So, it's a Dot Com. Now for the logo punch up.

You got lucky. I am pretty sure that there are some people out there monitoring domain names that people look up and then snatching them up.

 

xminus-
a small to medium sized business is different than mcdonalds.
secondly, people do not go to google to find a cheap cheese burger. people will however go to google and type need a new roof- last month...

Total Number of Monthly Searches
Regional: Austin 11,336

so if i can put whatever.whatever in front of that audience it really doesnt matter does it. but his chances of earning business from his website increases with the domain i suggested. so in a nutshell you are suggesting said roofer build a billboard and stick it in his garage and close the door.

 

when i google "roofer austin texas"...

these roofers come up on the 1st page....

barkerroofing.com
druryroofinginc.com
capco-texas.com
aztecroofing-siding.com

All with their business names as their domain names.

click thru all the pages and there are ALOT of roofers and all with the business name as their domain name.

 

still not doing yourself any favors with the rolleyes smiley. i'm in marketing as well. been doing it for 15 years, so i've been around the block myself. read the post below yours and come back and roll your eyes again.

besides, you're not getting the point that many domains names with common words are already bought and squatted. your services from your website seem to cost from between $2k to $5k a month. i think in reality he would be better off with a billboard or a focused cable spot than search engine optimization. but what i do i know? i've only worked in marketing for a decade and a half.

about the billboard in a garage joke: i suppose the heady crazy world of the internet, nobody ever refers people via word-of-mouth. do you think it's easier for someone to say "i got my roof done by ranch hand roofing. they were really great. i don't have their number but their website is: " a) ranchhandroofing.com or b) austinroofersinc.biz or austinroofingcompany.info?

which one is easier to remember?

 

having a strong domain name as i suggested allows you to have the opportunity to obtain that space quicker. those guys have content in their sites and other variables to appear there. you just dont build a site and appear there. your site needs to have meta-tags keyword rich content, no flash- unless in navigation areas, blah, blah, blah...
If you think i am full of S$#% spend 10 bucks, build you a site and see how long it takes you to get there. good luck.

 

like i said, i have many clients in this arena. referral, word of mouth all great ways to earn business- the best, but why would you cut out a major avenue. 11k last month- think about that, cut the number in half- that is a lot of people looking for what you do and you are not there.

 

so register a different domain and point it to your main site. what's the big deal? besides, you're assuming that companies don't show up at all in google searches unless they have that domain name. there are plenty of sites that show up in category searches in google that have their names as their domain. there's a metatag section in the header of nearly every page.

 

Po, that assumes you already know the name of the biz. The goal of web advertising and SEO in general is to be the first organic hit when someone types in "roof repair austin."

Like I said in the lawyer thread, I would recommend investing a couple of grand with an SEO company to get you on the first page, if not first. Also, I am guessing the click-through rate for something like this is really, really cheap.

 

actually suttree, the click through rate in the roofing/siding/window industry can rival that of your industry- depending on geo-targeting. It is very competitive.

 

po,
there are many variables involved to an organic ranking. a keyword rich domain name is very important through the eyes of google.
if NCAA were to use a keyword rich domain he could achieve a better ranking sooner.
the goal is not to have your clients look for you on google through your name- those folks already know you. it is to gather new clients that did not know you existed.
thats why a siding guy would want hardi plank in his domain if possible. so when some one types in hardi plank siding austin- he has a better chance to show up- instead of johndoesiding.com
then there is paid advertising- pay to play. then the domain does not matter

 

i love all these companies that are supposedly outsmarting google. the folks at google are a lot smarter than nearly any other group of people who are not government funded. the people who are trying to game the google search system are fighting a battle of wits that they cannot win.

not to mention, if you decide to buy a domain with the words "hardiplank" in there, i'm sure the james hardie company would probably have something to say about that since it's a registered trademark. also, hardiplank is for siding.

 

you know i dont chat on many threads, but i lurk all the time. i chimed in on this thread because i can be of some use to NCAA. you just never know who is on the other side of the screen and how much intellectual property they have. i am not suprised by the duchebaggery that some on here tote around. i gave some sound advice- agree/disagree to a fellow hornfan. i am pretty confident that i know what the hell i am talking about. sorry i am not in the 1000+ post club, but sirs (milkman,xminus) with all due respect your take on google and others are not even close to being accurate. i would continue to rebuttal, but is hard to rebut ignorance in the fact that you guys just dont know. best of luck to NCAA and his site.
as for reach it is the most cost effective way to advertise your business- i could careless what you think of me but no one can touch reach's platform.

 

3 clicks for e-commerce

 

like i said before riloh, you're not really representing yourself in much of a professional manner. calling people "duchebags", whatever that is. you continue to argue a point and generally make an *** out of yourself when people obviously disprove one of your initial claims.

in the examples that YOU'VE given us, none of the top results have the search terms as their domain. i have no doubt that your service is valuable in some way, but you represent yourself and your company very poorly. maybe some day, when you grow up, you'll realize that skeptics are still prospective customers and if you want to have any chance of gaining someone's business in a service environment you better have some patience and some CONCRETE examples. not just smarmy answers for people who completely DISPROVE your theories.

you sound like a kid who's been in the real world for about 3 years. you've drank some of the company's kool-aid but you still don't know how to act like a businessperson. honestly, if you're much older than that, then i don't know what to say because that's just embarrassing.

 

The Link
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The Link
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The Link
The Link

 

like i said before riloh, you're not really representing yourself in much of a professional manner. calling people "duchebags", whatever that is. you continue to argue a point and generally make an *** out of yourself when people obviously disprove one of your initial claims.

in the examples that YOU'VE given us, none of the top results have the search terms as their domain. i have no doubt that your service is valuable in some way, but you represent yourself and your company very poorly. maybe some day, when you grow up, you'll realize that skeptics are still prospective customers and if you want to have any chance of gaining someone's business in a service environment you better have some patience and some CONCRETE examples. not just smarmy answers for people who completely DISPROVE your theories.

you sound like a kid who's been in the real world for about 3 years. you've drank some of the company's kool-aid but you still don't know how to act like a businessperson. honestly, if you're much older than that, then i don't know what to say because that's just embarrassing.


i am NOT trying to earn anyones business on a message board, i was just offering advice from the knowledge that i have. Also, if being smug is "business like" then count me out.

 

Next time you might want to leave out all of the hardwood floors searches, as they undermine your attempt to make a point.

 

fyi- none of these are any of reachlocals clients. these are examples to show you in the ORGANIC rankings there are sites that have domain names pertaining their industry- there are also ones that have the name of the business. My point is that yes you can get in those rankings with a business.com BUT if you have a whatwhere.com it is a crutch to hel achieve those rankings QUICKER. as googles metacrawlers at this time look favorably to those whatwhere.com.

you have not disporved anything- you have just showed that you do not clearly grasp the whole enchilada, and thats ok. i am not trying to tell you how to operate what you do- this is what i do and i clearly understand SEM/SEO. I do understand that there are holes in this thread regarding SEM/SEO- i was concentrating on the domain name and gave some advice. there has been no discussion about content, meta-tags, etc... thats a whole different ballgame.

my examples are not faulty- you just dont understand or can interpret them correctly. --- i do not mean this in a rude way.

 

since you want to knock reach... i ask the question, if you are a lawyer in a major market city and spent 1k a month in advertising and these are your results last month...
Campaign Budget: $1000.00
Campaign Spend: $1000.00
Campaign Visits: 366
Campaign Calls: 24
Campaign Emails: 8
Campaign Web Events: 84

results 7 cases live, 4 others pending.
11 new cases for 1k.
advantage reach.

disclosure-these are real results for a real client. everything you see has been tracked- the phone calls have been recorded with lawyer's approval. reachlocal provides a daily report of the activity on your site.

 

Do CS majors have to take any social-skills classes?

 

there was discussion about meta tags. i mentioned them earlier. look, i'm sure you're proud of what you do and you believe in it. we're just saying you haven't made the best case for yourself in this thread. the majority of the results you've posted don't have organic domain names. the highest hit rate was for dwi lawyers.

in a business like roofing, i'd venture to guess that word-of-mouth is more important than search engine optimization. i've done enough work on my houses to know that you take the word of your friends very seriously when it comes to spending that kind of money. we're talking over $10k in many cases. there's no way to accurately weigh the benefit of having a company name domain for people who have heard ncaa's company name from friends vs. the organic domain approach. but you have to understand that there's a lot more to marketing a business than their website and how it shows up in google.

you can easily point to an example and say "your name was at the top of the results, so you paid off your investment in our services." but i can tell you from experience that there have been times when i've looked for a specific company and if their company name isn't their domain and it's hard for me to find based on a search for their name, they lose my business.

ncaa may gain more business by just having his company name as a domain. when your neighbor asks who did your roofing, or they drive by and see a lawn sign with the domain "ranchhandroofing.com" that's much easier to remember than "roofers-austin.biz".

i would say that most smart homeowners don't pick their contractors for major by who shows up first in a google search. plus, you still haven't answered the question of whether or not you can forward an organic domain to a main domain. if so, then you're suggestion to base his domain on an obscure hypenate domain makes no sense at all.

---

 

xminus try this on for size---- that is EXACTLY why he should have a whatwhere.com, its to get a leg up on his competitors ALREADY there. this allows NCAA to have a remote shot at getting a peice of the pie WITHOUT doing some extensive SEO work to his site. most of those guys sites in that particular vertical do not have access to the information that i am divulging to NCAA. caveat- this is just a remote chance not a sure fire way to accomplish front page placement. so if there is a choice between whatwhere.com to businessname.com you go with whatwhere.com
xminus i would love to chat with you anytime and engage with you more about SEM/SEO feel free to shoot me an email and i will give you a buzz.

one last thing- the results arent WHAT i have accomplished. its just the reach platform, IT works- i am just here to tell the story and to educate.

 

in ten years, his company will still be called ranch hand roofing. can you say with any certainty that in one year you'll still know how google ranks web pages for search results? google changes their algorithm constantly to stay ahead of people who try to googlebomb the results. in three years a whatwhere.com domain might not be a great strategy, but the name of his company will remain constant.

you have to step outside of your own world sometimes to see the bigger picture. there's more out there than google results. the guy i used for my recent $100k remodel on my house doesn't even show up on the first page of google for "los angeles remodel contractor". but would i recommend him to other people and friends? absolutely. i've already been a referral for him on two jobs larger than mine. if i wanted to tell my friends to go to his site, i'd just say the name of his company and then "dot com". i remember his web address because i remember his company's name.

quite honestly, if he had a name like "los-angeles-contractors-remodeling.com" i'd probably be a bit cautious about his company. i'm not saying that it's right or wrong, but that sounds very fly-by-night-ish to me.

 

To be honest, I don't want all the business (i.e. traffic) that could come from being top listed. I am a one man band in everything but the installation & for that, I have my sub crew... a pair of brothers who I have been with for over 3 years & 150+ projects of varying sizes & complexities.

What I really need most from this site is a way to effectively showcase my information to prospective customers & yes, I may also end up with new, natively derived clients via someone doing a search under those specific terms that have been mentioned. One of my more common ways of "free advertising" has been CraigsList & my word of mouth has spread a bit from there. I only resubmit my ad when I smell slow times about 2 - 3 weeks out & I think it's been about 1-1/2 to 2 months since I last reposted it for this reason (I also repost sometimes just to keep it within the 45 day age off window they allot).

I would end up beyond overwhellmed if I got even 2 calls a day for a new roof inspection (hopefully in 2 years or so the kid situation will have settled down a bit & I can spend 6 days a week doing inspections, estimates & installations). It's a catch 22 of sorts for me; you can do multiple inspections & sell more if you leave a crew to their own devices, however when there's 7+ people on a roof, there's no way I can effectively guarantee they are minding every detail I want them to. There really is a lot that can be glossed over & left off of a roof that delineates OK vs. good vs. great & the avg. homeowner will never notice it... & a problem might take 10 years to develop. 90% Of all warranties on a total roof repair are provided @ 5 years (I provide a minimum of 6) & if any part of the roof blows out @ 7+ years, the homeowner would be stuck like Chuck. So, not to get too far out on a limb, I don't really want 10 customers a day calling for estimates.

For now, I want a quality way to show my customers prior projects, provide a reference list, links to suppliers information so they can get ideas on what products to purchase, technical details for 'trouble areas' or special things that you just can't really explain via text or a phone call. I will probably want to a cross reference to things like the Star of Texas Fair & Rodeo (Rodeo Austin), APHA & AQHA, FFA & the Dripping Springs area soas to possibly reinforce my background & the "Ranch Hand" aspect of why I chose this business name.

& Yep, I need to get some yard signs made. I was waiting on someone (name not mentioned) to find & send me the graphic logo they worked up with the correct extension. That way, the file won't distort once enlarged to 2'x2' yard sign size I figured no need in getting signs made if I didn't have a url to go with it.

I may one day have this put on the doors & tailgate of my truck.