Hi guys. My website is "online directory of all about painting and decorating" in my small country. I have a problem to decide which domain name to use for good usability and seo too. 1. w.paintinganddecoratingdirectory. 2. w.paintanddecorate. 3. w.paintdecorate. paintinganddecorating. is sold already I like the 1st because it is descriptive of what my site really is and good keywords in it, but is really long. Lot of my marketing will be through "text messages" to painters and I am worried that they will be mistyping it (also in emails). 2nd and 3rd, much shorter, but no good keywords for search. ???Would anyone have an opinion of what is more important??? I would really like to do it good from the beginning to avoid redirecting etc. in the future. thank you very much
Great question! I have wondered this myself and have several real-world experiments out there to test this out. I helped develop this site for example: http://www.customerservicescoreboard.com/ which is REALLY long. But it manages to pull down quite a few unique visitors per month and was recently mentioned in a Time magazine article (last month). I tend to go for shorter domains, but long domains with keywords in the domain can work. However, if you see lots of word-of-mouth traffic make sure it is at least phonetically intuitive.
Hi Jenny. thanx for reply. I believe "PaintingAndDecoratingDirectory" is phonetically intuitive. I am wondering whether it would be a good idea to use long "paintinganddecoratingdirectory" as a main domain name and use shorter one for my "text messages marketing campaign" which would be 301 redirected to the main domain. would this be any good???
all of those are very similar with same keywords. remember google is smart enough to know the word variations. i personally like paintdecorate.com because its short, got all the keywords.
I always recommend shorter domain names where possible, they are usually more memorable and have less of a chance of your site visitors making a typo when entering your url. Another vote for paintdecorate. Have you checked to see if those domain names are available with your country tld ?
webcosmo has a good point. Google can handle interpreting different word stems. "ing" is just a stem on paint - same applies to decorate.
Thank you all guys very much for suggestions. I am using "and" only because thats the proper name of the trade, so... , but I would be happy dropping it. So you guys are saying, that if I pick "paintdecorate", if anybody will type "painter and decorator" or "painting and decorating" into google, my domain name "paintdecorate" would be highlighted? would it??
if i have to choose, the shorter must be better. anyway check out the post on How to Register a Good Domain Name.
shorter is usually better, but some keywords are lengthy. In some cases you can't help but have a longer domain, and I've seen plenty that do just fine.
If the keyword is very long, you can abbreviate it such as: Auto = Automobile Info = Information Tele = Television Deco = Decoration Anim = Animation
Go with the shorter one if you're serious long term and use seo, if your just after a quick buck then the longer-tail will get you results quicker.
I bought the shortest one paintdecorate as "all" of you suggested. thank you all very much for your opinions and help. I am really grateful.
Google and the rest of the search engines don't base ranking on keyowords in a domain name or how short it is. Key is to pick a rather short domain so people can remember it but make sure you get your site noticed and provide valuable information to people.
First, You need to check that Domain that you are trying to search is available or not. if available the you to hosting and select it But remember that No more then 15 characters of your domain.