Domain Name Length "wiggle room"
-
So the general idea for domain names is around to keep it around 15 characters, but I'm considering getting a mycitywebdesign.com type domain specific to my location and it's 23 characters. No hyphens. The original site hasn't had any seo work on it, so the original won't lose any progress.
What suggestions/experience do you have with this type of situation?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hey David,
Yes, totally get where you are coming from on this, and agree that there is still a small edge in keyword domains. I predict that's one of those signals that is diminishing over time and may one day hold little power, so for me, I'd advised starting with a branded domain, planning to WIN now and in the future
-
I totally agree with branded domains being more effective. I was just trying to answer his original question. It can be hard to remember the entire domain when marketing your services, especially if it's a long one. The bad thing is, having a keyword driven domain still has a bit of ranking potential attached to it, even if it isn't much. For new clients searching for what he does I don't think this matters as much, since they would not have any loyalty so early in that stage of their buying journey, and would probably click whoever comes up on top of search results.
-
Hi Blake,
I think David makes a lot of good points here. I'd like to offer some different thoughts of my own on this, building somewhat on what David has already said, but maybe taking it a step beyond that.
Personally, I think brands are more important than any specific keyword reach can be. Let's just think about this site we're both on right now ... Moz.com. It's not mozseattle.com or mozinboundmarketingsoftware.com or what have you. The domain and the brand are one, making them both mutually, immediately recognizable as 'the' Moz entity. Another example - let's think about the 49ers. Their official website is 49ers.com. They don't have to be 49ersfootballteamsanfrancisco.com. They've built a brand that stands for itself.
Unless a city or keyword is part of your legal business name, I think domains like this can look like kind of an awkward, not very sophisticated reach for search engine rankings:
Truly, I'd rather see walkerplumbing.com if the name of the business is Walker Plumbing. If I've used their service before and they did a good job and then I need a plumber later, I may have some chance of remembering that the guys who came out were Walker Plumbing. If I see that domain in the SERPs, recognition happens. I'm not going to recognize plumbersanfranciso.com as anything if the Walker guys chose that domain instead, hoping it would give them a bit of a ranking edge.
If you are planning to build a great brand, my personal choice would be to go with a domain name that matches it as closely as possible and focus on much more robust tactics for earning rankings. Added to this, putting a city name in your domain may become an albatross for the business if you earn enough success to want to expand to other cities. It could actually limit you.
I like brands I can instantly recognize. They are memorable and convenient for users. This is a good reason to choose your business name wisely from the get-go, so that it legitimately includes keywords from the get-go (i.e. naming your business Stellar Web Design vs. just Stellar or something like that).
Just my 2 cents - hope they are interesting pennies
-
Thanks so much! That answered my question perfectly.
-
If it is memorable then it could work. I see plenty of keyword driven domains ranking all day long, even if they are a bit longer. My honest opinion, I would figure out a clever way of adding a keyword into a branded name, rather than going right for the citykeyword.com
Our domain is an example of that. www.webdesignandcompany.com covers many different phrases due to how we merge on page and off page content. (our logo is an ampersand, so it all fits together) Also by having the word "company" in our name we can also rank for when someone searches for Internet marketing company, seo company, web design company, web development company, etc etc.
Here are a few examples: (Linking to Google searches, not our site or pages)
St Louis internet marketing company
St Louis web design company
St Louis seo companyI would have your name, then possibly your keyword. Something like YOURNAMEwebdesign.com, and use your content (on page/off page) and citations to make the web understand where you are. yourcitywebdesign.com is kind of forgettable, plus it can make it harder to rank for services outside of your main one. I know from experience, as it took some work to get our Internet profile to be understood by all search engines. Now we show up on page one for a lot of different phrases. SEO was always our number one focus, so we target that phrase the most.
Will it work? Yes. Could you use a long domain name? Sure. Could you rank for additional items? Yep. Could you find a better domain name? Absolutely. I wouldn't worry about it too much unless the name is REALLY long to where it doesn't make sense, and a user has a harder time remembering it. Also, I would use a shorter domain for your email if you decide to move everything to a longer 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
-
Considering Switching Domain from .ca to .com for Service Area Business - What is the Risk / Reward?
Hello, Thank you to anyone who takes the time to share their thoughts on this. I will preface this by saying that I am very new to the community and have lots to learn, so please forgive any obvious errors on my part. That having been said am very happy to receive positive criticism and feedback 🙂 Quick Background: We are a high end mobile wellness business based in Toronto Canada offering in home/office servicing including: yoga, pilates, nutrition, meditation, chiropractors, etc... As we are expanding we are transitioning form new leads coming from business partners and word of mouth to driving new business online As such we have an new Squarespace site (which is the first site I ever built, so any feedback is welcome) and are venturing into social media, SEO, local citations etc... for the first time We have a significant content catalogue originally for client and instructor education that we are now repurposing for this new digital adventure but have not yet deployed While currently focused in Torotno, we have plans to expand to several other countries in the next two years. As the site is quite new and we have little content or incoming links I was thinking now is the time to switch to .com from .ca before we roll out Website: www.anahana.ca Risk Reward? & Other Issues? Both domains are currently verified with Squarespace, and it seems easy enough to switch. What could blow up by making this switch which I might not be aware of? Our emails and business card use the .ca, but I don't think this would matter too much 6-12 months out... is there something else I might be missing on this? .com and using subfolders or subdomains as opposed to country specific TLDs ? This is something I am still working on understanding, but from what I have learned thus far, if we are going to progressively roll out a large content library, is it not better from an SEO standpoint to have this all in one domain? Local SEO and legal considerations for TLDs when operating local Service Area Businesses. I am sure there are many other angles here that I am missing and am not really looking for any hard answer on much of this, but any general advice, suggested resources, and experienced insights would be extremely helpful. Thanks so much, cj
Local SEO | | CJ7770 -
"We" or "I" for a small local healthcare enterprise?
Hi all, SEO newb here (or possibly rookie!). I'm a health professional and run a small, new specialised healthcare business targeting a local area (15 miles max). My product as such is the service I provide. There is a grand total of one employee, that of course being me! My SEO goal is phonecalls made and subsequent bookings as opposed to sales. Prior to joining here, I just looked at websites that provide a similar service and blindly assumed that a "We" approach to writing content was the accepted norm for presumed professional appearance. On reflection however, not only are most of these employing a team, most are in areas much more metropolitan than I operate in (I operate in a medium sized town where almost everyone knows everyone else by about 1 degree). In addition, I have run into a few difficulties with this however when writing content/incorporating keywords. Now I am about to re-write my "About Me" section I'm having a real challenge using the aforementioned context while sounding personable and like-able. Does anyone have any advice or experience re the correct context to use, in regards to the difference in CTR's and bounce rates etc in a small one-man enterprise that offers specialised services to the local area? Many thanks!
Local SEO | | UkPod1 -
Two websites, same business name, same NAP
Hi, A client of mine offers loft conversions and wants to make a go of it. So he has a website dedicated to loft conversions. He is also a joiner/carpenter and has another old website which offers general joinery work and insurance work. Both websites have the same business name and same address and phone number. There is only one Google place page for the loft conversions website. The loft conversions website is not ranking as well as we would like locally. Could it be due to the same NAP? What are the best options? Redirect the old website to the loft conversions one (he might not like that idea) Change the address and phone number on one website?(and all subsequent citations?) Would love some help on this!
Local SEO | | AL123al0 -
Transfer Local SEO rankings to another domain
The question is specifically about local rankings, not the organic ones. My client recently acquired another Law firm. Acquired firm's website is ranking well in Google local and has a decent SEO authority. Its Google mybusiness page is also established and has a lot of positive reviews. Client's main website is comparatively new and doesn't currently rank well in Google local. The Google mybusiness page is sort of incomplete and doesn't have any review. Both businesses are listed in local directories (client's main business is listed in lot less directories and has fewer citations). The client wants to merge the newly acquired website with his main website, without losing Google local rankings the acquired website has. Or in other words, transfer newly acquired website's local rankings to his main site. Client wants to transfer the website to his main website in all cases while minimizing the damage. I'd transfer acquired website's content to main website, properly map the pages and place 301 redirects. Regarding Google my business pages, what would you suggest? I can either update main business NAP and Website address in Acquired business's mybusiness page, or transfer acquired business's mybusiness ratings to main mybusiness page via this form: https://support.google.com/business/contact/business_move_reviews I've also heard that Google support can merge two business page, however not sure about that. I'd also need to update the business listings and citations. Could you please suggest the best way of doing this? And have you practically tested it?
Local SEO | | Woofire0 -
Changing Your Company's Name
Our firm is considering adding another person and adding that person's name to the firm. In terms of our online presence, what all would have to be done for that to work? For example: 1. We aren't changing the domain, but should we get a domain with the new name and redirect it to our current site? 2. Do I need ask the people who have linked to our site with our name in the anchor text to change it to the new name? 3. Do I need to get back to all our old posts/blogs/etc and edit them with the new name? 4. Can we use our current social media names or do we need to setup new accounts? 5. If we decide to just keep the onsite marketing the same, but change the name in regards to offsite markeitng (banners, billboards, etc) will that conflict have a very negative effect? 6. Anything else, anyone wants to point out would be great. Thanks, Ruben
Local SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Keywords & Domain
I need some advice. We are a real estate company that offers real estate sales and rentals. I have a domain (for example lets pretend there is an imaginary island called Pumpkin Island) - pumpkinrealestate.com (as many people just refer to pumpkin island as pumpkin eg. I am going down to pumpkin this weekend). pumpkinrealestate.com will be a website that offers all the properties for sale, local real estate community information, buying process, selling process, etc for the Pumpkin Island real estate market (we are a brokerage). I am also beginning to build out a new website that will be for our vacation rentals at "pumpkin island". I have a domain called "vacationrentalspumpkinisland.com" Question taking this factors in account: EMDs work well in our area IF the content is good. So assuming I will have a good link profile and good content, on page seo and offpage - - - pumpkinrealestate.com will have a decent amount of traffic naturally while vacationrentalspumpkinisland.com will have very dramatic increases of traffic during the winter, spring and summer (due to people planning vacations) would it be best to have the vacation rental website under its own domain vacationrentalspumpkinisland.com and the sales site under pumpkinrealestate.com OR have the sales site as pumpkinrealestate.com and the vacation website a subdomain of it for example: vacationrentals.pumpkinrealestate.com?? (maybe helping to leverage the traffic for both sites for benefit of one domain). Puzzled and need some thoughts, advice or suggestions. Thanks!!!! CHris
Local SEO | | topsailislander0 -
Please help me choose which is the better brand name or domain name?
I am helping a friend and getting involved in looking at launching a taxi service in a major city. Now this is for one of the major cities of world. A big part of the branding of the company or service will be the unique and memorable telephone number this company owns. This company is not expected to be anything huge, just a good small local business. However, we are trying to utilise online marketing which I feel have not been utilised by this cector that much.. The telephone number is something as good as 100 1515, but slightly better. These numbers are hard to get hold of and even when there is one available it's often very expensive. So a big part of the company will be getting that number seen everywhere. As it's a regional business, just for that one city, and for taxi services having a good telephone number that people can easily remember is important. However, most people now use smart phones, and people will often search on their phones or ipads for "birmingham taxi" or "birmingham taxi service" and so on. I have the opportunity, as an example to either go with "getbirminghamtaxi.co.uk" or "getabirminghamtaxi". So the choice is between "Get Birmingham Taxi" or Get a Birmingham Taxi" - the difference being putting the "a" in the middle like a sentence. I also thought of exact match domain "birmingham taxi" or birminghamtaxi.co.uk but the owner wants between £3,000-£12,000 (so between $5,000-$20,000) for it. I feel with a domain purchased for just £3 ($5) I would be able to test the market, and if I found it was successful, we could then consider acquiring a more expensive EMD. I feel that services like private taxi hire firms are small tiny regional businesses, and they don't really do much on search and SEO. I feel if our one did, it would stand out, and I do think quite a few people search online for taxi's, and I know I do. I am also aware that there are now app's like Halo but there is room for a small business to thrive doing a lot online and offline marketing with a great number. This is not for Birmingham. I have just made that up. So I would welcome people's feedback in terms of which domain name would be best, with or without the "a"? If you have an alternative suggestion I would welcome that. Also if anyone has any other comments or feedback about this market, doing business, marketing, or any knowledge that you have that you would like to share with us - then that would be appreciated. Thank you.
Local SEO | | RyanShahed0 -
Duplicate site content and setting up country specific domains
We look after a website which was originally just hosted on mysite.co.uk. We expanded to the European markets creating mysite.de and mysite.fr getting each product and page translated properly into German and French respectively. We have really good success on google.de and google.fr for these sites. We want to do the same with google.ie and create mysite.ie for the Irish market but as they speak English there will be no translation required. The only thing we will change is the base currency from GBP to EUR. From a duplication point of view will this be bad for both businesses mysite.co.uk and mysite.ie or will the .ie site be seen as the 'copier' and the .co.uk as the authority? Has anyone got any advice over best practice here and what would be the best thing for us to consider? We absolutely cannot risk the .co.uk site ranking wise. It's unrealistic for us to rewrite each product description and page so it means the same thing but is worded differently to avoid the duplication issue.
Local SEO | | gavinhoman0