Changing Domain Name to improve SEO

[health2u]

My website is Welcome to Health2U! Yoga and Juice Plus Supplements in Orange County. We offer yoga in Orange County, CA. Currently, if I do a search of "yoga in orange county" in Google, my website shows up on the 5th page. Of course, I am looking to be on the first page. Do you think my domain name has something to do with it? If I change it to include "yoga", will that help me get on the first page of google?

Thank you,
Kim

[Dubbya]

Including keywords in your domain name is highly recommended. It's one of the easiest things you can do to climb a few spots in the SERPs.

If you decide to register a new domain name, let it age for a while before you move your site. Google likes to see domain names that have been around for a while, so making the change too soon can hurt your rankings. When and if you do move the site, you'll probably see some pretty significant drops in your search engine results for several weeks to several months.

Whatever you do, hang on to your current domain name as it's already aged and others will have linked to it. Keep in mind that if you've invested a lot of time and effort marketing your present URL, any changes will require that you do it all over again.

For now, I'd recommend that you register a new domain and have your host assign a redirect that bounces clients to your present URL.

You can have as many domain names as you like and, as long as they all resolve to one URL, it's not going to hurt. Additionally, there's always a chance that someone randomly types in your new domain name.

.02

[pdstein]

Having keywords in your domain name can help, but its only one of many things that can influence the ranking of your website. There are a lot of on-page things you can do to optimize your homepage to improve your ranking for "Yoga in Orange County." I would suggest you either start by reading an introduction to SEO (maybe someone here can recommend something?) or hiring an SEO. Then you should start getting links to your site with that phrase in the link text.

[Orion]

Dubbya said it best.. keywords are great but time is important...

If it's a brand new site with almost no time on the domain go ahead... just 301 the pages to the new domain.

But if that domain has been around a while just get the URL for simplicity and point it to the site. Let it age..

[powersitedesign]

I echo what Orion said about the 301 redirection in Apache to your new domain. It will save you all of the effort you have put in building link partners.

[phx-keith]

I would not buy a domain. Buy a 2nd one, put up a second site - maybe, but not in this situation.

Being on the 5th page is promising!

Here is what I would do.
1) add the string "county orange yoga" to several places on your home page.
2) get some quality inbound links.

"county orange yoga" gets about 500 searches a month.

Inbound links and content rule the Search Engines!

[M & C]

I wouldn't buy another domain name but try first by putting up a couple of new pages with a top search term on 'yoga' like 'yoga poses', 'yoga techniques', 'yoga for men', etc but put the yoga word and your county word in the file path. Cheaper and very effective as we changed the word "products" in our file paths to "gifts" for our gift box website and showed immediate improvements in unique visitors.
In case you didn't realise, you've also got 2 x 404's on Beach yoga and Nutrition under your Resources.

[DoneInStyle]

I'd definitely buy a second domain, but for reasons different than what has been stated. health-2U.com is not a desirable domain name from the point of view of visitors for two reasons. First is the hyphen. People will forget it's there and not use it. Similarly, a number in a domain name also creates confusion since it can be 2 or two. I recommend that any new domain name you choose takes this into consideration and has no numbers of either sort, and no hyphens.

And yes, having a keyword or keyphrase in your domain name IS helpful!

[davidmg]

Visiting your site I noticed you do not use alt tags on your images. Place good info in your alt tags and make sure you include yoga in orange county. This creates a link to your images which in turn creates another link to your site. Search engines can't read images but they can read alt tags. Even put aly tags in the header image. The more info in the tag the more important the picture is to your site. Every little thing you do helps.

Clean up your site. beachyoga and nutrition pages bring up a partial page and a 404 warning. About yoga the picture on the left does not show.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by davidmg

Visiting your site I noticed you do not use alt tags on your images. Place good info in your alt tags and make sure you include yoga in orange county. This creates a link to your images which in turn creates another link to your site. Search engines can't read images but they can read alt tags. Even put aly tags in the header image. The more info in the tag the more important the picture is to your site. Every little thing you do helps.

That is not always true. You should not use everywhere alt tags, or in some cases you should not use them at all.
Read my tutorial I published recently about the use of Alt attributes: Alt Attribute & Search Engine Optimization - SEO Workers

About your question changing your domain name just to have some keywords in it is not the best solution if you already have a living domain. There are so many factors you should consider for improving your rankings before you come up with such a idea which can cause you a damage. Think about domain age.

[beakerbum]

You should be able to get much better results without even thinking about a domain name change. You have some decent links to your site, not a ton, but still decent, you've got some average page rank which if nothing else is a sign that your site is somewhat established. Changing domain names will likely do more harm than good, especially if you can get a lot better without doing so.

As the search engines see it your main page is about a lot of different things. It's about Health-2u. Who searches for that? If they know to search for that, they'd already find you by entering the domain name. It's about Welcome. Again, who searches for that??? It's about Juice Plus Supplements. And oh, by the way, it's about Yoga in Orange County. All the other stuff really waters down the subject of the website, and so as far as Google is concerned, Yoga in Orange County is only a small part of what the site is about, and that kills you in the search results.

Try these two things, and I'll bet it makes a huge difference fairly quickly for you:

FIRST: Simplify the title: Yoga Classes in Orange County

SECOND Put the part that says Yoga Classes - Private and Group in an H1 tag and add Orange County to that heading. Something like Yoga Classis in Orange County - Private and Group

These two things alone will make it much more clear that your site is about Yoga in Orange County. I'd really be surprised if you didn't end up on page one after that.

[seo4china]

I will register a domain name with yoga in it but build a completely new site for this domain, similar to the one that you have in terms of content but of course not a direct copy-paste.

[reesethomas]

I hate to disagree with almost everyone in this forum, especially as I do not often post here, but, if you have 500 searches a month for Orange County Yoga, GET the URL


ORANGECOUNTY-YOGA.COM is available! (from Godaddy 5 min ago)

I have many times registered a URL with the desired search term
for instance Google Data Privacy Tools (does not matter quotes or not, very probably a much more competitive search term than yours.) My site, dataprivacytools.com which is a couple months old, with a few free directory listings and an XML sitemap was just number 5 in Google serps, don't believe me., do a whois and a backlink check on the site. I have dozens of specificly created URLs for this purpose , Before they are out of the sandbox, they are 1rst or2nd page. I f you email me, I'll send you a list of sites very similar (I went on a URL binge 2 months ago, every one is placing high, but just for that term.)

Sorry my first post in a while disagrees with everyone, but, could not let this slide.
BTW that available URL is radio friendly "Orange CountyDASH Yoga, Dot Com!"

[edhan]

Originally Posted by seo4china

I will register a domain name with yoga in it but build a completely new site for this domain, similar to the one that you have in terms of content but of course not a direct copy-paste.

Yes. This will be what I would do. Having another domain name and building it to complement the existing site. As said, make sure it is not copy & paste content from your existing site as it will be useless.

[MikeinFlorida]

Hi Kim: Well, you've seen that responses to your question run the gamete from not doing anything to making big changes. Unfortunately, a lot of people think they know about seo who don't know much at all. That's just life. There are all kinds of people of course in the world.

From experience with seo over a number of years I can tell you this: Yes change the url to a really good name-- something that describes your business well and make it as short as possible. A check of your site's domain name in the whois directory shows it was registered in 2004. So that will help with the new site since the old one has already been through the aging process. Keywords are good but not necessary. Learning or hiring a good seo are the key to make your site successful with excellent content of course. Look my sites up in G and you'll see how they rank for yourself for proof.

Whatever you do when you make a change make sure to do a 301 redirect from the old name to the new site. If you use the same site it will take a while for the se's to recognize the change. So be patient and work on more content to improve your site for the user's experience. There are 2 forms of seo-- on site and off and you need to do both to be successful. Good luck with whatever you do!

[Orion]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

That is not always true. You should not use everywhere alt tags, or in some cases you should not use them at all.

alt attributes are required.. they tell the browser what the graphic is when they cannot see it. the are a requirement of xhtml all DTD's.. if you have a corner image and don't want to say alt="corner image" because IE will give you a tool tip on that one you can use alt="" but the alt is required.

title="" is to provide additional information to the site visitor and will produce a tool tip (in all browsers (alt only does in IE) and even IE will override alt= when there is a title).

[DrTandem1]

Domain names are for humans, not search engines. The domain name has virtually nothing to do with a site's position in the SERPs. While I think your domain name is a poor one for humans to remember, with the hyphen, the number and then the letter "u," it has no effect on your SERP position.

If you want to change your domain name, direct your efforts to your human searchers, not the search engines.

Orange County is locally known as "OC." Obviously, OCYoga.com is already taken. Since domain names are for humans, typing out "orangecounty" plus anything else you add to it, is too lengthy, for humans.

Since it appears that the business is located in Dana Point, may I suggest, CoastYoga.com? How about DanaPointYoga.com? DPYoga.com? Get creative.

[beakerbum]

I think MikeinFlorida's EZRealEstateReferrals site is a good example of the relative value of the value of proper key word placement vs the value of the domain name.

The obvious key words for searches in the domain name is Real Estate Referrals. (no one is going to search for EZ Real Estate Referrals unless they're searching for the specific site). But that site won't be found in a search for Real Estate Referrals.

But, do a search for Real Estate Domain Portfolio, and it gets front page listings.

Key words are good but not necessary? The key words that get search results for that site are the ones that are positioned in the title, in the description and in the body, NOT the ones in the domain name.

I'm not saying domain name doesn't have value in a search, it's one of many things about on site optimization that is taken into account. But it's got far less value than what's in the more important areas including title tags, header tags, and the description.

One thing I'll agree with him on though. A lot of people think they know about seo who don't know much at all.

[astro]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

That is not always true. You should not use everywhere alt tags, or in some cases you should not use them at all.

Hmmm....... interesting, but what about 501??? Do not Google mutter into their beard about accessibility from time to time? Or has Acidrainia (formerly known as the U.S.) finally axed 501 for commercial reasons?

Or............ are you referring to alt tags on page furniture? (you know, ...curly arrow left, curly arrow right, picture of a button...etc.)

Domain names as 3 word search terms can do excellently, but multiple domain name pointing to a single URL????? Not sure, one may be, but I suspect this would be perceived as spamming.
</astro>

[mjancosek]

Hi forum folks,
I use to think that domain age was important to, until lately. I was building a site for my employer and he dabbled on the domain name. 2 weeks ago we bought the domain name and now the site is listed on page 5 without any submitions, sitemap, or any SEO. I noticed this as well on another site when the domain name was less than 1 week old and listed high in google. This kind of abnormalities do make you ponder.

However, in answer to health2u I do agree with all the above comments and say that the domain name will help you bump up a little in the SERP, but do not forget all the fun SEO stuff. And for now let your domain name age a little.

[davidmg]

Posted by webnauts
That is not always true. You should not use everywhere alt tags, or in some cases you should not use them at all.
Read my tutorial I published recently about the use of Alt attributes: Alt Attribute & Search Engine Optimization - SEO Workers

I read your article. Every image should have an alt tag. You do not have to put the same keywords in every tag but it is extremely important to use alt tags. You do state that it is good in your article and basically state that you shouldn't use the same keywords. The site is not over laiden with images and alt tags will not hurt the site.

Many times if I do not have images on a page I will alt the border images just to create links. Even if you put "left border in red at xyz" it gives the image importance in the search engines. Most sites do not spam the content with the site name. f the site name has keywords in it you can not get penalized for using them in alt tags. The alt tag lends crediblity to the image and would not be considered spaming if done right.

[Dubbya]

Originally Posted by mjancosek

2 weeks ago we bought the domain name and now the site is listed on page 5 without any submitions, sitemap, or any SEO. I noticed this as well on another site when the domain name was less than 1 week old and listed high in google.

Don't be mislead. It's very common for Google to give a brand new site fantastic positions in the SERPs for a few weeks. When the shine wears off, your positions will most likely plummet into the supplementals for a few weeks and you'll have to rely on solid SEO to work your way back out. This is commonly known as the Google Sandbox effect.

Domain age IS important.

[wige]

David, how would putting text not related to the image into a layout image not be considered spam? Under 501, a blank alt tag is supposed to be used for design elements that do not convey relevant content to a sighted visitor (to do otherwise is to hinder non-sighted visitors to your site, placing them at a greater detriment when visiting than is experienced by the sighted, and a clear violation of the law). Also, my understanding was that search engines will at some threshold stop counting keywords. Once you oversaturate the page with a certain keyword, the engine either stops counting, or worse starts penalizing by deducting value from that word as they perceive it as spam.

[callaway-preowned]

I would consider creating a content page specifically geared towards the "orange county yoga" keyword set if you don't feel like taking the time/money to rebrand your entire site. Potentially - health-2u.com/orange-county-yoga.xyz - and have some organic rich content on that page.

[davidmg]

Originally Posted by wige

David, how would putting text not related to the image into a layout image not be considered spam? Under 501, a blank alt tag is supposed to be used for design elements that do not convey relevant content to a sighted visitor (to do otherwise is to hinder non-sighted visitors to your site, placing them at a greater detriment when visiting than is experienced by the sighted, and a clear violation of the law). Also, my understanding was that search engines will at some threshold stop counting keywords. Once you oversaturate the page with a certain keyword, the engine either stops counting, or worse starts penalizing by deducting value from that word as they perceive it as spam.

Borders can contain multiple images. There is nothing wrong with alting a few border images with text relevant to the page. If the page is not rich in content or keywords have not been widely used it offers another way to add content to the site along with a possible link to the image. An image is an image to the search engines and alting a border image does not hurt.

[wige]

Not trying to attack your strategy, just get some better idea of what you are trying to accomplish with this method

Originally Posted by davidmg

Borders can contain multiple images. There is nothing wrong with alting a few border images with text relevant to the page.

Couldn't this hurt accessibility, because the text to speech software has to read alt tags that are not related to the page content?

Originally Posted by davidmg

If the page is not rich in content or keywords have not been widely used it offers another way to add content to the site along with a possible link to the image.

What type of link are you trying to get? The only incoming link I can think that this would gain is a link from a Search engine image search function, which would be unlikely to generate much traffic, since users that see a design element in the results will likely ignore it, and which would not gain any SEO benefit since these links are invisible to other search engines.

Originally Posted by davidmg

An image is an image to the search engines and alting a border image does not hurt.

Could this not trip a spam filter? Especially if you are repeating keywords that are not present in the rest of the document or using the keyword more in the alt text than in the page text surrounding the image?

[davidmg]

Originally Posted by wige

Not trying to attack your strategy, just get some better idea of what you are trying to accomplish with this method


Couldn't this hurt accessibility, because the text to speech software has to read alt tags that are not related to the page content?

What type of link are you trying to get? The only incoming link I can think that this would gain is a link from a Search engine image search function, which would be unlikely to generate much traffic, since users that see a design element in the results will likely ignore it, and which would not gain any SEO benefit since these links are invisible to other search engines.

Could this not trip a spam filter? Especially if you are repeating keywords that are not present in the rest of the document or using the keyword more in the alt text than in the page text surrounding the image?

The webpro banner at the top could be divided into separate images yet still generate the link to the home page. Why can't you put an alt tag on the logo part? Many sites have a logo or an image in the upper left anyways. the alt could read web pro world your source for SEO. You would not be penalized for this. Even if the page had a solid color down the right side as a right border it could be alted "right border image web pro world your forum for IT" Weither or not someone clicks on the image when they search pictures it still creates a link to an image on your site and a link to your site just gives you another link. The search engine does not know that it is a solid color or a picture. It does not know that it is important or not. You are giving it relavance by alting it so there for it is relavant to the content of the site.

If you have an ecommerce site and you are selling widgets if you alt pictures as "blue widget" "Red Widget" are you getting penalised for excessive use of the word widget?

You could get more specific like"blue widget as it flys throught the air" if your widget is a plane or frisbee. The more content the better in alts. Using keywords in alts does not penalized you it can only help.

[health2u]

Thank you for suggestions. So for example, I have my new domain name: coastyoga.com and when someone clicks on it, they get redirected to my old domain, health-2u.com. So, do I bother putting a lot of content on the new one? Do I start doing links to the new website and do nothing with the old one?

[Orion]

if you want to go with simply forwarding from the new domain then when you register the domain (most registrars) have DNS settings there all you do is from their control panel set up the domain to forward to the site...

if you want to switch to the new domain then you move the pages from the old domain to the new domain, then put up a .htaccess file on the old domain pointing each page to the new site.

[Orion]

wige is correct using the alt="" with relevant text on border images is referred to as keyword stuffing. alt="" has only one purpose it means 'alternative' it is to describe the graphic on the page for those who have images turned off, are using text only browsers, or are using speech browsers. Don't abuse it as it may come back to bite ya down the road...

Personally I feel search engines should totally negate text in the alt="" attribute EXCEPT when indexing graphics for an image search.

to provide further information about an item use title="" it can be used in form elements, images, links and much much more.

[beakerbum]

Okay, time for the Yoga in Orange County Experiment.

I have a domain name that has nothing to do with yoga in orange county. It's a very basic page with "Yoga in Orange County" in the title, header tags, and sprinkled on the page.

I've linked to it from 2 other sites and of course, from here. Not very relevent links but ones I expect spiders to pick up fairly soon.

Just curious to see how well I can rank for a phrase like that which shouldn't be too difficult to rank well in if set up properly.

Of course give it a bit of time for the updates to cycle, should be active by morning, and then of course we'll see what happens from there.

[astro]

Originally Posted by beakerbum

Okay, time for the Yoga in Orange County Experiment.

I've linked to it from 2 other sites and of course, from here. Not very relevent links but ones I expect spiders to pick up fairly soon.

Just a thought, but are not message forum links viewed with utmost suspicion by most SE's ?

I have always avoided them and cringe a touch (but nothing I can do) when my sites are linked to from various forums by other people talking about the area where I live, and the holidays they had. (I have very image heavy web sites)

Just been to check, but if you go to G.com and key in "accommodation information agia efimia" 1 & 2 are me (well they were 2 minutes ago!) and number 5 or 6 (can't remember which) is also me with another website. This site is so image heavy you could lose the will waiting for the pages to come down. Yet it is listed!!!! The heavy image (kb wise) is an experiment, on a 56 k laptop modem you could prepare a light lunch whilst the page down loaded! I had believed sites like that would never get listed. But it is an argument for generic domain names.


</astro>

[pcgeek]

Help me understand...so what is an aged domain? one that sits there at godaddy while parked for a long while without any marketing? or one that you have to market a little to get indexed by the SE's, or one that is an established website.

Also, relating the subject Yoga domain...if he did move domain names, wouldnt that be bad because if he has established PR then, he would have to make sure he gets all the sources that link to him to update their directories, sites, blogs, articles, newsletters etc to point to new domain, very quickly to keep PR? that is very tough, you reckon?

Thanks
Geek

[DoneInStyle]

Help me understand...so what is an aged domain? one that sits there at godaddy while parked for a long while without any marketing?

Yes. That's exactly what it is. I think that if you own a domain for awhile before building it out there is intent read into that, a certain amount of planning and aforethought, instead of just another adsense splog or whatever. At least that's what I remember reading somewhere, probably on Matt Cutts' blog, though I'm not sure.

[beakerbum]

Originally Posted by pcgeek

Also, relating the subject Yoga domain...if he did move domain names, wouldnt that be bad because if he has established PR then, he would have to make sure he gets all the sources that link to him to update their directories, sites, blogs, articles, newsletters etc to point to new domain, very quickly to keep PR? that is very tough, you reckon?

Short term, yes, I think there's a bigger risk. He can do a redirect and cut his losses somewhat. From a search perspective I think the risk outweighs the benefits.

From a long term perspective, I think the new domain name he picked up is a huge improvement, but as has been stated, for other reasons than search. And, long term he can make up for what was lost.

[incrediblehelp]

Maybe I am missing something here, but why are you changing the domain name again?

If you just want to buy it for type in traffic simply 301 redirect the new one to the old one. The value of the keywords in the domain name for this type of example is very minimal. IBLs and on-site SEO changes could be improved to ANY type of domain, to achieve the rankings you want here.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Maybe I am missing something here, but why are you changing the domain name again?

If you just want to buy it for type in traffic simply 301 redirect the new one to the old one. The value of the keywords in the domain name for this type of example is very minimal. IBLs and on-site SEO changes could be improved to ANY type of domain, to achieve the rankings you want here.

If you read previous posts in the thread you will see that the member does not care. He wants a new domain no matter what we say. So let it be bro.

[incrediblehelp]

Thanks John, like I said I must have missed it. I scan through these old threads just trying to help.

[Webnauts]

Before changing the URL, if your primer concern is google, then take a minute and read this: Google Doesn’t Parse Keywords in URLS » Half’s SEO Notebook

[health2u]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

If you read previous posts in the thread you will see that the member does not care. He wants a new domain no matter what we say. So let it be bro.

It is not that, My main objective is to have my website on the first page of google. Someone recommended to me to change my domain name to include key words. So that is why I posted this on this forum. Since I am a novice at SEO, I am looking at all the recommendations.

So far, I have changed the first page to include H1 Yoga in Orange County and remove Juice Plus. My website jumped from page 5 to 2!

BTW - the he is a she.

[health2u]

Originally Posted by M & C

I wouldn't buy another domain name but try first by putting up a couple of new pages with a top search term on 'yoga' like 'yoga poses', 'yoga techniques', 'yoga for men', etc but put the yoga word and your county word in the file path. Cheaper and very effective as we changed the word "products" in our file paths to "gifts" for our gift box website and showed immediate improvements in unique visitors.
In case you didn't realise, you've also got 2 x 404's on Beach yoga and Nutrition under your Resources.

Can someone tell me what is meant by file path and what 404's mean?

Sorry I am new to this.

Kim

[bj]

404 is an error page. 404 file not found. AKA a dead link.

[beakerbum]

Congratulations on the improvement. Yoga in Orange County is up to page 2 on yahoo and msn as well. You also are up to #2 for Yoga Classes in Orange County.

A couple of things you could do to help a bit more would be use that phrase once or twice in the body of your main page. Another thing is if you can get some links to your site with that as the Anchor Text, kind of like what I've done here.

You have a couple of broken links on your main page, that's what's meant by the 404's. The link to Beach Yoga and Nutrition just go to an error page. Bad links can sometimes hurt you in your results.

Interesting point about the domains. One states dashes are bad for domain names, and yet the thing about google not parsing domain names. In the end, it seems to me that the question becomes whether you try to get your traffic from searches or from people entering the address manually.

What might be a good idea is to redirect your new domain name to the current one, so people can get to it more easily manually, while keeping the positioning you have with the old domain.

[beakerbum]

Debuting on the charts at number 11 (where's Casey Casem when you need him?)....

Referring back to my post from a bit more than a week ago, I created the Yoga in Orange County experiment. Using a URL name (informationonhold.net) that has nothing to do with Yoga in Orange County, the idea was to see how well a site could perform relying more on good on page optimization.

Today, i looked and found it at 11th for a search for Yoga in Orange County. The health-2u site is at 13th (a good improvement over page 5 by the way)

[health2u]

Thank you for you advice. Definitely helped.

[beakerbum]

Have you been able to notice any more traffic because of your improved ranking?

In the two weeks or so since my experimental site went to #11, I've had exactly 2 visits from people who searched for Yoga in Orange County. Although I'm sure some of that has been because my description specifically said the site had nothing to do with Yoga in Orange County.

The other thing that has been fascinating is that although I got to 11th in Google, I'm nowhere to be found in MSN and 338th in Yahoo. I wonder, is that a commentary on those two being better at weeding out frivolous websites, or Google being easier to manipulate?

[health2u]

That is interesting about Yahoo and MSN.

As for my stats,

I had 2815 hits in Oct vs 2499 in Sept - so 400 more hits

I had 1209 visits in Oct vs 1294 in Sept - so 285 less visits.

Not sure - what is the difference between visits and hits?? I am using Dreamweaver to review this info that is download from my hosting company.

Kim

[beakerbum]

basically, hits is the number of files requested. If you added images, you could increase the number of hits without really increasing the number of visits. Hits isn't usually a very good measure of the traffic you're getting unless you've not made any changes to the site at all.