Changing domain name, witch is better - brand name.com vs keyword + brand name.com?

[Karel_K]

Hi,

I just made one decision and now I'm bit worried, if I did right one. I hope that you can give me feedback and advice regarding it. I'm in hookah market, so I do not have any possibilities to buy adds, so SEO is really-really important to us. I know a lot of things what has to be done to perform better, but currently I have just few really important questions. In international market the main keyword is "hookah" and everything related to that. We are small company and our brand is not that well known and do not have high volume traffic on website. Hookah in front of that we tough will give better understanding to audience about what is the page.

Which domain name is better for SEO and also branding purposes? Currently we were using the first one without keyword, no we switched to the second one (just about week ago).

https://hekkpipe.com

https://hookahhekkpipe.com

Regarding it, some really important questions:

1. Would the longer version of domain helps us better rank with important keywords to us or not?

2. When we will write good content, which domain is more likely shared? I'm bit afraid that first one and that we made a mistake changing the domain name.  When the 1st one, then how big difference does it potentially make?

Thank you

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

Th number one result here in the UK for Hookah is Hookah-Shisha.com.  They've been clever by adding in both names.  I'm a local brand so we are 'Smileworks Liverpool' because I want to pick up local Liverpool search. But If I changed my name to SmileworksDentistLiverpool I'm more likely to get a penalty than a bump in search.

There have been  updates going on at google back in 2015 and then recently making the title of the business containing the name of what you're selling less important and presumably in the future this is going to increase to fight spam.

It's a local thing though.  So if you set up a local business and call it Braces Liverpool or HookahLiverpool then you can get a quick win in the maps but it'll soon be filtered out.

So be natural and make the name of your brand descriptive but not stuffed with keywords. I would imagine that Hookah-shisha is a really great site with strong implicit user feedback and time on site and low bounce rate that answers users questions about how to buy, use and the issues surrounding Shisha and Hookah.

I'll also bet it was created before this algorithm tweak.  To me HookahHekpipe.com does sound slightly 'unnatural' so I'd have avoided it but am sure it's not going to make only a small amount of difference when compared with the quality of your content, UX, implicit user feedback and your link profile.  I'm seeing a trend towards google not 'punishing' so much rather they just 'ignore' and don't give you any extra love for adding the odd slightly unnatural sounding keyword in there. HekpipeHookah sounds more natural. Like a company here in Liverpool called 'The Liverpool Brace Place' or 'City Dental' which have the keyword in there but it's 'natural' sounding.

Everything you do now needs to be natural and done for the users and not the search engines. There are still basic must haves but even these are becoming less and less important as time goes on.

[Karel_K]

Thank you Ed for a nice and good answer. Hekkpipe is not pushing locally, we would like to become international brand. This is good feedback that hookahhekkpipe.com doesn't sound good. When we aim to become also important player in out niche, is then better option for example to keep turn back to hekkpipe.com  or  should it be hekkpipehookah.com (on SEO purpose and clearness what is Hekkpipe)? On brand wise it seems to me that it is easier to brand hekkpipe.com.

In local business perspective it is really good information, how to gain a change to rank higher.

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

I've just done some more research here.  So Hekkpipe is your brand? And you're worried that people might not know that means it's a portable (and epic by the way) sort of 'picnic / skatepark / on the go hookah'.  But also you presumably don't want people thinking it's an ecig!

OK so now I understand a bit better I would certainly have Hookah in the name of the brand.  Not for google for people.  If you'd said right at the get-go My site 'portablehookah.com' or 'picnichookah.com' wants to do x, y and z then I'd instantly have known what it was all about.

Also - and very interestingly - I'm a dentist and have never had a dedicated page for 'Smile Makeovers' because it's broad and competes with all the elements of a smile makeover like implants and dental stuff.  But we've always ranked for 'smile makeover' because our URL is 'Smileworks'  Also "The Brace Place" was really hard to beat to the number one spot for 'Braces' but we did do it eventually.  So i'd say you're perhaps trying to solve the wrong problem here.

Unless you are going to do multinational advertising so that the whole world knows that Hekkpipe means 'Portable Hookah' then i'd put it somewhere in there so people know what they are looking for and looking at.  It's a great idea and a beautiful website but I literally wasn't sure what it was from any of your URL examples. SO why not spell it out for the masses.  People are not that smart and especially in my niche we have to spell out lots of stuff that is not always the most elegant and 'cool' but it gets the job done and people understand and when they understand they buy.

Like I'd want one of these now - if I hadn't given up my ecig in favour of gum. Think about expressing your brand in terms of what you are for and also what you are against. Sometimes it's useful to say what you are not so people can better understand what you are.  Does that make sense?  So you are for smoking and activities and healthy outdoorsy stuff and parties and being cool.  What you are not is a whole load of things that you need to spell out to the potential buyers  - who maybe hookah users or ecig users or just people who like cool stuff or they may be outdoorsy types or super-cool social types.

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

Can I also note that I don't think you've made enough of the benefits of this thing. 'Features' is great but that's more B2B, benefits is B2C.  People want to feel liberated and you've done this great with your imagery but the copy and words perhaps need more depth to them.

Put more copy on the site.  I know it looks beautiful and you don't want to interfere with the design but copy sells not images.  It doesn't have to be long but explain the benefits and problems that you're solving right at the beginning.