I have a close family member who's an extremely talented florist (won awards, worked for celebs, etc), but is tired of working for someone else their whole life, so I'm starting an online flower store (like honest florist dot com) to help them out. The plan is to start in our major city, and down the road, assuming things go well, start adding other cities by basically getting local florists in those cities to ship the flowers and charging commission. As far as domain names go, given the fact that we will be starting with a single major city and only expanding to other cities if the initial venture is successful, should I look for a domain name with the city's name (and other keywords) in it to help with initial SEO rankings? I do plan on paying an Indian Elance firm $150/mo from day one to do SEO, and having an AdWords campaign from day one, but I'm still scared we might not get customers because of the sheer number of online florists out there! So what do you guys think: get a city-specific domain and then switch down the road, or get one non-city specific domain name and stick with it for life? Also, regardless of whether or not I get a city-specific domain name, should I try hard to squeeze as many keywords into the domain name as possible, or just give it a cool, unique name that doesn't necessarily have so many keywords? Thanks team!
Redirecting a domain you plan on building up to a new domain is NOT going to be a fun process. If you're planning on building a domain and you want to have it for life, then you should not include the city name, unless you want it in there for life. You can do other things to let google know which city you're targeting. For example you can include the target city in your title tag, in the site copy, in the links to the city. I manage my mother's antique website and those steps gave her the #1 ranking for her business in her city. You can also register your mom's location in the city on google maps and link it to your website to make it completely clear where your florist shop is located. Google will know. You do get a boost for having an exact match for your domain now, but I suspect that there won't be as big a boost for exact match in future updates of the google algorithm. Definitely plan for the long term and select a name that you want to keep forever.
Non city specific name (unless there is a huge number of searches for that city-name-florist keyword). If giving a non city specific name go for a unique, cool one, that stands out and is easy to remember. There is a lot in the name, and cool ones are easy to market (offline and online). Stay away from cheap Indian SEO firms. In most cases it's money wasted.
I'm looking at the Google Keyword Tool, but I'm not sure if that counts as a "huge number of searches for that city". Please have a look and search for "toronto flower delivery". It doesn't seem like there is (specifically with "toronto") in the name, but what do you think? Convenient link to tool: https://adwords.google.ca/select/KeywordToolExternal
I can only see 590 local monthly searches for that keyword. There are other related keywords there, but their numbers are not that high. In this case i wouldn't really bother with a city name (unless i could find something really catchy, and easy to remember).
590 per month is a lot if you're giving the viewers EXACTLY what they're looking for. Money in the bank for a toronto florist business. "Toronto Florist" is at 720, and there's always additional longtails you'll get in addition. Also, you can gain customers for life so we're not talking about single conversions.
Get both domains. Use the brand name as the main site. Use the geographic one with location information and get people go to the main site to place orders.
So you'd recommend the local domain name? How about both like freespace just suggested? Will this be ok as far as SEO goes, because I don't want to pay a firm double, to do both. Perhaps they can just target certain keywords that will be beneficial to the local domain name, so that my total cost will be a bit extra as opposed to double? I'm confused because what you said kinda contradicts what the other person just said?
North, no. All I'm saying is those "small fry" keywords mean a lot to an actual business. They're very much worth pursuing. I do not think you should get the local domain name, unless you're ok not changing it in the future. You can get those keywords without the local domain name, but if you're ok with staying with that name forever, then you should go for it. Otherwise don't worry about trying to get an exact match domain.
Ok, so you wouldn't recommend getting 2 domain names like freespace suggested, and to just get one permanent one instead?
Do one thing, if you want more customers then try ti tricky plan like give 2 flower free if anybody purchases for 5 flower pots. Else draw a scheme which interacts the customers. Thanks
well, I wouldn't develop 2 separate sites to go after the same keywords. If you want to develop the sites to go after different targets that might be ok. I'm not so crazy about the idea of splitting resources/authority though. You might want to try to develop the keywords on separate pages of the same site if you're able to get your main site to become strong enough. It sort of sounds like you just want to start off in one market though, and that you don't really want to stick with the city name in the domain. If I understand that correctly then I would say to stick with one site, and you don't have to put the city name in the domain. Hope this helps.
Yes, you could do a general site, start from that, a cool domain name I've found that is available as of now is floristernet.com for florist and internet or talentedflorist.com do this site a lot, make sure you have the city in the page title and body. But also book a domain name including the city name and make it a mini site, which links to your main website.
Holy crap, that's one hell of a domain name find! Thanks mate! I'm not sure if I'm gonna use it (although there's a good chance because let's face it, that is a damn good domain name!), but I just bought it anyway before someone else does. You rock!