Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

There is no perfect solution. From a branding perspective OverSprayRX.com is best. From a SEO perspective paintoversprayremoval.com is best because it combines all of the highest volume keywords/phrases in one TLD.

As to the choice, Google of late seems to be favoring keyword/phrase TLD (top level domain) matches. Since overspray has the highest search volume of the keyphrases you mentioned so any of the keywords will be helpful.

"Overspray removal" has the most volume but "overspray" and "overspray removal alre also "paint overspray" is big. You could rank well for all three. The advantage isn't as great if the TLD is not an exact match however. So paintoversprayremoval.com is not as effective as oversprayremoval.com if the search query is for "overspray removal". It should however provide an advantage over a TLD that is a complete mismatch.

In any case I would buy every one of those combinations and implement 301 redirects to the one TLD of choice. They'll be a lot more expensive later or they could be unavailable or worse, a competitor snagged them and now has an advantage over other competitors.

From a usability standpoint the long hyphenated name is not ideal. If you were to use a long TLD you would be better to eliminate the hyphens and "camel code" the TLD such as:
PaintOversprayRemoval.com. It'll be a lot easier to point telephone callers to that TLD than the one with the hyphens. It is also theorized that G punishes long hyphenated TLDs. I don't see two hyphens as qualifying but you may want to keep this in mind when searching for domains.

As you can see there are a lot of considerations and I'm sure I've missed a few. The question I have is how much potential does your brand have? Will the value of the product have more value over time than the brand? I also ask whether you're an internet only business. If you plan offline marketing efforts as you've mentioned then you may prefer to go with the approach that values the brand more.

To above poster. Based on my research a url that has the words seperated lends better SEO. It has been eluded that the search engine does not see the three words put together separately but as one word. I read a study where they did an actual test trying both and the separate hyphenated words ended up significantly higher. What are your thoughts on this?

I only intend on using my OversprayRx.com on printed material to lend easy direction when communicating directly. My brand will bring new customers via direct selling and direct mail. In the event that they search OversprayRx the web site will also be optimized to guide them to me. The web site will predominantly be used for education of current customers and to drive new business to it.

Question are there any disadvantages of the 301 direct in reference to with engine optimization? If not I see no reason not to incorporate both...do you agree?

I agree with excellira, OversprayRx.com is the better of the two.

Also beyond SEO, be sure to register with the appropriate social media sites and use your best keywords to tag the content you upload.

good luck,

Steve

"Based on my research a url that has the words seperated lends better SEO."

The above statement can easily be disproven by conducting searches on competitive terms. At one time however, I may have agreed with you. I suspect that the data you are reading may be outdated.

My take on this is that you are over SEO'ing this. If you are looking to create a hard-selling internet business with little brand value you are best to go with the longer TLD. If you are looking to build a brand, then you will want to stick with the business name.

As far as the 301s go, no, it shouldn't hurt you. There is a very slight chance that the redirect may surprise a few visitors but the 301s should pass PR and send visitors to the correct URL. Check with your registrar and see if they do domain forwarding. Godaddy for example does these for free and they implement 301 redirects rather than 302 which would be detrimental.

Dear darhma,

OversprayRx.com also strikes me as being the better of the two.

An on the issue of Greg's (excellira's) advice about hyphenated domain names? Listen to what he's saying. People generally don't type in hyphens for lots of reasons, but generally, it's because at root, they're extra key strokes.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA
Follow me on www.twitter.com @Gary bloomer

Just an example of what I am talking about...

overspray-removal.com

autoclaimtech.com

Same web site content...different urls...is this okay.

No.

One of those sites has 33 pages indexed in Google. The other has 1. What Google has appropriately determined is that one site is duplicate content and has not indexed its pages. Usually it will pick the original content though this is not always the case (crawl frequency comes into play).

In this example, the site with 33 pages predates the poorly indexed site by 1 year. A good call on their part.

My recommendation would be to get some professional assistance with this project. Google is sensitive to these tactics. You can get away with a lot in the short-term but in the long-run they'll find you or one of your competitors will report you.

Just a thought, if you put as much effort into the user experience part of the development of your site then your site should be good.

I don't know about the rest of you but I have never seen a search engine buy goods and services online - they find the websites but they never buy!

Remember Your website is for Your customers not the search engines.

Good luck

@Nigel, I agree. Focus on the fundamentals and put this effort into generating excellent content. It'll take you a lot further.

The technology is changing all the time but Hyphens are not put there for the humans benefit :) (sorry Gary ). They are put there for the Search engines benefit :)

If you use oversprayrx the search engine cannot find a 'partial word' so it will not match on a search for 'overspray'

The searcher would have to specifically type oversprayrx and then the engine can find it.

That is why phrases are hyphenated.

here is a great example from one of my favourite european web sites :)

https://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2009/09/17/it-was-my-duty-to-save-the-team-...

with the hyphens, the engine can see each word distinctly in the phrase and can key on any of them

Since it is very very rare nowadays that people actually TYPE url's into a browser, the hyphens do not cause a problem for users, they simply see a link and click.

therefore - you need to use overspray-rx

this way you will get hits from users typing 'overspray' or from users typing rx.

Somebody please correct me if I am wrong :), as I said, the technology is changing all the time.

Thank you and good luck,

Matthew

That was true in the past but the converse is what is working now.

If you want to receive a boost you'll need an exact-match domain. A TLD of keyword1.com will match a query of keyword1 and potentially benefit from that match. Keyword1-keyword2.com or keyword1keyword2.com is less likely to help. And if I had to choose the two word TLD then I'd go for the keyword1keyword2.com format.

If you add hyphens and additional keywords then the bonus may be less or perhaps more likely vanish.

However, I would buy the other domains because, like land, they aren't making .coms anymore and the algorithm can change to your favor.

Dear darhma,

Matthew, you have no need to apologize. I'm sure you're NOT wrong and that search engines NEED the hyphen to do their jobs.

I simply don't know.

For certain things such as telephone numbers, my preference is to do WITHOUT the hyphens (555 123 4567 rather than 555-123-4567). I just think it's extra visual clutter that limits clarity.

I've no idea how a search engine looks at text, but a simple test of typing "oversprayrx" into Google (no space or hyphen) results in Google asking the simple question "Did you mean: overspray rx"?(WITHOUT the hyphen), so Google appears to know the difference between a space, no space, and a hyphen (WITH the hyphen in a search for "overspray-rx", Google does NOT ask the same qualifying question).

I think people, generally, tend NOT to type hyphens into search phrases, UNLESS they're in the habit of doing so.

It's also likely that more people, as searchers, search for particular terms by keywords and by keyword phrases than by domain name and that search software is wide ranging enough to recognize clusters of words and smaller clusters of letters, the latter of which it matches against its huge database for a match or for a non matching possible match. Hence Google asking its "Did you mean: ...? question.

It's also likely that more people, as searchers, search for particular terms by keywords as above UNLESS the searcher knows or recognizes a specific domain name and goes straight for that as their search solution, a solution they then book mark for later reference.

But, people search in different ways (by keyword, by keywords, by misspellings, by search phrases, and by domain name), so search engines compensate for all these issues, and many other variables, to aid the searcher's success.

As has been pointed out, technology changes regularly, so perhaps the issue and the question is moot.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA
Follow me on www.twitter.com @Gary bloomer

Note;
All the following urls are taken:overspray, overspray-removal, paintoversprayremoval, oversprayremoval. The most common quarries are overspray, paint overspray, overspray removal in this industry, over spray, over-spray removal.

Based on all the advise and on my own testing of other industries search queries. I have come to the conclusion that the best course is to use OversprayRx.com and make sure a few pages also have a pages with hyphens between words that further accentuate the additional search terms such as this OversprayRx.com/removal-process.com.

It was curious to find that although the domain name did best without hyphen the additional page descriptions (for the most part) only when hyphened gave the site the google boost.

Thank you all for your contribution.

Right. You can work keywords into the URL structure such as:

oversprayrx.com/overspray-removal
oversprayrx.com/removal-process

If you're using file extensions (prefer not to on new sites) it would be:

oversprayrx.com/overspray-removal.html
oversprayrx.com/removal-process.html

etc.

You can then optimize those pages for keyword phrases.