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.
SEO Value in Switching to ".NYC" Domain?
-
Recently " .NYC" domains have become available for purchase to New York City based businesses.
I own and operate a New York City commercial real estate firm, nyc-officespace-leader.com. New domain would be www.metro-manhattan.nyc
Our existing domain has been in use for seven years.would there be an SEO benefit to transferring our site to .NYC domain? Or would a new domain kill our domain rank?
Thanks, Alan
-
Hi All:)
Popping back in here with a little proviso. While I think The Sage's suggestion is creative, I would strongly stipulate that if you do choose to go with a multi-domain approach, your NAP (name, address, phone) must reside on only one of the two websites. And do not use the second domain in any of your citation building. You do not want Google getting mixed up finding the same basic contact details on two different websites - it can create a nightmare of merged and duplicate listings, negatively impacting the clarity of your citations and the ranking power they provide. As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of multi-site approaches for local businesses in most cases, because of these risks, and if you do decide to go with this route, do be careful to run the second site as a completely separate entity that does not share basic NAP with the main, local site. Hope this advice is helpful!
-
As a real estate brokerage firm our business is local in nature. If we can get improved ranking for such terms as "New York City office space" it would help our business immensely.
Your suggestion of using both .com and .NYC is very good.
Thanks,
Alan -
I ran your existing site through the Moz platform here and discovered a domain authority of 24 for your existing domain. While this isn't awful, it's not so great that you'd want to hold on to it with an ironclad grip. Remember -- throwing good money after bad is a sure sign of a big loser.
Ultimately, no one here knows what Google will do in the next couple of years with regard to the new TLDs. Some will argue that they will be treated like .info domains and penalized in search results, as they aren't considered "premium Web real estate." I personally agree with the camp that thinks that as Google attempts to deliver more relevant traffic, having your location (or your primary topic) in your TLD can only be a good thing.
But there's no reason you can't have both. You can use your existing .com to promote your corporate identity, as it does now, and utilize your new .NYC domain name to deliver content that is targeted and relevant to NYC locals, for example, neighborhood-based content. This was the same recommendation we made to our client at Keller Williams NYC. I'm posting the same advice here because I'd like to see it become the new "best practice," because to me, it certainly makes the most sense.
-
Hi Alan!
I'm with Egol on this - if you're going to go to the trouble of changing to a new domain (and all of the redirect, branding and citation cleanup this would involve) I would only suggest doing so for a better domain than the one you're mentioning. Other community members may have differing opinions on this, but the hyphenated domain doesn't strike me as strong enough to make all the work involved in switching domains seem like a good tradeoff.
-
Right now you have a problem with your best clients typing in NYCOfficeSpaceLeader.com or NYC-Office-Space-Leader.com or NYC_Office_Space_Leader.com (and a host of typos).
If you go to the proposed domain your best clients will be typing... MetroManhatten.nyc and MetroManhatten.com and Metro-Manhatten.com.
Those domains, to me, are like throwing traffic away.
Phone conversations go like this...
Guy: What's your website?
You: Metro hypen Manhattan.NYC
Guy: Huh? MetroHikingManhattan.com?
You: No. M-E-T-R-O hyphen-like-a-minus-sign M-A-N-H-A-T-T-A-N dot com
Guy: huh? can you repeat that ?
You: OMG!
Guy: OMG!
I would make the name of my biz really simple. Get a good .com domain without hypens. I'd be willing to spend good money to get an appropriate domain that anybody will clearly understand on a telephone. If you don't get a .com then whoever owns the .com is going to get lots of your type-in traffic.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Are core pages considered "cornerstones"?
To check that I understand the terminology, "cornerstone articles" are posts (or pages) that have some extensive, detailed, important information about a subject that other blog posts and articles can link to in reference, right? For example, a website for an auto repair shop might have a blog post about what cold weather does to a car's transmission and that post could link to a cornerstone "explainer" article that goes into more detail explaining to car-dummies like me what a transmission even DOES. But are core pages also in this category of cornerstone content? Or are they something entirely different and should be constructed accordingly? By "core pages", I mean the base-level pages about what your business is and does. For the repair shop example, I mean things like an "About Us" page or a "Services" page*. *or broken up into individual pages listing the services related to brakes, engine, wheels, etc. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | BrianAlpert780 -
Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo
I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different. I am a local electrical contractor. I specialize in a service and not a product. Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA. Although new to the web I am not new to the trade. Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose. Now I want to put them to good use. Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide. My primary site is empireelec.com A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com. Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it. It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker. That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician. It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com I can provide a unique phone number for each site. Am I going about this all wrong? Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.
Local Website Optimization | | empireelec1 -
Improving SEO with no blog
I have a client who understands the value of content for SEO - however getting them to provide some content has proven an impossible task. I've tried every way to make it easy for them. I've offered to come over to their office myself and see if I can just take 15 minutes of their time and record their answers to a few questions. The response is that's a great idea, we'll set up a time...and no time is ever good. So I've thought, what can I do without them? Unfortunately, their industry is so technical and so niche I'd need to have a law degree to even begin to understand exactly what they do, and as they are in law it's probably better to have no content than content with something even slightly incorrect in it. For now, all I can do is summarize and share news from a government website to their social media accounts. It's not highly effective. Their on-page SEO for the main site is completely optimized. I've placed them in every free listing I can possibly find - both industry and local sites. I have them update me on any local events, conferences and/or trade shows they attend for possible backlinks. What else can I do? I suppose I fear that if I can't provide them any additional results, they will stop seeing the value in SEO services, and I'd have a hard time disagreeing as I can't think of what else to do for them. Thanks for any help!
Local Website Optimization | | everestagency1 -
Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL
Hi there, My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk? Thank you for your opinions!
Local Website Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Should I use pipe in title tags for local seo?
Hi, I've created a bunch of landing pages for local areas, reading, windsor, slough etc for the title tag I have for Windsor Emergency Electrician Windsor - BrandName should I be using a pipe in the tag to further help search engines learn/identify the location? Emergency Electrician | Windsor - BrandName Thank you Kev
Local Website Optimization | | otex1 -
How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO
Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis9 -
Image URLs changed 3 times after using a CDN - How to Handle for SEO?
Hi Mozzers,
Local Website Optimization | | emerald
Hoping for your advice on how to handle the SEO effects an image URL change, that changed 3 times, during the course of setting up a CDN over a month period, as follows: (URL 1) - Original image URL before CDN:www.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg (URL 2) - First CDN URL (without CNAME alias - using WPEngine & their own CDN):
username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg (URL 3) - Second CDN URL (with CNAME alias - applied 3 weeks later):
cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg When we changed to URL 2, our image rankings in the Moz Tool Pro Rankings dropped from 80% to 5% (the one with the little photo icons). So my questions for recovery are: Do I need to add a 301 redirect/Canonical tag from the old image URL 1 & 2 to URL 3 or something else? Do I need to change my image sitemap to use cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg instead of www.? Thanks in advance for your advice.0 -
Does the Location of my Server effect my SEO?
Does the geographic Location of my Server effect my SEO? HELP US! We are arguing for 3 weeks already. My partner has mentioned multiple times in the past that "since 2013 google does not require your server to be in the country you are targeting for seo"
Local Website Optimization | | DanielBernhardt
And that actually all they care about is if its a good and fast server - not where its physically located in the world. I am a strong believer that the geographic location of your server directly effects your SEO ranking... lets say if you want to target www.google.ru for your seo, best you have a server located in Russia for hosting your website.. WHO IS RIGHT? Choose the winner and base the facts.
If anybody has the correct answer and information to base it on it will help us alot - and maybe even spare some unnecessary violent between us two! we found some articles across the web, sadly they are all dated back to 2012.... Thanks in Advance for all the help guys!0