Changing Domain Name to improve SEO

health2u · #1 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 03:21 PM

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 · #2 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 03:43 PM

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 · #3 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 05:26 PM

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 · #4 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 06:20 PM

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 · #5 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 06:33 PM

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 · #6 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 06:57 PM

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 · #7 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 07:12 PM

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 · #8 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 07:16 PM

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 · #9 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 08:01 PM

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 · #10 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 09:13 PM

Quote:

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 · #11 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 10:25 PM

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 · #12 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 11:19 PM

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 · #13 (**permalink**) 10-02-2007, 11:36 PM

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 · #14 (**permalink**) 10-03-2007, 12:03 AM

Quote:

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 · #15 (**permalink**) 10-03-2007, 12:38 AM

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 · #16 (**permalink**) 10-03-2007, 01:21 AM

Quote:

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 · #17 (**permalink**) 10-03-2007, 08:08 AM

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 · #18 (**permalink**) 10-03-2007, 08:20 AM

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.