Advice Needed Re: Choosing Domain Name

5 replies
  • SEO
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Hey,

My girlfriend is in the process of opening her own insurance agency here in our city that is scheduled to open Jan 1, 2011. She is an independent contractor of a large insurance company here in the United States.

She is throwing around ideas for her domain name for her website. I have a few examples I am going to give and I would greatly appreciate any and all thoughts on this. I am the last thing from an SEO expert, but I do know a little about it.

I know the success SEO can depend on how keyword rich the domain is, correct? She found hercityinsurance.com (her city obviously being the proper name of where she is located) for sale, but for around $2K. She plans on being in this area for literally decades, so it's not like this will be used for 1-2 years.

She had someone else who had claimed to do SEO work in the past just reccommend hercity then her state abbrev. insurance.net. Example would be RichmondVAInsurance.net. This is available. The .com version of this site is claimed and would be one of her competitors. The concern I had there was that in the offline market people tend to associate .com to every domain name.

The other option would be insurehercity&stateabbrev.com...which is available.

The keyword searches hercity insurance and hercity stateabbrev insurance gets around 2.9K and 1.9K monthly searches according to the adwords estimation tool.

How important are these keyword phrases in the domain name? What's everyone's thoughts about .com or .net?

All help is appreciated!
#advice #choosing #domain #needed
  • Profile picture of the author RealEcon
    If you can get the keyword in the domain its best, also it doesnt really matter much if you take the .net or the .com, although the .com is better if you plan on selling the site later for branding purposes.

    If you want the site to rank quickly get the exact match domain for the keyword you want to rank for or get an aged domain with PR. These type of domains rank the quickest.
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  • Profile picture of the author Odhinn
    I always say go with .com or nothing, simply because it's so much easier to rank a .com.

    have you thought about buying herstateinsurance.com and setting up a subdomain with the name of the city? That would be really strong in case she wants to set up sub-sites for different cities if business expands.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Odhinn View Post

      I always say go with .com or nothing, simply because it's so much easier to rank a .com.
      That is not true at all. The TLD has nothing to do with ranking.

      In most cases, I wouldn't care about the .com, .net, .bs... whatever.

      This is what I recommend to my clients. Buy two domains.

      Get the keyword rich .net domain you mentioned for SEO purposes. Online, it doesn't matter what the extension is. You just want to be ranked #1 and have people click on it.

      For offline marketing (business cards, flyers, commercials, whatever), I would buy HerNameInsurance.com (or something similar). I would then have the HerNameInsurance.com forwarding to the other domain. That way people have an easy to remember .com to type in, but it takes them to the same place.

      In general, people are more familiar with .com's. Therefore, if she runs an ad with the .net, she is probably doing a favor to her competitor with the .com because some people will type the .com out of habit.

      Hope that helps.
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      • Profile picture of the author alecr45
        Thanks so much for the replies!

        Anyone else with anything to share?
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  • Profile picture of the author warrich
    Just make sure not to go for long tail keywords as you mention in your thread.. Short and simple looks better..
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