Domain length
-
Does Domain length matter for SEO?
-
I think there may be an important distinction here - are you talking about potentially registering dozens of domains to rank for long-tail phrases? I think we're all assuming that you mean your primary domain choice.
Registering dozens of exact-match domains to rank for long-tail phrases is a lot less effective than it used to be (and will probably get even less effecting over the next 1-3 years). People abused that tactic, for starters, but it also splits your link-juice, social signals, and typically creates either doorway pages or large-scale duplicate content. The negatives outweigh the positives in most cases.
If you're only talking about one domain, and it really is a very long-tail phrase you want to target, then that's a bit different. In the example you give, most of the keywords are very common and a bit ambiguous, so you're right - a short version might not make much sense. On the other hand, the long version is going to target one very specific phrase that probably gets a small amount of traffic. You could target that phrase through on-page cues, inbound anchor text, etc. (the domain name is just one small piece of the puzzle).
-
Ooops I read this after posting below... Sorry about that
-
"the more words in your domain, the less SEO impact each word is going to have. At some point, it may start to look a bit spammy." I think I missed a good article on this can you please provide a source?
I would not use this for over the phone lol... Only to tap into search engine traffic, lets say I found a term that is highly competitive. However, the rankers are not optimizing for that specific query. Its only highly competitive because these sites are authoritative for other relavent keywords.
Example.
I want to rank for the keywords "how can i be sure this is true"
When I type this in a search engine, lets say I get youtube/ebay/etsy/etc... for the SERP (highly authoritative according to SEOmoz but they are not targeting the long tail question)
Would I be better off buying a domain canthisbe.com? I dont see how this makes sense....
-
It's confusing, but best practice is generally no hyphen in the root domain, but hyphens in the sub-folders (so, "www.mydomain.com/my-domain"). Google is good about separating words in root domains, but not always in folder and page names (and they recommend the hyphen as the preferred separator). Traditionally, hyphens in the root domain are also a (small) negative trust signal - people tend to think you couldn't get the non-hyphenated domain.
-
I am not 100% about hyphens. However, I noticed that most sites use hyphens in all their sub pages. (Just look at the URL of this thread http://www.seomoz.org/q/domain**-**length) I think that Hyphens are bad on a root domain.
"The reason behind it is that words such as: what, is, right etc. do not really give you any keyword value. Your main keyword would be France and then something to indicate that you want to relate to the current time - like 'now'."
Are you sure about this?
I never heard of this... Can you please provide a source?
From my understanding exact domain helps (no telling how much). By exact I am implying [iwanttogetonthefirstpageofgoogle] for the term "I want to get on the first page of google"
-
I think the comments here cover the bases - I'm not aware of any kind of outright penalty, but it's always a balancing act - the more words in your domain, the less SEO impact each word is going to have. At some point, it may start to look a bit spammy.
Of course, there's the practical side, which includes the usability aspects, too. Imagine you want to give someone this URL over the phone, print it on a business card, use email addresses at it, or even post it on social media (without a shortener) - at some point, a long URL just isn't practical. It's also a negative trust signal - people aren't going to take an overly long URL seriously, IMO.
-
Domain length extends your urls, and long urls are seeing as a negative factor. My recommendation would be to forget about hyphens - as these are also additional characters and are more difficult to type together with the rest of the alphanumerical characters on the keyboard.
As to the length - keep it short and do not try to put all of the words from your phrase in the domain - try to use the most important ones and no more than 3 combined together. For instance I would convert your domain : whatisgoingoninfrancerightnow.com to something like : francerightnow.com or even francenow.com
The reason behind it is that words such as: what, is, right etc. do not really give you any keyword value. Your main keyword would be France and then something to indicate that you want to relate to the current time - like 'now'.
The rest of the keywords could be easily included in the page names and that should give you a perfect structure to drive your SEO.
-
There are some minor negative correlations when it comes to length of domains. If it's a competitive search, then it may not be worth the minor interference. However, if it's a low competitive vertical, then go right ahead.
My opinion, though, would be to use a shorter search phrase like goingoninfrance.com. This will give you a broader appeal to consumers by not having the "right now" part, and it is short enough to remember. This also keeps you safe if the algorithm would change to further impact long urls.
-
I did an additional case study.
I took a longer domain with not just 1 or 2 but 3 hyphens
http://www.high-higher-highest-rankings.com/
I located one of it's high competitive keywords that it ranks for
"increase website ranking"
I'm sure if you type this in the Google search PPC ads will fill both top and right side
Now we check to see where it's ranking for this key phrase
You will notice that it's located number 2 only losing to an article about Google by About.com
So, I guess that statistically we can't necessarily rule out that the length of the domain with hyphens constitutes a ranking factor. Maybe only on a broader scale with other underlying issues
-
There is a lot of mixed opinions on both of these and personally I would rather not use a domain that's long. I rarely see websites ranking within the top 5 for long domains and I'm sure many people own these long-tail phrases and use them as domains.
According to the SEOMOZ's Google's Ranking Factors 2011
Long Titles + URLs are Still Likely Bad for SEOYou should definitely take a look at this as it breaks down some interesting facts.
This is the slide share of it: http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/ranking-factors-data-2011-smx-elite-sydney
Google's Ranking Factors
-
THis is somewhat helpful. However, it explains domain for users...
Let me give you an example..
If I want to rank for "what is going on in france right now" it is longer then 15 characters and no one will want to type it. If my domain is whatisgoingoninfrancerightnow.com it will help my SEO rankings, or do the search engines look at the length and say nonono?
The link you provided led me to another question. It recomends not using hyphens, are they talking about the main domain only www.my-domain.com, or main domain and extension www.mydomain.com/my-domain?
-
This is an excellent resource that gives all details in accordance with domains and SEO: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to avoid duplication across multiple country domains
Here's the scenario: I have a client currently running one Shopify site (AU) They want to launch three more country domains (US, UK and EU) They want each to be a standalone site, primarily so the customers can purchase in their local currency, which is not possible from a single Shopify site The inventory is all from the same source The product desscriptions will all be the same as well Question: How do we avoid content duplication (ie. how will canonical tags work in this scenario)?
International SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
2 Top level domains - not ranking?
Hi Guys I'm a bit confused, I have 3 top level domains com, com.au and co.nz I have set up the right CcLTD's and also the correct Hreflang tags - but for some reason, I'm only been found for my co.nz site and not for the com.au and the com My site is zenory com and zenory.co.nz, zenory.com.au the co.nz is doing well in the nz search but how come I can't find anything for the other two? Is there something I'm doing wrong here?
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
Huge spike in referral traffic from international domains
We have recently experienced a huge spike in referral traffic from .fr domains (we are in the UK). They all lead to our 404 page. Its been going on for the last 3 days, and its still happening with about 20 visitors browsing the site from these domains at any one time, staying approx 3-7 seconds and then bouncing. The top domain appears to be a parked page. We cant see any obvious links or ads coming from any of these .fr domains and they are quite irrelevant to our sites industry anyway, which leads me to believe these may not be real visitors. Any advice on what may be causing this? And how to stop it? Needless to say none of these referrals have converted.
International SEO | | Silkstream0 -
For a website in portuguese what would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br
Hello We are a company with a website in several languages, one of them is portuguese. Our market is 2 times bigger in Brazil than in Portugal, but obviously Brazil has more potential in the future. In domain.com we have our main site in English. What would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br? In the first case, it means just portuguese, in the second Brazil but it is not geolocalized, and in the third, you are almost ignoring Portugal users... Duplicating content, doesn't seem to make sense... The content is basically international, so it is just the language that matters. Any help will be very much appreciated.
International SEO | | forex-websites0 -
Working with country specific domain names vs. staying with .com
I've recently inherited a client that has a country specific domain for Canada (.ca) but there is also a US branch for the company at the .com address. They have a direct competitor that operates also in the U.S. and Canada that has decided to operate entirely under the .com address and re-direct all .ca traffic to their .com address. When I compare the link analysis data for both the .ca, .com, and competitors site, I'm finding there is a huge difference between the .ca site and the competitors site, but not a huge difference between the .com site and the competitors site. For example, the domain authorities are as follows: myclient.ca (Canadian branch) - 22 myclient.com (US branch) - 46 competitor.com - 53 When I do a brand search for my client in Canada, the Canadian branch website shows up first, but the American one is second. At this point, would it be better for my client to consolidate the two branches into the .com address and focus on increasing external followed links to the .com website? Or, is there merit in continuing to create a separate inbound link strategy for the .ca site? Thanks.
International SEO | | modernmusings0 -
How to Best Manage Multiple Domains?
Hi,
International SEO | | thealika
I am new here and this is my first question.
(so please excuse if my etiquette slightly off) I have just taken over the SEO work for a website in South Africa (.co.za) it is for an Attorney of immigration law, and naturally I would love to make it into a star on google. I have about 15 extra keyword domains at my disposal, 5 of them are parked and the rest are not doing anything at the moment. so my question is: what should I do with them to get the best SEO results for their keyword names? I was thinking to make a WordPress Multi Site, un-park the domains and create a separate site for each domain. Create a visually similar front page, but all the links head back over to the main site. Then work on optimising the SEO for each domain. (lengthy work but it's not too hard to rank in google.co.za) what do you think? I also heard that parking domains is a bad Idea, because google sees it as duplicate content; is that so? website:
www.migrationlawyers.co.za Parked domains:
MigrationLawyers.co.za
MigrationLawyer.co.za
MigrationLawyers.de
ImmigrationLaw.co.za
EmigrationLaw.co.za Keyword domains: Migration-Attorney.com
Migration-Lawyers.com
MigrationCounsel.co.za
ApplyForPermanentResidencesSouthAfrica.com
AvoidDeportationSouthAfrica.co.za
AvoidDeportationSouthAfrica.com
RetirementVisaSouthAfrica.com
SouthAfricanCitizenship.co.za
SouthAfricanPermits.co.za
StudyPermitSouthAfrica.co.za Thanks a lot,
Nikita0 -
Multilingual site - separate domain or all under the same umbrella
this has been asked before with not clear winner. I am trying to sum up pros and cons of doing a multilingual site and sharing the same domain for all languages or breaking it into dedicated subdomains e.g. as an example lets assume we are talking about a french property portal with an english version as well. Assume most of the current incoming links and traffic is from France. A) www.french-name.fr/fr/pageX for the french version www.english-name.com/en/pageX for the english version B) www.french-name.fr/fr/ for the french name (as is) www.french-name.fr/en for the english version the client currently follows approach A but is thinking to move towards B we see the following pros and cons for B take advantage of the french-name.fr domain strength and incoming links scalable: can add more languages without registering and building SE position for each one individually potential issues with duplicate content as we are not able to geotarget differenly on web master tools of google potential dilution of each page's strength as we will now have much more pages under the same domain (double the pages basically) - is this a valid concern? usability/marketing concerns as the name of the site is not in english (but then people looking for a house in France would be at least not completely alien to it) what are your thoughts on this? thanks in advance
International SEO | | seo-cat0 -
The best SEO practice for a .hk domain
We are currently working on a project which involves 3 separate .com domains in relation to a UK company selling/renting residential, commercial and investment properties within the UK. We are now working on producing a .hk site for the overseas customers. Can anyone advise what the best practice is for a .hk domain and where best to start? Should the domain be hosted in that geographical location for example? We are relatively new to this so any advise would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | SoundinTheory0