Type-in-keyphrase.com domain Vs brand.com domain

[drummerboy]

Hey all,

I'm a new member here but a long time lurker and reader. Apologies for the long story

I've been running an online business in the UK for almost 10 years in an area of my industry that I have been largely resposible for creating. 3 years ago I appeared on BBC Dragons Den (like American Inventor) and as a result I managed simply to generate a lot of competition from others going "that's a great idea, I'll do that too". Don't start me on IP infringement!

I have a superb 'brand' that is a registered trademark, it is also the name of my limited company and I own mybrandname.com after negotiating the purchase of it from the previous owner who had a poetry site on it! I also own .co.uk, .info etc etc

As a result of the TV exposure and some very savvy work by my competiitors with much more resources, my branded website has dropped from #1 to #3 in google.co.uk for the #1 keyphrase (3 words). Even at #3, this keyphrase is responsible for 1/3 of the total visits to my website from organic serps, a huge proportion, and I'm confident that my two competitors are doing significantly better than that.

I redesigned the site earlier this year to optimise my onsite content which got me from #4 to #3 however my main competitor who is #2 has a bunch of backlinks because he sells through agencies who all link back, yet I sell directly from my site. I cannot understand from a technical perspective why the other guy is at #1, I am in the process of appointing a SEO consultant to investigate & report back.

Unfortunately given this is my first business and my competitor has been operating in a related field for many years, my naiivete at the time meant that I missed the agency route. He has the main agencies sewn up and they won't entertain a similar product in competition with their existing product range. Published accounts show this guy's turnover is 4x mine.

Recently I was able to negotiate the purchase of mainkeyphrase.com and it leaves me with a quandary.

My question after all this - Is it likely that if I transfer my site to mainkeyphrase.com it will improve my serps and leapfrog my me-too competitors.

My site has hundreds of pages and has been developed over time through frontpage (this was 10 years ago!) Dreamweaver, Joomla!1.0 and now J!1.5 so I have a bunch of legacy 301 redirects.

I have searched the forum here and have seen a couple of related posts but none that help me with the business implications of this - apologies if I have missed something completely relevant. I'm very nervous about making the change but I believe that in the long run it could be the right move.

I appreciate your suggestions and the benefit of your experience. Sorry for the long post.

Many thanks

Paul

[jaynl]

Hi Drummerboy,

Just a quick response, without knowing the exact area of business you're in.

Is it possible for you to do both? That is, maintaining the current keyphrase.com site as is, and creating a second site under brandname.com? The two sites can be different in content, focus, and audience. In fact you'll be creating several competing sites, but both sites are owned by you.

Another thing I'd like to mention is the "Long Tail". Don't focus on the main keyphrase only, but also consider all other keywords people search for. These can be derived from your own weblogs, by checking the free Adwords External Keyword Tool for the UK, and checking other websites. This should be an ongoing process. I strongly recommend Chris Anderson's brilliant book "Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More".

By the way, you're in the UK. If your intended audience is mainly in the UK, I strongly suggest a co.uk name for any new website. Again, without knowing anything about your particular business area, so I might be wrong here. But in general, search results in the UK will favor co.uk domains in organic search listings.

Good luck.

[Webwork]

A common and common sense question that is often asked, when it comes to "branded website name (domain) versus "the generic name of the service/thing" is "What is your budget for building the 'meaning of the branded domain' TO MEAN what the keyword domain 'already means'"?

A "brand" much more than a name or symbol. The branded name or symbol is merely associated with user experience OF your branded product or service.

People labor about "branded domains" when I think they really should be laboring about "user experience". Get the latter right - the experience / the product or service as an experience - and you could have an onion or tomato or potato sach as your "brand image" and it would work. You could call it Flickr and it would work.

I think a better question is "How much money, time and effort will it take to associate the branded domain with the service/goods?" That will be a function of the industry's competitiveness, amongst other factors. It can be a very large sum/cost.

When you have the industry's generic name as a website name the costs of "making the association" likely drop significantly. Plus there's the benefit of people linking to your website using anchor text that is descriptive of your services.

[drummerboy]

Hi Jaynl,

thanks for your fast response.

I currently have the keyphrase.com domain setup with a WP blog about the 'keyphrased' industry sector, it favours my brand only of course and was pretty quick to setup. It does not yet appear in serps because I've not linked to it and I have not promoted it with sitemap submission because I'm unsure if it would only confuse the situation - I'd invest reasonable resources and effort in that but after I make this decision.

My experience in the uk and certainly in my specific industry is that the .com is king over the .co.uk. It's not viewed as a US specific TLD more like the domain of general preference. It doesn't seem to matter to the SEs in local searches which is used really but my clients expect brandname.com rather than brandname.co.uk. This was why it was so critical that I purchased brandname.com. That original site was lying dormant and I would often get messages from custiomers who had been trying for ages to find me by typing .com. I think I lost quite a bit of business in the early years by not having the .com unfortunately.

We rank well for long tail keywords & phrases, many at #1 in serps however this single keyword phrase is likely to represent 50% or more of the natural type-in traffic for the #1 slot. It's kind of my industry version of a dictionary word, obvious and does what-it-says-on-the-tin - to get keyphrase.com was a major coup.

In my longer-term plans I could definitely see mybrand.com being a hub site as my business expands and moves a little beyond this keyphrase. Without risking line extension, Mybrand.com would then be the corporate site dealing with the core brand and linking to several varied lines of products such as keyphrase.com and otherproductype.com. This move in that case would be absolutely correct but we are a small business and for now all of my brand eggs are in this basket that is completely dominated by this phrase :)

I posted with out introducing myself - I'm not a complete noob to domaining but as a hobby rather than a business. I have been a domain collector and site builder from the mid nineties, starting out for no other reason than the names were cool (& available) and I could see lots of opportunity to develop information sites in my hobby genre (hint - my user name here :) this is a different subject to my main business!.

I'm not a commercial domainer like many here but I have a few under my belt that are most likely worth in the £10k+ bracket were I to choose to sell them and others with sector-leading forums, wikis & stuff with thousands of members which I am developing further and monetising increasingly (everyone needs a pension, right? :)

Anyway, thanks a million for your response Jaynl. I appreciate your willingness to help.

[drummerboy]

Hi Webwork

I agree with you wholeheartedly! 'Be first in the mind' to quote Seth Godin

Yes I have invested a lot of time and effort in creating the brand and when people hear the name, they go it's perfect for what you do and it's almost impossible to forget! But as a small business it is just too expensive to just promote the brand, our marketing resources have to go on results-based investment rather than building brand awareness. For now! Unfortunately cashflow forces us all to make difficult choices!

There is some timing in this also. The demand for my product is seasonal and we are just entering into a 5-6 week low season which would be a perfect opportunity for me to take a temporary hit on the serps.

You make very good & relevant points webwork, I feel somewhat vindicated for thi.king this way already - Yeah the backlink anchor text is a big natural plus

Many thanks again

[maximillianos]

I think keywords in domain names as a ranking factor is slowly diminishing. I purchased an old keyword domain last year, built up a solid, unique content site around it. Did some minor link building. It still ranks page 3 for exact match searches.

I would stick with your branded efforts.