Which domain is better - a Long descriptive or Short Abbreviated?

[NikitaG]

I want to start a new company and have an option to have a long and descriptive domain or buy out the 5 letter Abbreviated domain for $2000.

abstract example:
LegalMigrationServiceCapeTown.com  
V.S.
LMSCT.com

The advantage of the shorter domain is that it is 13 years old.
so now for the SEO - which one do you think is better? is Exact Match Domain a better thing for SEO or can I get away with a shorter domain?

I can buy both, but which one should I build on as the main domain?

any advice would be much appreciated, as well as the PROS & CONS of both.

[danatanseo]

This is a great question and great example. The first thing I want to know is, what is your brand name? Do you have a brand name? I understand that "legal migration service in Cape Town" is what your business does, but is that the brand name as well? If not, and you do have a brand name, I'd go for the brand name, personally.

If you don't have a brand name yet, I would consider making "LMSCT" the brand name, and brand the hell out of it. Yes, and make it the URL too.

I wouldn't go for the EMD. That brings with it too much potential risk (IMHO) in terms of potential algortihm updates that are hurting EMDs and rewarding brands. Besides, the EMD is extremely long and hard to remember. Another thing to keep in mind is when and if you do paid advertising, that EMD is so long that it's most likely going to tap out the character limitations of a lot of ads, and take away room that you could have used for your marketing purposes.

That's my two cents. Interested to know what other people think!

Dana

[Francisco_Meza]

I personally think both are hard to remember. It's been 30 seconds since I read your post and I already forgot the domain name. There are two things I would do. The 1st one is what Dana suggests to use your "current" brand if you have one. The second one, assuming the "current" brand is too difficult to remember, is to buy an EASY to remember brand.

I am PERSONALLY in the process of immigrating my wife so I am probably almost the perfect guy to ask.

My Google search here in San Diego would have been something like "San Diego immigration services", "San Diego immigration lawyer", "San Diego legal immigration". Any of those searches can be a brandable domain. Since these are probably taken, i would contact the owners of the websites using domaintools.com and doing a whois search. You can buy many domains for less than $1000. Other brandable domains would be weimmigrate.com, immigrationlawyers.com, legalimmigration.com, greencardservices.com (because that's what it's for, the green card), permanentresident.com, whatever.com.... you get what I'm saying.

Oh wait, you're not targeting "immigrants". You're targeting people who are migrating. So now I'm a little confused; migrating out of USA or into USA (backbutton, bye!).

[NikitaG]

Thanks, the company I am branding specialises in allowing people to Migrate to South Africa, and we are based in Cape Town. The actual name is different, i just prefer not expose it until I actually buy it.

We have plenty EMD's in the niche, we use them as landing pages.
But as I understand google is less and less concerned about the domain name containing keywords.
From the Answers so far; I gather I must concentrate on the "BRAND" regardless of a short or long domain, and spend time building that up.

thanks

[danatanseo]

Yes, Nikita, I think you've got the gist of it and you are on the right track. Good luck!

[MoosaHemani]

I would highly agree with Dana here!

Instead of moving towards exact match domain you should try to go for the domain that offers more branding opportunities!

I really like the idea by Dana here and that is to go for a domain that contain your brand name and stick to it... you can use the exact match domain and redirect it to your main domain but your main domain should be short and contain branding opportunities.

Hope this helps!

[NikitaG]

Hello everyone, 
Dana, Moosa, Francisco.

Thanks so much for your input, I really appriciate it
I have come to a point where I need to make a decision:
My brand is a South African Band, but we target an international clientele.
Should I buy the .COM  or the .CO.ZA ?

We would like to rank for mostly other countries, but south africa is important too.
Thanks,
Best Regards
Nikita