Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best Domain Name for Life Coaching Site
-
Hello,
I am an NLP health coach. I am starting to work with both life threatening illnesses and minor diagnoses. NLP is a type of personal development. I'm wondering what your opinion of the best domain would be, keeping in mind branding, SEO, and usability/rememberability. The term "NLP" is not well known. I will be doing both phone coaching and in-person coaching. My other website (BobWeikel.com) is not very strong because of the lack of keywords in the domain, but it's easy to remember.
Options are:
BoiseHealthCoach.com (I'm in Boise Idaho)
or whatever you suggest.
-
-
Keywords people get to me with are
NLP Boise
NLP Life Coach
NLP Health Coach
and related terms.
I want them to find me eventually with terms such as
NLP Coach
Health Coach
Life Coach
-
What are the keywords people use when looking for your service?
-
Let me zoom up to the 30,000 feet level to offer a much broader perspective than a techie/geeky approach that draws on general principles. The reason is simple: your situation is very particular.
As i'm sure you are aware, NLP is hugely controversial. Many consider it a discredited and crackpot theory roughly on a par with the flat earth society. I'm not saying that's true....only that those doing a quick Google search might reach that conclusion.
The Wikipedia article on NLP has a bone of contention for years. It is currently edit-protected and includes the sentence:
"NLP is unsupported by current scientific evidence, and uses incorrect and misleading terms and concepts."
In a former life, I was the editor of a fitness publication. We published an article that drew on some NLP concepts. It provoked a furious response -- up to, and including, suggestions from otherwise rational people that all those responsible for publishing the article should be fired and blacklisted!
Again, I'm not saying I agree or regret publishing the article.
But given all the above, I can see no arguments in favour of including NLP in your domain name and many against.
I am also not suggesting you hide who you are, what you do, or what you believe.
Only that there is a time and place for everything.
-
Hi Bob
On the SEO side, keywords in domain names don't directly matter as much as they used to, especially with Google. That's the general consensus these days.
On the Usability side, it still helps if there is a keyword or two in the domain name, it helps with that remember-ability as you mentioned plus can help with Click Through Rates if it 'does what it says on the tin'.
What the keyword(s) is depends largely on whether Brand or Product/Service is your most important selling point.
If 'Bob Weikel' is your brand that you'd like to be the main selling point, then include those words.
If 'Health Coach' is what you'd like to be foremost known for, then go for that.
And of course, your suggestion of 'bobweikelhealthcoach.com' includes both brand and service and isn't too long, though more difficult to remember perhaps than either or. Perhaps drop the Bob and become known as 'w****eikelhealthcoach.com' as a suggestion.
There's no definitive right or wrong, it's what best matches your business purpose & goals.
If you haven't already read it, have a read of a Domain Guide here on SEOmoz which may help you further.
I hope all that does help you out,
Regards
Simon
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
-
Can access my site using www
Hello, when I try to access my website using www i would like it to redirect to non www but instead it shows a sal error message.
On-Page Optimization | | Voopoo2 -
On Site Question: Duplicate H2...
Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages. This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | GTAMP0 -
Multiple domains for the same business
My client purchased over 500 URLs for targeting various customers and ranking for different keywords. It is for the same business though. What is the best strategy to deal with this kind of approach in your opinion. They use different meta data for each of the URLs starting with brand name in meta title. Are there any other points to keep in mind when developing strategy for all those URLs. Is this a good approach?
On-Page Optimization | | alicaomisem1 -
What is the best way to execute a geo redirect?
Based on what I've read, it seems like everyone agrees an IP-based, server side redirect is fine for SEO if you have content that is "geo" in nature. What I don't understand is how to actually do this. It seems like after a bit of research there are 3 options: You can do a 301 which it seems like most sites do, but that basically means if google crawls you in different US areas (which it may or may not) it essentially thinks you have multiple homepages. Does google only crawl from SF-based IPs? 302 passes no juice, so probably don't want to do that. Yelp does a 303 redirect, which it seems like nobody else does, but Yelp is obviously very SEO-savvy. Is this perhaps a better way that solves for the above issues? Thoughts on what is best approach here?
On-Page Optimization | | jcgoodrich0 -
Best practice for Portfolio Links
I have a client with a really large project portfolio (over 500 project images), which causes their portfolio page to have well over the 100 links that are recommended. How can I reduce this without reducing the number of photos they can upload?
On-Page Optimization | | HochKaren0 -
Hyphens in Domain Name
I have a client who is a business broker. I have just begun working with them, and they are trying to determine the best domain name to use - they have several. business-broker-alabama.com vs businessbrokeralabama.com Which one of these has more value? I know that search engines have somewhat devalued keywords. The first one probably has a little more SEO value, but is going to be a drag in terms of marketing -- saying "business hyphen broker hyphen alabama" is going to get old for them. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | csmithal0 -
Best practice for franchise sites with duplicated content
I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content. I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues. All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Again Aaron
On-Page Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency0 -
Best Practice for Deleting Pages
What is the best SEO practice for deleting pages? We have a section in our website with Employee bios, and when the employee leaves we need to remove their page. How should we do this?
On-Page Optimization | | Trupanion0