Are long domains bad for SEO?????

[DancingWithPoodles]

Say I got the domain www.tastiest and most delicios chocolate in london.co.uk and this had 4000 exact matches per month and was avaialble.

Shall I buy it and have the exact keyword match or is it toooooooooooo long and I need a shorter one?

tell me your experiences and opinions please. I want to buy the domain I am looking at today so nobody else can buy it.

P.S the one above is fake

 

[david64]

Only Google could give you are real answer for that. People will have their different opinions on this. I would say it makes no difference. Domain length shouldn't have any affect on site quality and relevance, which is what Google are interested in.

I know an aff. bilger who swears that Google doesn't like multiple hyphens though.

 

[Clinton]

4000 exact matches

When results are in the low numbers like that I find them extremely unreliable as an indicator of the real search volume.

 

[BDR_London]

People usually go for short domains because they are easier to remember. If you are going to have an email address for that domain it can be a mouthful. Longer URL names are usually classed as spam sites which could have an impact on your SEO. I did find this ultra long domain thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast[dot]com
so it is possible.

 

[Andy Walpole]

When results are in the low numbers like that I find them extremely unreliable as an indicator of the real search volume.

4,000 per month isn't low.

A domain name like that may have some value - experiment with it.

The whole point about having short domain names is that they are easy to remember... that is an unusually long domain name though

This thread is already number five in the SERPs for that keyword!

 

[weareable]

My most successful site has a domain with 15 letters. I don't put its success down to the long domain name but it didn't do it any harm.

 

[Page1SEOWriter]

I am on page 1 of Google for every London borough and acronym SEO with a five word hyphenated domain name and did this within 2 weeks of registering the domain and have remained on page 1 ever since, with many number 1 results (example Knightsbridge SE0 - change 0 for o) so from my experience I would say it could work.

There is only one way to find out though, try it!

PS it must be kept less than 90 characters max though.

 

[MASSEY]

Say I got the domain www.tastiest and most delicios chocolate in london.co.uk and this had 4000 exact matches per month and was avaialble.

Shall I buy it and have the exact keyword match or is it toooooooooooo long and I need a shorter one?

tell me your experiences and opinions please. I want to buy the domain I am looking at today so nobody else can buy it.

P.S the one above is fake

You register the toooooooooo long domain name, and register a shorter one change the DNS of the shorter domain so it points at your long one, and you only advertise the short one on your literature etc. so people wont be confused.

 

[Daniellelondon]

great tips

 

[Zeal]

Since you finally asked a serious question, here's a serious answer

I believe hyphens do help to separate key words though? Myth or fact? Or just self confidence
As already mentioned - length has neither a good or bad effect on results.... however:

Mr Smith calls you and ask's "Have you got a website?"
Poodle reply's with "Yes, its: www.a really long domain name which customers might struggle with .com "


Then, if you start to include hyphens in there.... it will get rather messy.


If you really insisted on a rather long name. You could set up another domain name for you to give to customers. Redirecting them to your 'long names site'.

 

[weareable]

Whatever difference it MAY make to Google, will be massively outweighed by producing excellent unique well written, well organised content

It may make a difference to humans, especially if they need to remember the URL (off the side of a van for example)

Great advice, Its very easy to get caught up the intricacy's of SEO and forget who you are making your site for, Google or your potential customers.

 

[endlasuresh]

Long domain names are bad to remember and their keyword searches are even too low
In google adword tool it shows but the results are not correct.Always try to keep quality content on the site whether it is long or short domain that would be enough to get traffic

 

[barrysummers]

completely agree with most of above. long name bad for clients to remember and revisit but as they have said just redirect. as for google dont think it matters about legth of the name for them though do not use more than one hyphen in my opinion.

 

[I, Brian]

It's only going to cost £6 for the domain and your time to set up a basic website. Why not try it and test it yourself?

 

[JElder]

You register the toooooooooo long domain name, and register a shorter one change the DNS of the shorter domain so it points at your long one, and you only advertise the short one on your literature etc. so people wont be confused.

If you just to a domain redirect, I believe Google will totally ignore the long domain - they want to read what the users will see, and if there is a redirect, that;s what they see.

To use two domains, you would need two sites with unique content on each, crosslinked to each other. Obviously, the site content on your SEO domain should be relevant to the domain name.

Its a SEO method that has fallen out of fashion a little as search engines get better at locating and ignoring duplicate content, but if the site has genuine, useful content there is no reason why it would not work.