Long descriptive domain names?

I was wondering what the general concensus is on using long descriptive domain names. I am trying to get a few websites going and might try my hand at starting from scratch.

Of course many of the short and relevant domains are gone. So, would a very long, but descriptive domain be better or worse than a shorter but less descriptive domain.

For instance would the domain SearchEngineOptimization.com be better or worse than something shorter but not as descriptive.

When I say better, I mean better for getting high rankings in the SERPs and getting more traffic from other sources. Basically better = more targetted traffic

Wha'cha think?

Oh yeah, I did think about putting this in the domain section, but this is really more of a marketing/seo question...

 

If it is difficult to type, you are driving away traffic instead of collecting them..

 

the descriptive ones do better in SERP's - just don't stuff keywords in there

 

I go with short domain names... they are easy to remember and easy to type.

 

If you want to advertise off of the internet where people don't have access to search engines and bookmarks via their browsers, you're doomed with a long domain name.

Other than that why would it matter ?
A link is a link, anchor text is anchor text. the only benefit I could see a search engine giving to a shorter domain name would be one having to do with how old the name is, since shorter names are logicly going to be older.
Past that, if people like it they'll bookmark it with their own little description/name.

 

I think technology has now gotten to the point where the name length does not matter if it is used as complete description. With most browsers listing click on links I think in some cases a precise long descriptive name can be beneficial.

 

Yep, I think it depends on what you are doing. If you are trying to make your site brandable and popular, then a short catchy name is best. If you are doing any offline advertising, an easy to remember name is best. But if you are just trying to get direct traffic from the search engines, then people don't exactly need to remember the name as well. So just keep it relevant.

 

Thanks for the tips.

If I am reading what you are saying right relevance is the most important aspect of the domain even if I have to go a little longer to get it right. This is, of course, unless I am planning on really trying to brand it offline. I was thinking about the offline branding and it seems to me easy to remember trumps length.

I guess short, catchy, and relevant is the holy grail of domain names...