Shoud I change my domain name ?

[schwarzes]

Hello,

I am a web developer and I am working as a freelance since around 3 years now. I have a lot of long term clients who I work for. I have profiles in freelance sites as well with excellent ratings and feedbacks ( which bring me a lot of clients ).

I have noticed something recently so I wanted to ask you guys here. I have a domain name outsourcejobstome.com ( It is not complete, I still have to work on it). It is not in the first page of google for the keywords I target ( I don't really care either ), but I still used to get atleast 4-5 requests for Wordpress work every week, sometimes more.

Recently I have noticed a sharp decrease in the emails from the website. One of my client told me this recently..""Outsource" has a negative connotation in the US. We have a high unemployment now (around 10% across the US) and people are sensitive."

Do you think I should change my domain name ?

[ColinChia]

If you are ranking for your keyword already, I would keep that site...

...and, since your a wordpress developer, you won't have a problem just creating an identical site with the exact same layout as your old one - but new name?

That way you can have two websites - you don't need to fix what's not broken!

Hope this helps,

Colin

[paulgl]

Should the warriorforum.com change their domain?

To something that deals with internet marketing?

Or leave it alone?

Paul

[RanD]

The domain name is rather insignificant. That is not the problem. It can add a little boost initially, but it is not a big factor. What you need to do first is figure out the real problem. You mentioned noticing a decrease in emails from the site. Unfortunately that leaves things rather vague. You really need to take a look at the analytics and see what is going on.

Is the decrease due to reduced traffic, or due to reduced conversion? Look at what words people are using to get to your site, and what pages they visit when they are there. Redo your keyword research and make sure you are targeting the right ones. The terms people search on are not static, and you need to keep on top of that.

If traffic is fine, maybe there is something that is not converting the way it used to. People may be looking for more details of what you can do for them.

I took a look at your site and noticed a few small problems, and some larger ones. First, if it were me, I would remove the comments about trance music. For what you are going for, you really need to keep things professional. Like it or not, people will judge you on things like that. Beyond that, your services page is way too thin. It needs more detail about what services you provide, and should probably have an email option there too, as that is likely where people would look for the information they want and make a decision to contact you or not. Don't make them look for the contact page. I'm not even sure what to think about the "Portfolio" page. It's not a portfolio of work you have done. It looks like a listing of types of sites you could build, which would belong more with "services". The pictures used on the "profiles" page do not give a good idea of what the sites would be like. They aren't even cropped in a meaningful way. One would expect that clicking the picture would take you to a view of the full site, but it doesn't, and it needs to. The description of each site type, is not very informative. It seems to expect that the visitor already knows what all those site types are, and which one they want. What it needs to do is describe what those various formats are good for, and why one would be better for them over another. Your site seems to expect people to know exactly what they want before they get to it. What it needs to do is explain the various options and get them thinking about what they need/want. Your descriptions likely bring up more questions than they answer. If you leave them confused, they may go looking for the information elsewhere. The "Read More" button is completely unnecessary, and interrupts browsing since it takes them to a new page that doesn't really provide more information, and you end up just backing out of it. That is going to irritate people, and it takes them away from where you really want them to be. Those couple of sentences could, and should, be on the original page. Remove the "read more" and the image links. They are an annoyance, with no practical use. Or make the links useful and provide full site images and detailed information on the functionality of that type of site.

I understand that it is still a work in progress, but I still thought it might be helpful to share my thoughts from a visitors perspective. Just trying to be helpful.

OK, now here is a major problem. On the top of the "Portfolio page" and on top of all the "Read more" pages, there are various links under a heading called "Features". At first I thought it was taking me to detailed example of the features of that type of site, but it doesn't. it's actually a sidebar widget that is only on those portfolio pages. It takes you to a different site about the features of, what appears to be, a premium theme called "Awake", and it is exactly the same for each of your "portfolio" pages. It opens in the same window, and takes visitors completely off your site. Once they start clicking around on that site, you have lost them. If nothing else, that one thing may be bleeding most of your traffic away.