I have a little dilemma I hope you guys can help me solve. I created my first website in the beginning of this year. So needless to say i did a lot of errors. Some of the them involves the sites domain name and url.
For example the domain name has no keyword whatsoever in it and a lot of the sites url is not helping the sites seo.
So now my two problems are:
There are domain names with my keywords now available what would be the best way to use that to my advantage for my main page.
The url on my website that are long and don’t make any sense whatsoever how can i change that without loosing any links and having broken pages.
I don’t want to move the whole website to the new domain with the better name because of all the work i put in on promoting my current one.
thanks stevie and bermuda… I have already purchased the new domain so what would be the best way to use it for promoting my main domain(bad url) and helping it’s SEO.
Agree with Bermuda. While it can be an advantage to have relevant keyword(s) in your domain, folder and page names, it is by no means essential. It depends whether your existing site branding is popular and easy to use - there is little point in changing from a domain that people are used to typing in and is easy to type for a new domain, even if it does contain a relevant word.
If your URL structure is clunky and long-winded, that could make it more difficult for people to remember and type in, and whether you move the site to the new domain or not, it would be worth looking at whether you can streamline it.
If you do change any URLs, whether within the existing domain or on a new one, you should always put a ‘301 redirect’ on them - this means that any people going to the old URL are seamlessly whisked off to the new one, and search engines will transfer all the rankings and ratings from the old page to the new one. To do this simply add Redirect 301 [COLOR="DarkRed"]/oldpagewithhorriblename.htm[/COLOR] [COLOR="SeaGreen"]http://domain.com/newpage.htm[/COLOR]
to your .htaccess file. Note the old URL doesn’t need to include the domain name, but the new URL does.
I think domain names effect your SEO. Just my experience… every time i type something on a search engine the highest results always seems to be similar to the domain name
If domains are not containing any type of keyterms there is nothing to worry about because even the keyword containers are not all found at the top of Google. At present all forms of websites and domains extensions could get promoted professionally by the use of links.