site nameing question

crazyjane

crazyjane

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i had an idea for a site that is kind of like a personal lifestyle type site. i thought of a domain name with the word "cafe" in it, but since it's not for any kind of restaurant or anything, and will have nothing to do with food or etc, would that be a bad idea? I usually shoot for EMDs but this is more of a personal windmill i feel like tilting at.
 
That's fine. You don't need an emd or pmd to rank.

Ditch the emd and create something more brandable. That way you can optimize many pages for many terms in the same niche.
 
I don't think it's a bad idea at all necessarily. Metacafe comes to mind right away. It depends, you can PM me the domain if you'd like a more personalized opinion (no pressure) but overall I don't see a problem with it.

IMO, sites using emd's are over-optimized a lot of the time... You can hit the keywords with your page titles. No need to have BuilderSociety.com/builder/top-10-builders if your KW is "builder", you know?
 
I always go for branded names - it'll be more valuable in the long run and be memorable. Recall all those "AAAAA plumbing services" in the old yellow page days, not really brandable or memorable at any level, so they'll have to rely on strictly yellow page advertising. When you have a brand that rolls off the tongue, word of mouth can spread faster and easier.
 
Yeah I agree. To be honest, the name of your website is important, but it really isn't. As stated earlier, EMD's are sometimes a bad idea mainly because of Google/SEO purposes, but if done right, they can be really good. As long as your site's name is reasonably memorable, and you provide some kind of value your readers will return to, it doesn't matter what you name your website. So you can go ahead and brainstorm, but not for too long. I've learned that its little things like these that easily trick you into thinking you're being productive, when you're really not. Go ahead register your cafe domain name, crank out some content and start getting traffic. If your readers really hate your domain name and it's affecting your business then you can rename your site and redirect the old domain. Don't sweat it.
 
Why don't you try to grab an expired domain which sorts of fits your need ? Its not really that hard tssk tssk ., registercompass/expireddomains.net . You can headstart if you plan to do any sort of link building to it
 
JT1 said:
Why don't you try to grab an expired domain which sorts of fits your need ? Its not really that hard tssk tssk ., registercompass/expireddomains.net . You can headstart if you plan to do any sort of link building to it
Click to expand...

Why get an expired domain that only sort of fits her needs and might be penalized and have pharma spam from a decade ago that doesn't show up until she loads her site into wmt? Seems like an unnecessary risk for zero reward when she already has a fresh domain in mind that she likes.
 
BIGdCPA said:
Why get an expired domain that only sort of fits her needs and might be penalized and have pharma spam from a decade ago that doesn't show up until she loads her site into wmt? Seems like an unnecessary risk for zero reward when she already has a fresh domain in mind that she likes.
Click to expand...

Not really hard to spin in on Ahrefs and see the link profile . The reward here is starting off with a solid link profile.
 
JT1 said:
Not really hard to spin in on Ahrefs and see the link profile . The reward here is starting off with a solid link profile.
Click to expand...

Except like I mentioned when ahrefs doesn't pick up the links, or only picks up some of them, and you're sitting there months later wondering why google won't send you any traffic. It's a gamble, that's all I'm saying. I wouldn't do it for an authority / money site, I would just go with the fresh domain that's a name I really like versus trying to shoe-horn an expired domain with an unknown past into my project. Different strokes for different folks.
 
I think having a branded name for anything long-term that's not hyper-focusing on an easy keyword is a good thing. Google is giving a lot of trust to brands and it's really easy to create brand signals. Brands seem to have an easier time ranking inner pages as well, and a harder time ranking the homepage for stuff other than the brand terms. Which means you'll end up with lots of longer-tail traffic and then you can treat inner pages as a page to SEO and rank. Every time you want to roll out a new "project" you can make it just a new inner page to try and rank. Before long, that domain as a whole will be extremely powerful, versus building 100 EMD's. You've got 100 inner pages linked like mad, all creating synergy and power for any other page you want to publish after that. It'll just get easier and easier to rank stuff.
 
A branded domain is fine and the word cafe doesn't have to pertain to food or restaurants. Above the person that mentioned Metacafe has a good point. Its your brand so the sky is the limit and good luck.
 
I would go with a brandable name. I have a project that started out (rather inadvertantly) as a bit of fun, but it started to look like something that could make me some coin. I've since spent the last eight months or so building that brand and employing a lot of techniques from Carter's traffic leaks. The site now gets more traffic because of that branding in the way of direct type in traffic than any of my EMD's probably ever will.
 
I would go with what works best for your potential audience. Are you building the site for pure SEO, or actually trying to build a brand? Stop formatting your site to please Google, and start formatting it to please your audience. Take care of them first, and everything else will take care of itself.

Here are a few tools I use to find brandable domains:

http://leandomainsearch.com
http://bustaname.com
http://namevine.com/

Good luck!
 
Choosing an EMD might offer SEO benefits at first until you realize you're walking on eggshells. And the long-term SEO benefit and just marketing and social benefit of having a brand with a large brand footprint will outweight any little SEO tricks from the ages of our ancestors. That ship sailed a while ago and will soon be over the horizon.
 
I would go for branded name + you could buy couple good link profile expired domains (this would give you good kickstart).
 
Branded Domain, is the standard choice, EMD is tricky if you don't know when to use it, I personally use them as 301 redirect or T1's.

There is a third choice which called Partially Branded Domain, is used by SEO expert but still not effective as a Branded Domain.

From my experience Google don't give weight to a Domain name they were doing that back in 2010-12 and before, now your links is the important stuff also your content you can add to that website loading time.
 
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I totally agree with the focus on your audience and branding rather than worrying about fitting a mold. I've found you're more likely to sell your idea behind your product/brand rather then the actual product/brand you're selling. Having a genuine nature about it can bring on more of a genuine audience.
 
I'm on the brand boat as well, but a simple question does come to mind, why "cafe" - is there any resonance/purpose for that word or is just simply because you like it (which is good enough).
 
Branded hands down. Cafe is fine, could actually have a unique spin on it.
 
I'm jumping on the brand bandwagon. If your project isn't going to depend solely on SEO traffic, having a sticky domain is paramount. I remember domains that are catchy and unique and am more likely to tell a friend about it.
Also, when it comes to link building I almost always send branded links to my homepage. Occasionally I'll do brand + keyword to the homepage, but generally reserve that for inner pages. Works really well for me.
 
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