When we first started Creative Density in late 2010 we went by the generic and Microsoft-ty but SEO friendly name, Denver Coworking (URL, www.denvercoworking.com). We eventually became Creative Density in mid-2011 but the online real estate .com was taken by a graphic design student in Florida who wasn’t willing to sell it. We decided on URL of www.DensityCoworking.com. It was available for the standard $9 and we could spend our credit card dollars on furniture and coffee.
The URL wasn’t really a big deal for the first few years because we were one of a small handful of coworking spaces along the Front Range of Colorado in Denver. Plus, URLs importance is kind of overblown for a local small business regarding SEO purposes. What I learned does hurt with a hard URL is having a memorable email address. People aren’t going to remember craig@densitycoworking.com or info@densitycoworking or whatever. People at events have a hard enough time remembering Creative Density Coworking and then a curve ball is thrown when they have to remember a special address at craig@densitycoworking.com for that guy they meet that runs that coworking space that maybe is called Creative Dentistry.
Yes, business cards would solve that problem but people hate business cards and I often forget to carry them. A simple CreativeDensity.com email address would be more memorable and give the brand legitimacy. It needed to change and here is where serendipity takes hold.
On the rooftop of the Irish Rover I was joining my girlfriend for a drink with her friends. Her cousin, Tony, that lived in Baker was there and we started chatting. Obviously we talked about what we do and I mentioned coworking and the URL thing came up when he asked for the address. He pulled out his phone and typed in www.creativedensity.com and Huge Domains phone number popped up, ‘Dude, we own it’ he exclaimed.
Tony is a partner at one of the world’s largest domain companies in the world and they just so happen to be based in Denver and he was at the Irish Rover that day. Tony explained that Huge Domains bought it 4 months before we met because since I had registed the Twitter name, Facebook name, and a business LLC. My actions likely sets up an automatic trigger that this domain is likely wanted by someone and Huge Domains snatched it up once it was available. The graphic designed eventually let the domain lapse and their auto purchasing domain machine went into action.
Tony and Huge Domains eventually sold me the domain at a discount from from the $1500 asking price. It’s awesome how chance connections happen. It reminded me of whyI love coworking in the first place.
I sat on CreativeDensity.com for a few years with a permanent 301 redirect to Densitycoworking.com. I eventually registered an email domain for craig@creativedensity.com but I just forwarded those emails on to my old email address. I was straddling this world of two domains and hacking it together creating confusion as people went to one domain and it showed the other or wrote to one email address and I accidently would reply from another.
Last week, the team set out to finally change domained and we swapped everything around. We are officially www.creativedensity.com and all associated emails are the same. It was simple but our SEO has taken a hit. According to all of our research and hosting companies we have talked to this is expected. Our SEO level should return to normal in the next three or four months as we went from position 3 or 4 on important keywords to 15. Our organic search traffic is down 50% because of that. That’s a big hit but it’s the right move in the long term.
It’s a big move and I’ll write a future blog posts on how we will address that. This blog posts is an announcement on how we changed URL and why.
I’ll leave it at that for you.
If you want to reach me please email CRAIG@CREATIVEDENSITY.COM and I’ll see you at www.creativedensity.com.
Thanks again to Tony and the awesome chance encounter or URLs in the real world.
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