entire domain. Rising tides raises all ships.
Likewise, I think it is telling that Moz rolled OSE under the main moz.com domain. Why? I would guess (Disclaimer: this is just my guess as I do not speak for Moz) for the same reason of consolidating domain authority, but also I think it makes sense from a branding perspective. Why would you want to spend all this time creating a tool and getting people to remember another domain name when you could be piggybacking off the fact that they already know your domain name to start with and so with any press around the new tool your main domain name is being talked about (let alone linked to).
I think in most cases a separate domain or subdomain is at the suggestion of developers to make it easier to develop on a separate server etc. That is technical hurdle that should not drive the answer of what is best for your users and for branding.
One domain name is hard enough to remember, why make people remember another one? Keep it simple. Reduce cognitive load. Plus, if the new tool goes viral and is on your main domain, your main domain is going viral as well.
Unless you are trying to build a separate company with a separate brand, then you might go the separate domain route.
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
-
Migrating educational resources for a SaaS product to an existing domain?
Odd situation I'm hoping some folks may have insight on. We have a product site and an educational site (two entirely separate domains). The educational site has: Existed for longer (24 years vs 13). Currently ranks for far more keywords and drives more traffic. Is an entirely separate brand from the product. Has historically driven sales to the product site (through email and onsite ads) but that channel has diminished over time. The product site Also has educational resources Is a more recognizable brand When prioritized resources here often drive far more revenue The Challenge
Branding | | pasware
Both sites cover very similar topics, making prioritization challenging and splits our topical focus. We are considering making the educational site our sole place for resources, migrating content from the product site, and rebranding the site to line up more closely with the product. Basically retain the domain, make it our sole focus for updates and new content, but align it with the strength of our more recognizable product. The Questions Does anyone have any experience with this type of rebrand where a separate domain is retained? Are we risking the loss of branded search queries in the process or some other risk? While potentially risking ranking/traffic loss would it make more sense to migrate all valuable content to the product site instead? Sorry for the long-winded questions here and appreciate any thoughts/ideas!0 -
Switch domain's CRYPTO focus to B2B
Hi everyone! I have my tough question, hope you'll help with your recommendations! I have a domain for blockchain company (DA 38, 590 linking domains), which started as an ICO project, but rapidly grew to a recognized B2B company with a few B2B clients. What we want is to attract more B2B prospects via Google Search, but the problem is when our prospects google our brand name (which also happens to be our domain, so this domain must be kept) they see mainly ico/crypto SERPs (as the result of ICO ad campaigns, online publicity etc). And they get prejudice towards us and don't trust us in the first place. What we already managed to do is to add some B2B news and links in 1-10 SERPs for our brand name, but still old ones (crypto related don't go so fast). Our management wants our prospects to be able to clearly see the difference between the current company domain (which must be remade to B2B focus only) and the new domain (our token-oriented, since our product is on blockchain). Question: is it possible to do such differentiation in the eyes of Google (and thus our prospects)? if yes, what is the best way to do that? 2 separate domains, not linking to each other or any other way?
Branding | | MariY
Do you have any other ideas?0 -
Passing "link juice" from old domain to new domain
I am purchasing several websites from the company I work for and starting my own company. 1.The websites have not been updated in several years
Branding | | RoxBrock
2. The websites have poor SEO rankings
3. Though bad inbound links have been removed, there may still be some added by a black-hat SEO company I would like to start a new website and move all the content to that site. My questions are: 1. Will it hurt my new website rankings if I redirect the old site content to my new site and delete the old sites--due to possible bad inbound links, losing rank due to redirects (I have lost rank from redirecting in the past)? 2. If related, isn't it better to put all the content on one website? Thank you.0 -
Domain authority vs indexed pages
Hello, There are many articles and from our personal experience we can say that you can rank a page without backlinks with high DA but we cant figure out if DA of domain help to rank as the link juice ( so the link juice going from home page thru all pages to specific page) or it will rank a page even if its not linked in any way from homepage or any other pages and even if it not linked in any way from other pages and still ranks just because of high DA, does that DA value will spread even above all indexed pages if you have lets say 100,000 pages, i mean if domain has 100 indexed pages and DA of 50 and another domain has 100,000 and DA of 100, if both pages are the same on those domains and have no backlinks to it from my understanding page on domain with 100 indexed pages and DA of 50 suppose to rank higher ? Please share what you think
Branding | | maxdelop0 -
Can you recommend a Content Delivery Network for hosting 20 videos across the website?
We want to host multiple videos across our website and are considering which CDN provider to use, with an average of 18.8GB per month for visitors, we are considering the following companies, some offer a free trial. https://www.maxcdn.com/pricing/ http://www.cdn77.com/pricing https://www.cloudflare.com/plans Does anyone have any other recommendations regarding CDNs for video streaming or have experience in this area as any advice would be much appreciated.
Branding | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
What is the best PR company out there?
I need to know what is the best Press Release company out there and if its still safe to use them. Thanks in Advance
Branding | | Angelos_Savvaidis1 -
What would you do before starting a new online business in the financial field?
Hi, What would do before you starting a new online business in the financial field for preventing reputation issues and start to branding your new company name? Which services / tools would you choose to use? Thanks in advance.
Branding | | JonsonSwartz0 -
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!
Branding | | advancedSemiotics0