Changing the domain - To do or not to do - that is the question

[DavidLenehan]

Hello,

I am in the process of updating my website (hopefully to improve SEO). It is a major update as we are going from 20,000 product line to 200,000 product lines and hiring two marketing people to work on more content. Unfortunately, I think my domain isn't the best

i.e.

www.direct-tractorparts.com

Some of the parts have long part numbers and I am worried that my URLs will be too long i.e. I will lose link juice from the search engines.

typical url

www.direct-tractorparts.com/6XY41210TTTAZCAz2

I am thinking of launching the new site with a shorter domain name rather than updating the old site.  My site doesn't have that many backlinks but generates a decent level of business for my company. Not sure if it would be worth setting up another brand or not

Anyone got any advice?

[baptisteplace]

If the actual site have decent keywords in the url and is old enough, you should keep it.

Switch to another domain if the domain name is extremely good.

What domain authority do you have on the actual domain ?

[Phil_]

www.direct-tractorparts.com/abc

If abc is a tractor part that will be searched for then your url seems pretty good to me. Your site is not available so I can only guess but you might want to look at categorising the site. eg where abc is a tractor engine part:

www.direct-tractorparts.com/engines/abc

I would not be concerned with urls this length but maybe someone else more expreieced might have a different opinion.

Phil

[iAnalyst.com]

There are a couple ways to go about this.

1. It would be better if the new domain doesn't have a dash (-) in the name. Dashes are considered best practice after the .com. For example: www.brandname.com/dashes-go-here-instead

Then you could just 301 redirect the old domain to the new one so you get credit for most of the links you had on there.

2. The deeper you get down in the site your URLS are going to get longer anyway. Example www.mystore.com/company/product/long-part-number

Changing your URL just to save characters isn't worth it. You would only wind up getting rid of a short amount of characters anyway (unless you plan on buying www.ab.com).

So only change the URL if it would be better for your brand in the long run.

[Goetzman]

yeah I agree with searchpl, dashes in domain names should be one of the last resorts of making a domain name

[krissy-cca]

I would agree with Phil, I think the URL is pretty good. Ensure you categorise your site so your URLs don't end up massive and you'll be fine.

Your URL isn't actually that long.

DD

[DavidLenehan]

thanks for all the pointer.

I know the dash was a bad idea. We kind of fell into ecommerce by accident and it has been a case of trial and error.

My domain authority is 26/100 - so a lot of work to be done.

[dmac]

I think having a dash is no longer a negative thing. Matt Cutts has made many open public statements about using dashes in the URL. We currently have a domain in an extremely competitive keyword "keyword1--keyword2.com". it's performing extremely well after about three months. It's also a brand new domain. If you do end up going with the newer domain, make sure you use a permanent redirect (301) from your aged domain to your new one. This will pass most, if not all, of your link juice to your new domain. Google also tends to give new domains a quick boost in SERPs. This usually doesn't last too long, but could be a welcome surprise if your website of high quality. Cheers! Dmac