The leading website in my niche has a keyword as their name. I want to use the same keyword for my site, only my site would be different. The problem is, everyone knows about the competitor's site. I wouldn't want any confusion, could that cause problems? As an example if the top website in the Wedding Cakes niche was: www.weddingcakes.com And it was a wedding cakes forum. And I want to register: www.wedding-cakes.com And turn it into a wedding cakes tutorial/niche site. Would this be good or bad? Could it cause problems with confusion or anything like that?
Not inherently a problem. You just have to outrank them They get a bit of a boost with a better domain name of course but its not something you can't inherently deal with. hope that helps, Nigel
Thanks it helps heaps. I really don't think I'll outrank them though, because they're the leading competitor. It'd be like any auction site outranking eBay. I'm aiming for second or third place, and first with all my longtail and secondary keywords. Thanks for the advice.
That is no problem at all. Just because someone has a keyword in their domain name does that mean they have exclusivity to that keyword. You can definitely go ahead and use it in one of its variations, be it with a hyphen or a dot or with a different ending. The only thing you will face is a tougher challenge with regards to SEO. You will need to work double in order to place above the competitor in SERPS.