Ricko, Changing the domain name is like changing the address for your shop and I hope everybody will agree to the fact that when you change the address it is like starting your business all over again. This is a painful process and as your rightly pointed that remembering a new name is even more difficult. Please advise your client not to change the name if not necessary. Sometimes a single hyphen in the name can really deteriorate the brand which has been created. I strongly recommend not to change the name. Thanks
If he is persistant on getting the domain, which he shouldn't be but then again he shouldn't doubt the person he hired to do SEO. You could register your-company.com and 301 redirect it to yourcompany.com, even though it won't help much in relation to SEO, it's a better way to go about it then to host it at a different domain. Also tell him about the complications of changing any advertising he has done with the domain.. eg. business cards, flyers etc.
I strongly disagree with their decision, changing the domain name is not needed!.. doing that will only be a waste of time, "back to the drawing board!" if you will ask me..
Tried to convince him and his SEO 'consultant' still wants to go forward with it. For educational purposes, I'll update this post as we go forward with the change. I'm glad it isn't on my shoulders any more...
This is a NO-NO and NO!! I had a really bad experienced when I had to change an old one to a new one, even you can 301 them but it would be a mess. I can guarantee these things will happen if you let your client switch his domain just for "dashes", even you 301 from the old one although - Your ranking will be suffered within a week and like a rock, at least for 2 months or more. - Your site will be filtered because of domain age, even you 301 from the old one but it take at least 1 month before Google acknowledge this. - You will waste a lot of time to check if all pages under the old one are indexed under the new one or not. - Not sure about this but I've heard that domain with dashes has less trust by Google because it has used for spammy sites in the old day. - Your current visitors will confused and your bounce rate will be dropped since they have to type "dashes" between the name.
I'm thinking the same thing. Redirect your-company.com and 301 redirect it to yourcompany.com I like the name with the dashes but it's hard for people to remember or to tell them over the phone.
So far my friend, you are correct. We're 2 weeks in and: - Are off the charts for all competitive and non-competitive terms that we previously ranked for - I've wasted a ton of time I've actually managed to contact website owners for a good portion of our links and have had the domain changed in the links. I hope this speeds up the process. My client will sh*t when he sees next month's report.
I feel for ya, it can be very frustrating when you try to keep a client from "shooting themselves in the foot", and they do it anyway! This is a prime example of an unqualified SEO using out-of-date advice and causing damage in the process.
While the theory is dashes in the domain name help for those keywords, the difference would be marginal at best - and besides... very few "credible" websites use dashes-in-that-manner. It-just-looks-spammy.
Another Update: About 3 weeks in, Google has recognized the new domain names. Yahoo and MSN are still clueless despite the 301 redirects. We've also been actively updating existing links to point to the new domains as recommended by Google. So far, we've maintained top positions for our brand name (surprise, surprise) but have fallen off for just about every competitive term for our industry across 5 sites. For the most part, the results thus far have been pretty catastrophic, as expected. There are a few competitive terms which we, oddly enough, have not been hurt so badly on. Will update again in a month or so. Maybe we'll miraculously bounce back...