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We are looking to rebrand our domain name. Our existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. We own www.metro-manhattan.com and were hoping to use this domain. The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. Is the fact that the new domain contains "Manhattan" a negative? I know that the fact that it has a hyphen is weak. Manhattan is part of such keywords as "Manhattan office space". Regarding the company name, is the fact that it contains the target phrase "Manhattan office space" bad? Our company name may sound like exact match anchor text and I am not sure what to do about this if anything. I would really prefer to keep our name but it is necessary to change it to improve SEO we will do so. Would it be better to change to a new name like "Integrity Real Estate" which does not contain target phrases or keywords ("real estate" is not a major target phrase as it is to generic) ? Or how something like www.mmos.com for the domain and leave the company name alone? How would I go about finding a  company that would assist is in creating an SEO friendly domain name and perhaps a new corporate name if necessary? Thanks, Alan

Hi, we have a client who have multiple business websites .co.nz, .com.au, .co.uk, .com which all have unique content intending to rank in each country. These sites are on a CMS that has a blog function capability. Should we set up the blog on one of these country sites then link to other sites when appropriate? OR Is it best to set up a new blog on something like Wordpress (or what?) that takes all blog posts from all countries and then links out to the relevant sites when appropriate. So the new blog becomes the content hub and creates its own Google power to then pass when appropriate to the various country sites? Any suggestions welcome especially from people who are currently doing either of these methods, and have experienced the results both positive and negative of the different approaches. NB: there will be about 20 staff creating a blog post on a topic relevant to them per month each once blog is live.

Hey guys! My company is sitting on a number of branded domains to ensure we have control over the URL in case we ever want to do anything with them and/or to protect brand integrity. However, we are sitting on a total of 24 domains, which seems somewhat excessive. What are you thoughts about .info and .net domains? Or keeping branded domains in general? Is there a good rule of thumb to follow? We have a few up for renewal soon, so it'd be terrific to get your thoughts! Thanks much, Clarissa

So here is the issue. I am working with a company that used to have a branded domain. Then they split the domain into two separate keyword rich domains and tried to change branding to match the keyword rich domains. This made for a really long brand name that is difficult to actually rank for as it is mostly hi traffic key terms and also created brand confusion because all of the social accounts still operate under the old brand name. We are considering a new brand initiative and going back to the original brand name as it better meets our business objectives (they still get traffic from branded searches under the old brand) and the old branded web domain. My question is if there is any added risk in going back to an old domain that has been forwarded for the past 2 years to the new domain? I know the risks and problems of a domain name change, but I am not as certain about the added complication of moving back to an old domain and essentially reversing the flow of 301's. Any thoughts? Cheers!

If I install a Facebook Like Button on my Root Domain, How can I have the likes accumulated from that button augment those already on my brand's page? Thank you fellow knowledgenies of the Book of Face.

I've heard conflicting reports about using these paid directories for SEO purposes. I am a local Realtor with a website and blog. My site is on page one but near the bottom since the national sites dominate the top. Would these directories help me for local seo purposes? Does Google consider these paid links and therefore devalues them? How difficult is it to get into these directories since they can decline a submission and there goes my money? Are these directories worth the money? In total it would be like $1200 do get on all. I've already done what I believe to be a lot of good seo practices. Emphasis on I believe since I'm no expert. Just learning as I go. Now I'm up against the big brands in real estate and meet to compete. Any tips if these directories are worth it and anything else I should look to do?

My domain registrar was having a sale for 1$ per year .com domain names (just for the first year). So I went all out and bought 16 domain names. They pretty much all are two or more keywords that i'd like to rank high on put together. We do dedicated server monitoring, so for instance I bought apachemonitoring.com and haproxymoniotring.com. Can anyone tell me what the best way would be to put these to good use technically? Options: Each domain just 301's to a specific landing page on my main company website Each domain is a site on a drupal multisite with just one page that has links to just my company website Other ideas? Thanks in advance! Walter