How does a business name affect SEO?

[optimalwebinc]

We have a client that's changing the name of their medical practice from the doctor's name to their region + "eye care."  However, they recently told us they're changing it from "eye care" to "eye center."

Many of their direct competitors use "eye care" in their name.  I ran a quick keyword analysis and it shows "eye care" gets a million US searches a month, whereas "eye center" gets 450k searches a month.

While that alone would make me suggest they keep "eye care," I ran a keyword difficulty analysis and found that "eye center" has a KW difficulty of 41 and "eye care" has a KW difficulty of 78.

Should we recommend they stay with "eye care" because it gets more searches?  Or is it better to go with "eye center" because it'll be easier to rank for?

[anthonytjm]

I think it is always a better practice to try to keep the desired keyword in your domain name. However, if they are set on center, you can always make a silo for care and still do plenty well in ranking for both keyword phrases.

In thinking this out loud, I might suggest keeping "eye center" as there domain and use "eye care" as the blog that supports the domain. This way you would be covering more ground and have a two pronged strategy to hit both choice key word phrases.

[AlanMosley]

I would go with "eye care center"

[APICDA]

I second Alans comment!

[MalcolmGibb]

Although keywords in domain name do have relevance in ranking it should not be the sole focus of a business. I would rather have a solid brand name with no keywords in the domain than some long domain with brand+KW for the sole purpose of ranking. I work in highly competitive verticals where none of the top 5 have KW's in the domain, and the ones that do tend to rank at the bottom. It's all about branding and authority.

[AlanMosley]

I think that depends who you are. If you really are a brand then fine, but if you a small business cutting lawns, then lawnmowingdallas.com would be the way to go.

People can nly reconnize or remeber so many brands, we can't all be a household name.

[rmontanez]

I agree with Alan.  I have a few clients (lawyers) that I suggest getting a domain name with their practice and their area (e.g. type of law + area).  This works great if they are mid level firm.  They care more about traffic than branding.

[optimalwebinc]

The focus below is mainly on the domain name, what about the actual business name?  Think this would be equally (or more important) from an SEO standpoint as it would appear multiple times in the pages, title etc.

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

You are losing the big picture......the content on the site is the content. New content can continue to focus on "eye  care" or "eye center" regardless what the core name is.......  Make sure if they change the name and change the url you redirect from the old url to the new. Remember, you also have the ability to generate additional "defensive urls' on the same subjects that support either term.

Good luck. Please show me the thumbs up.

Mark