Hi, My partner and I started a software company and gave the company a "random" name/url that means nothing to our market. We did this so that we would have a "generic' company that could release other, non-related software products under the same umbrella at a later date. Our first product has a VERY relevant name/url that people and search engines should like. My partner thinks that we should have our main site be the company name/url and have a secondary landing page with the product information. He thinks that we should simply re-direct the strong product name url to that landing page. So, the main home page would be: www.companyname.com and the product landing page would be something like this: www.companyname.com/strongproductname.html I am thinking that this might be a mistake for SEO purposes and we would be better off having our main website use the strong product name throughout the site and having a company landing page in the About Us section so the main home page would be: www.strongproductname.com and the company landing page would be: www.strongproductname.com/companyname Will there be a difference in these approaches from an SEO perspective? Would appreciate all comments/thoughts from the experts. Thanks! JRBIZ
of course... productname.com is better for SEO. it's easier to rank with keyword.com than company.com/keyword
Much better to have one authority domain that is trusted, than spreading yourself too thin with lots of separate ones. You won't have a problem ranking www.companyname.com/strongproductname.html if your site is well optimised and you have lots of high quality backlinks. Definately go with one site!
jrbiz, I was in a situation identical to this at my last job. We had a domain that was just a compound word rather than a "companyname.com" domain. The first recommendation I had was to register our company name (which of course was already taken by a cybersquatter because they foolishly didnt register it like the other domain they got...) and 301 redirect everything over. It's not much of a search engine issue, because Google will still display your URL regardless of it's called RottenOranges.com and your company name is actually Capital Investments LLC. The issue here is branding and looking like a professional organization. People expect you to own the .com of your own company name, and that's also the 1st thing they'll type in. If worse comes to worse and if you don't want to 301 redirect, use the "keyword" domain as a content-rich site with a backlink pointing to your business site. You'll have the best of both worlds, you can still rank for that keyword while funneling visits to your company's site.
another opinion.... put a landing page/ squeeze page on productname.com, on companyname.com have a page there with a summary, the ability to buy from your site and put a one way link to productname.com.. do not link back target the seo efforts to the squeeze page so that it will rank well
I would create one site for your company and one site for each software package you will offer especially if each software package isn't related. Think about it as building one site for each brand that you will offer. Your company site can have a small write up about each software package with links to each individual "product branded" site (just don't duplicate the content). Keep your product sites very tightly focused on one theme or niche and it will help each site rank in Google easier.
if you want the best choice, combine the two product and company name are best especially if they are for fast ranking on different keywords.