Is this Domain Change Worthwhile?

[Juller]

Hi-

I have a client who has setup a new criminal law firm in the last few months. The URL is like:

www.somenamelawyers.com

['somename' is the same # characters as their company name]

I have run a successful AdWords a/c for them and many of the big traffic and conversion keywords include 'criminal lawyers'. From a SEO perspective, the long goal is to get traffic for 'criminal lawyers' and keywords that phrase match that.

So I am considering migrating them to www.somenamecriminallawyers.com.

I have researched this issue and understand the technicalities involved in moving. My question here is 'is this change worthwhile'.

I think it is worthwhile because it really is in a sense rebranding them to be more clearly in a specific business domain, ie. criminal law. Also, they are a new outfit so they don't have a lot of backlinks yet. And mainly, they will get a SEO boost to their core keywords 'criminal lawyers'.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts-

Jules

[RobertFisher]

Jules

We work with quite a few law firms and I understand what you are wanting to accomplish. Since they are criminal lawyers, I will assume they are not trying to go nationwide with say...mesothelioma. Most criminal firms work within a city so my suggestion would be to use the city name as opposed to their name(s). This will also help with optimizing them locally (Google Places, Bing Business Portal, Yahoo Local).

Given they are a "new outfit," now is the time to make a change. Assuming you already have some ranking and some links, you do not want to have to redo that. You want to 301 redirect from url current site to url new site. This will preserve what you have. The only negative would be losing the authority or rank you now have so this will handle most of that (you will get roughly 90%).

On new site, make sure each attorney has a local listing as well as the firm. Being you are already doing Adwords, I would think the rest will be easy for you.

[RobertFisher]

Jules

We work with quite a few law firms and I understand what you are wanting to accomplish. Since they are criminal lawyers, I will assume they are not trying to go nationwide with say...mesothelioma. Most criminal firms work within a city so my suggestion would be to use the city name as opposed to their name(s). This will also help with optimizing them locally (Google Places, Bing Business Portal, Yahoo Local).

Given they are a "new outfit," now is the time to make a change. Assuming you already have some ranking and some links, you do not want to have to redo that. You want to 301 redirect from url current site to url new site. This will preserve what you have. The only negative would be losing the authority or rank you now have so this will handle most of that (you will get roughly 90%).

On new site, make sure each attorney has a local listing as well as the firm. Being you are already doing Adwords, I would think the rest will be easy for you.

[Juller]

Thanks Robert that all makes sense and is useful.

I presume you do think the domain change is worth the effort?

Thanks-

Jules

[RobertFisher]

Absolutely. Too often with law firms and other pro practices their first pass is all about the site and name being an icon to their current or soon to be greatness. You have to focus on what do people query in the search bar (and get them to understand that is what you do): Felony theft, DWI/DUI Defense/Criminal assault, etc.

Typically, with local firms, I find the terms with localization are best with the query term. So, Omaha-criminal-lawyers.com, omaha-criminal-defense.com, etc. Out of curiosity I checked the following in adwords with keyword tool: Criminal defense, dwi defense, criminal lawyer. (I used Omaha as I have no clients there).

What came back was interesting: Criminal Lawyers has many more queries than criminal defense, but when you look at one Google through out along with mine - criminal law, it gets as many queries as criminal lawyer/lawyers and is much less competitive.

You will have to look with the local added, but I think it is a good change as long as you url to url 301 for all that are applicable from old to new site.

Hope it helps, PM me and let me know how it works out.

[Juller]

Great. I'll investigate the localization options and 'criminal law'. Thanks a lot for the help!