Ditch the company name and go for KW's?

[tonynoriega]

i have a client who has a site www.companyX.com

their site is ok, in SE's for some keyterms.

they have also bought 3 other domains...i.e. goodkeyword.com betterkeyword.com and 3rdbestkeyword.com

should i have them use betterkeyword.com as their primary site, and have the other re-direct?

[rj87uk]

No!

You should be a good enough SEO by reading webmasterworld to get the website ranking for all three terms without any big problems.

I wouldn't change a companies domain name for the sake of a keyword you should really just get them ranking for each keyword.

RJ

[edd1]

It also depends what their main game is. What are their goals? If branding and long term strategy is important then it would be criminal to change their main domain name.

How do you think YouTube would have got on if they'd have changed their URL to watchvideosfreeonline.com

or LonelyPlanet.com to traveldestinationsinformation.com

All depends on the goals, if it's short term SEO gain then maybe, but even then probably not.

[tedster]

Yes, it definitely depends on the business model. Before making any decision about moving a domain, it would be very useful to read about the experiences others have had - and the possibility of major traffic loss for many months. There are some good references about moving to a different domain in the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

The extra ranking help that might seem to be there from a keyword in the domain name is not as big a factor as it might seem at first, at least not from what I can see. Today's algorithm is not so simplistic, and tomorrow's algorithm will be even less so.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Why move the domain at all?

If I were you I would be advising them to start a secondary website using the preferred domain name. If and when the traffic from this site starts to pay off you could then consider what to do in the long term but in the short term your client would not suffer.

[ecmedia]

I would say optimize the main page for the company name and then other pages for appropriate keywords. Trying to optimize multiple domain names and then redirecting the traffic is so much more work.