Domain Name Length "wiggle room"

[blakewenloe]

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!

[David-Kley]

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 company

I 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.

[blakewenloe]

Thanks so much! That answered my question perfectly.

[MiriamEllis]

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:

plumbersanfrancisco.com

sanfranciscobestplumber.com

myplumberinsanfrancisco.com

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

[David-Kley]

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.

[MiriamEllis]

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