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Which is better - a domain targeting a city or state?

by infohog
17 replies
Before I run off and purchase a dozen domain names to cover everything I was hoping to get some Warrior opinions.

Say I have a nice little taco restaurant (or whatever) in Toledo Ohio and a very limited budget to purchase domains. Which is a better domain name?:

best-tacos-in-toledo. com

or

best-tacos-in-ohio. com

In other words, for a local business that gets a lot of out of city/state foot traffic is it wise to have a domain that covers the whole state or narrow it to a specific city or region. Or best to bite the bullet and buy both domain names?

Thanks for any advice given!
#city #domain #state #targeting
  • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
    First off all, you're welcome to the Michigan domains. Leave the Ohio domains alone.

    What will people be searching for? That's the key. If I were searching for the best tacos in Ohio, I think I'd expect to find places near me or, if I were a traveler, I'd want to find places near where I am going.

    If I'm driving through Columbus, for example, I'm probably not going to go out of my way to get tacos in Toledo. If I live in Columbus, I'm not likely to drive to Toledo to pick up tacos for dinner. Instead, I'd probably search for the best tacos in Columbus.

    I'd probably only search for the best tacos in Ohio if I regularly drove throughout the state.

    Toledo is also a border city. If I were in Michigan near Toledo, would I search for the best tacos in Michigan, the best tacos in Ohio or the best tacos in Toledo? I think I'd search for the best tacos in Toledo, assuming that's the nearest big city.
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    • Profile picture of the author infohog
      Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert View Post

      First off all, you're welcome to the Michigan domains. Leave the Ohio domains alone.

      What will people be searching for? That's the key. If I were searching for the best tacos in Ohio, I think I'd expect to find places near me or, if I were a traveler, I'd want to find places near where I am going.

      If I'm driving through Columbus, for example, I'm probably not going to go out of my way to get tacos in Toledo. If I live in Columbus, I'm not likely to drive to Toledo to pick up tacos for dinner. Instead, I'd probably search for the best tacos in Columbus.

      I'd probably only search for the best tacos in Ohio if I regularly drove throughout the state.

      Toledo is also a border city. If I were in Michigan near Toledo, would I search for the best tacos in Michigan, the best tacos in Ohio or the best tacos in Toledo? I think I'd search for the best tacos in Toledo, assuming that's the nearest big city.
      Good points. Thanks for the tips.
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      Matthew D.
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  • Profile picture of the author Russell Taylor
    I would go for the domain name with the city if you only had one choice. My reasoning is that even though someone may be searching for best tacos in ohio, chances are they won't drive too far away to get to your taco place unless they're die-hard taco fans.

    If you have a domain name with the city in it, your consumer is probably much more targeted and probably has a better chance of visiting your taco restaurant.

    It also would depend on what service you're offering; if its a specialized service that is not freely available and perhaps only one of few in the state, then a state domain name may be better.

    Personally though, I would purchase both domain names, optimize them for both keywords and see which one performs better.
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    • Profile picture of the author infohog
      Originally Posted by Russell Taylor View Post

      I would go for the domain name with the city if you only had one choice. My reasoning is that even though someone may be searching for best tacos in ohio, chances are they won't drive too far away to get to your taco place unless they're die-hard taco fans.

      If you have a domain name with the city in it, your consumer is probably much more targeted and probably has a better chance of visiting your taco restaurant.

      It also would depend on what service you're offering; if its a specialized service that is not freely available and perhaps only one of few in the state, then a state domain name may be better.

      Personally though, I would purchase both domain names, optimize them for both keywords and see which one performs better.
      I think you're right, Russell, purchasing both is probably the wise route to go. Thank you.
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      Matthew D.
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  • Profile picture of the author webdelux
    You want to use less hyphens first off. I would use as much of the term you want to get results in as possible. Do you want ohio serach results or toledo?
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    • Profile picture of the author infohog
      Originally Posted by webdelux View Post

      You want to use less hyphens first off. I would use as much of the term you want to get results in as possible. Do you want ohio serach results or toledo?
      Web - about hyphens, I use to think that also but then I read some post here at the forum that state it doesn't matter if you use a hyphen or not? At least in Google's eyes.
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      • Profile picture of the author reapr
        Originally Posted by infohog View Post

        Web - about hyphens, I use to think that also but then I read some post here at the forum that state it doesn't matter if you use a hyphen or not? At least in Google's eyes.
        I use a hyphen in some domain names and have never really noticed a difference unless i-buy-a-domain-name-like-this . com.

        Go with the city name. I have seen some interesting rankings for and example using the state abbrevaited name such ...

        BestTacosInToledoOH. com

        Something you may wish to research.
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        • Profile picture of the author reapr
          Well I have never ate my own words so quick after that last post this popped up in a some keyword search. Look about half way down the page! And 9 million results broad term!

          Google
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      • Profile picture of the author ContentArticleWriter
        Originally Posted by infohog View Post

        Web - about hyphens, I use to think that also but then I read some post here at the forum that state it doesn't matter if you use a hyphen or not? At least in Google's eyes.

        Well, it is a matter of choice. But most SEO experts and webmasters do advise against hyphens, ONLY because if people are typing the domain name directly into the browser too many hyphens may get confusing. Now, let me give you my own example. When I started my blog my husband gave it a name with like three hyphens, then optimized my blog. That, along with all the content in it, made it get indexed almost instantly in Google and started ranking in SERPS within days. SO, although it is advised to keep the hyphens at a minimum, if you optimize well for your particular keywords/key phrases, you should not have any problems placing in SERPS.
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  • Profile picture of the author Online Bliss
    Web - about hyphens, I use to think that also but then I read some post here at the forum that state it doesn't matter if you use a hyphen or not? At least in Google's eyes.
    This has been a matter of debate so many times on this forum.
    I sometimes use hyphens also however
    I believe it's all about how easy your customer will remember the name of
    your website without having to search. Especially in a local area.

    If the name of your site was in a commercial Jingle
    would it contain hyphens? :rolleyes:
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    • Profile picture of the author abednego
      Originally Posted by Online Bliss View Post

      This has been a matter of debate so many times on this forum.
      I sometimes use hyphens also however
      I believe it's all about how easy your customer will remember the name of
      your website without having to search. Especially in a local area.

      If the name of your site was in a commercial Jingle
      would it contain hyphens? :rolleyes:
      Great analogy about the Jingle - it would definitely not contain hyphens!

      I personally never use them.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by Online Bliss View Post

        This has been a matter of debate so many times on this forum.
        I sometimes use hyphens also however
        I believe it's all about how easy your customer will remember the name of
        your website without having to search. Especially in a local area.

        If the name of your site was in a commercial Jingle
        would it contain hyphens? :rolleyes:
        If you want your customer to remember your domain name (like from a jingle or newspaper ad), then hyphens may be a problem.

        If you want clicks from search (main site, downloadable menu, coupons, etc.), hyphens don't make a difference.

        While it may not apply here, there are definitely times when hyphens are desirable...

        Top 10 Worst Domain Names Unofficial DreamHost Blog

        20 More Unfortunate Domain Names Unofficial DreamHost Blog

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        • Profile picture of the author Fred_Acker
          Hi infohog,

          You can drop the "best" and the dashes. Go straight for the tacocityname.com

          It's much easier to remember and it'll work much better for seo (especially local). One thing to remember though...

          Be sure your client (I'm assuming this is for a client) has all offers mathced to this domain. i.e. business cards, fliers, commercials... etc.

          Now if it's not a client and you're building a portal site then you should still go tacocityname.com simply because it's usually what people will look for in se's.

          And, if you plan on upgrading this portal to reach out to more cities then you can use the tacosstatename.com as a main site connecting all your little portals.

          Does that make sense? Sheesh, I hope so.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rob Thayer
    Which is better: best-tacos-in-ohio.com or best-tacos-in-toledo.com? The answer is: Neither.

    First you have to decide if you are going after a "branding" URL or a search URL.

    In the case of the former, you're mostly going to have type-in traffic from people who have seen your URL in your marketing materials. Therefore, it has to be as short as possible, as memorable as possible, and hopefully not have any dashes.

    If you're going after search traffic -- which I assume is what your intent is -- then you need to "think like a searcher". If I'm in Toledo and I have a hankering for tacos, I'm not going to be searching using the keyword "ohio". Unless you have a chain of Mexican restaurants across the state or are looking to target the rare blogger who is on a quest to document the best tacos in the United States, I don't think that's the way to go.

    If you do a Google keyword search for the term "best tacos in toledo", you get very little (< 10) in the way of monthly search volume. Since one of the easiest ways to get a site ranked highly in the SERPs quickly is the use of the search keywords in the domain name, I wouldn't want to use either of those names.

    The problem as I see it is that there simply are not a lot of people searching for Mexican food (tacos or otherwise) in Toledo. If you're looking to bring in new customers to your place purely through online search, it doesn't look very promising. The best search term I could find was "toledo mexican restaurants", which only showed 58 searches a month.

    In my opinion, your best bet is to use a domain that is based on the name of your establishment, and try driving traffic to your site using banner ads placed on community portals such as Toledo.com.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheDebtEliminator
    Use the local domain first ... that is probably the number one place for traffic to come from?

    Then put the state,and any other local area into the first paragraph on the first page, highlight it. In the search engines will pick it up, if that was what the Google search was for.

    All the best ... Ron
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  • Profile picture of the author Online Bliss
    You can drop the "best" and the dashes. Go straight for the tacocityname.com
    In addition there is nothing wrong with capitalizing the beginning of the individual words.

    TacoCityName.com
    as many people already know it will access your site just fine.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tiger66466
      This may a bit ass backwards from what you're asking but here's something I'm working on (no results yet as I'm still building the sites). I bought a broad domain name and added states on as a sub. I will then probably add in some city pages on these subs. It's an experiment to see how things go. It may tank and it may do well. My goal isn't to make a lot of money per subdomain but for it to add up to something decent.

      Granted when it was suggested to go with the subdomains it was mentioned it isn't the BEST option as far as SEO goes but doing that is better than doing NOTHING if you are in the position of not being able to afford each state (or city) as a separate domain.

      In your case if it's not a financial issue - I'd go ahead and get the main keyword with just the city and the main keyword with just the state - but only if you were wanting to target other cities in the state as well. If you are only focusing on the ONE city - stick with the city domain.

      Not sure if I wrote anything helpful but sorry I do like to ramble. lol

      Stacy
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