Launching website - domain name issue

Loobz

Hi all.

I have built my website through weebly and everything is ok on that end. However I am unsure which domain name I should go for - Let me explain...

On facebook, I have a page called 'Art Farm'. However It can only be found through searching for 'Art Farm Wexford' (most annoying)
I have purchased two domains:

www.artfarmwexford.com
www.artfarmireland.com

My question is, should I launch my website on the 'Wexford' domain or the 'Ireland' domain. If I want to keep things uniform, I should probably use the Wexford domain.

However the 'Ireland' domain would be easier for non-Irish customers to grasp, as they wont the significance of 'Wexford', but can relate to Ireland as a country.

I feel like I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill. However I am thinking I may not reach a wider audience Using one domain over another, considering I can only be found on Facebook by searching 'Art Farm Wexford' to begin with.

I have 10 days to official launch of website but I need my flyers to go to print with correct web address asap.


Am I making any sense at all?

TrueDub

Do both - register both names and point them to the same website.

Loobz

TrueDub wrote: »

Do both - register both names and point them to the same website.

Thats another option. When Im advertising my site, on facebook and flyers etc, should I list both websites? My thoughts are mentioning both confuses things.

Talisman

If you are looking for international traffic then the Ireland domain will provide greater recognition so use the artfarmireland.com domain for the website.

You can also use the artfarmwexford.com domain, configure the web server to perform a 301 permanent redirect to the artfarmireland.com domain.

Banta

The best solution here might be to setup a CNAME record for the domains, it's the same website, but with 2 domains. As in, they'll both show the same content, without the need to redirect.

I know the user Blacknight (as well as others) can probably say if that's THE best solution or not, or at least why it may not be a viable one. Means Intl visitors URL won't change, and neither will Irish ones, should you advertise that way.

Loobz

What I would like to do, ideally, would be to advertise to everyone just one web address. If I register both sites, as suggested, and only advertise one address, what is the significance of having the second address at all? People wont know it exists or is it possible it may be found through google etc?

By the way, the site is live at the minute, its just I havent 'advertised it as such, feel free to have a look. www.artfarmireland.com

Any feedback welcome, good or bad. My first attempt at building a website, albeit through Weebly.

tricky D

TrueDub wrote: »

Do both - register both names and point them to the same website.

This and then promote using one domain only for brand consistency.

However, getting keywords into the additional domain name would be down the SEO priority list. I would strongly suggest you look at using keywords much more and better on your site's text content, which needs a lot of SEO work. As is: you are missing alt tags for images and the images have no captions capability; 'ireland' and 'wexford' are not in any of the text content as far as I can see which is far more important than working them into domain names; the description meta tag is not being used; do not use the keywords tag at all, it's totally useless; have you feedback from happy customers for a testimonials type page?

A really important tactic is for getting keywords like 'ireland' and 'wexford' to work well, is to integrate Google+, Google My Business and contact/location info on your site. Search for 'how to get into the 7pack' or variants for ways to get a big boost from this. I'm currently writing an article on this. Here's the main headings/points:

How To Do It

3 main ingredients

Content which is keyword optimised for locality and business type.

Quality back links based on the above from...
Try to get more and better than the competition already in the pack (careful, quality links only).

Integrating your Social signals especially the Google Local for Business, Google+ and Name, Address, Phone, (etc) content on the site in a consistent format.

PS lastly get rid of the visitor counter, they look bad (90s). And also try to rewrite some of the content using less 'I' and more 'you' (what I can do for you).

Hopefully Weebly will let you do most of this (if you are lucky, it's awful imho) though I wouldn't know myself.

mneylon

You probably won't have the same level of flexibility in terms of pointing domains etc., as you would have with Wordpress or similar powered site

If you can point both domains to the same site you should use a "301" redirect if possible, otherwise you risk Google seeing two sites, which you don't want

Loobz

Blacknight wrote: »

You probably won't have the same level of flexibility in terms of pointing domains etc., as you would have with Wordpress or similar powered site

If you can point both domains to the same site you should use a "301" redirect if possible, otherwise you risk Google seeing two sites, which you don't want

From the feedback im getting here, I think I may be in over my head on this. I have very little web development skills and feel like I may have gone down the wrong road with Weebly.

Maybe it is possible to do all of the suggested you guys have given, but I have no clue how. Feeling a bit deflalted.

mneylon

Loobz wrote: »

From the feedback im getting here, I think I may be in over my head on this. I have very little web development skills and feel like I may have gone down the wrong road with Weebly.

Maybe it is possible to do all of the suggested you guys have given, but I have no clue how. Feeling a bit deflalted.

Keep it simple

Banta

Loobz wrote: »

Maybe it is possible to do all of the suggested you guys have given, but I have no clue how. Feeling a bit deflalted.

OK, regarding the 301 redirects you maybe able to do this through the registrar that you used to register your domain. (Don't mention 'em here, as it's not permitted) So do a search for "Set up 301 Redirect with My Registrar" and see if you can find out about how you'd go and do that.

It may not be something you can do through your own control panel, so if not, then I'm sure you can log a support request with them simply saying, "I'd like to set up a 301 redirect for e.g. www.artfarmwexford.com to go to www.artfarmireland.com, which I own and have registered with you also".

It should be fairly easy to work out if you can do it or not, and if not log a support request.

On another note: Don't feel deflated. At all. You've registered 2 domains, created a Weebly account, and built a site from scratch in Weebly and pointed a domain to it! Believe me when I tell you that you've already accomplisted a fair bit for somebody who didn't have much of a clue what they were at when they started. So please, don't feel deflated.

Are you a little over your head? Perhaps, but you've already shown a determination and a keen willingness to learn things. Don't lose that motivation. You've come a lot further than most people I know who've attempted to do something like this. For that, you have my admiration for your efforts to date, and I do mean that.

Don't feel deflated when you've already come this far. Keep the willingness to learn and who knows what'll happen.

Loobz

Banta wrote: »

...
Don't feel deflated when you've already come this far. Keep the willingness to learn and who knows what'll happen.

Banta, thanks for your kind words of support, technical and otherwise. Seriously I will persist, I will persue, I will not fail


Weebly has a dedicated SEO section which has the following:

Anyway, turns out I can get the redirect sorted with my registrar, there is also a 301 redirect option within Weebly. I can just add the url - sorted.

Also, regarding meta keywords, turns out I had done this at the start, also an option within Weebly. My keywords so far:

art, tractor drawings, car art, car drawings, art farm, irish artist, artist, art farm wexford, sketches, tractor sketch, car sketch
Is there anything I should add?

Also there is an option to add:

Header code - currently has none. Mentions Google analytics below this box.
Footer code - currently has none. Mentions Google Webmaster Tools verification meta tag below this box.

Thanks to TrickD for the Testimonials page suggestion -will definitely work on that. Alt tags being worked on also.
I can put a caption on each photo in my gallery, is this the same as Alt tagging?

Testimonial Page added
Thanks for helping me along on this journey.

tricky D

Loobz wrote: »

Also, regarding meta keywords, turns out I had done this at the start, also an option within Weebly. My keywords so far:

art, tractor drawings, car art, car drawings, art farm, irish artist, artist, art farm wexford, sketches, tractor sketch, car sketch
Is there anything I should add?

Remove all these. Yes all of them. The keywords tag was so badly abused in the past that search engines ignore them almost completely. The only exception is Bing and it only looks at them to check for keyword spamming which it will penailse. As is, Bing will see 'art' or 'artist' 6 times and penalise your site's rank as they have the same word stem 'art'.

What you need is keywords naturally in the text on your pages, not in the meta.

Loobz wrote: »

Also there is an option to add:

Header code - currently has none. Mentions Google analytics below this box.
Footer code - currently has none. Mentions Google Webmaster Tools verification meta tag below this box.

Analytics is in your footer already which is fine though you might have to do some Webmaster Tools stuff to get access to the analytics. Verification is tag is missing.

Loobz wrote: »

Thanks to TrickD for the Testimonials page suggestion -will definitely work on that. Alt tags being worked on also.
I can put a caption on each photo in my gallery, is this the same as Alt tagging?

They are not quite the same. A caption would appear below the photo, the alt attribute is 'under the bonnet' in the image tag and it describes the image for entities which can't see images (eg. search engines and blind/vision-impaired) or if the image doesn't load properly. I wouldn't make them the exact same. Some thing like '1980 Ford Capri' for the alt and '1980 Blue Ford Capri Colour on canvas 100x75 cms' for the caption. Similar but not the same.


I can't emphasise the 7pack tactic enough, it's not as well known as it should be in SEO circles and is great at addressing your main location issue.