Ask HN: Domain name strategy when expanding a regional app?

5 points

8 years ago

In law school, I created oregonlaws.org which makes the Oregon Revised Statutes (the "laws") much easier to read and link to. It's very popular, and it serves its audience well even though it's a ".org" because 99% of visitors enter via web search to a leaf node page. They don't type the domain name. People in Oregon call the site, "Oregon Laws". So I think it's important that each state site have some identity, and not be generic.

Now I'm making instances for the rest of the U.S. states, and some foreign countries. And I'm unsure about how to use domains for this "version 2". SEO is very important to this project. And so I may be overthinking the domain name strategy, but I want to avoid pitfalls. I've come up with these ideas:

* Since oregonlaws.org is a success, I can follow that example and register a unique name for every jurisdiction, whatever's available. E.g., `virginialaw.online`, `washingtonlaws.org`, etc.

* Come up with a new app name and use sub-paths for each jurisdiction. I prototyped that route with `weblaws.org`. I.e., `weblaws.org/newyork/law...`

* Use a new app name and sub-domains for each geographical area. This is what I'm currently going with. I registered `public.law`. The ".law" domain is restricted to attorney/law-firm use. I see this as a good thing. And so I'm prototyping e.g., `newyork.public.law`.

Generally, a person at one of these geographical/jurisdiction sites will never want to see info from another. Although, in the future, I will add cross-area search.

The tension for me is e.g. Paul Graham's advice to always use a .com: http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html

Also, the decision to use subdomains might negatively impact SEO.

Thanks for any feedback!

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