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orion_joel
01-06-2009, 01:41 AM
Which would be a better domain to have for a website, i am just using a sample here as i don't want to give away an idea.

Websitesandgraphics.com OR wandg.com OR both with all marketing pointing to the full domain.

I can understand that the 2nd option is less then ideal as it means absolutely nothing to any body. However it is much easier to remember and to type. However i can also understand why the first option would also be the preferred method, as it defines what the site is in the domain, however beyond this it is a long domain name and would not be entirely easy to remember.

Probably having both would be good however still am i better off trying to come up with a better option for the short domain.

Harold Mansfield
01-06-2009, 01:48 AM
Since most ".com" domains that make any sense are most likely gone, if you can get the one with the key words in it, take it.
Remember, if you already have an indexed domain that you are using, and the new site is sort of a spin off, you can always make a sub domain, and use any keywords that you want.
For instance, if you already have orionnetworks, why not websitegraphics.orionnetworks.com.au ?

(Obviously no one can register a sub domain except the owner of the original domain)

It depends if you are looking for SERP results or branding.
Shorter is better for branding, but the other is good for memory.
For $10 a piece, why not both ?

SteveC
01-06-2009, 01:56 AM
Suggest you buy both of them... domain names are so cheap it is simply easier to buy all that interest you and then you can use them as and when... and of with a keyword will always rank higher within the search engines.

Steve B
01-06-2009, 02:33 AM
However it is much easier to remember and to type.

I don't agree. Since it's not a real word (or combination of real words) I think it is much harder to remember and type.

I like your first option.

Business Attorney
01-06-2009, 12:06 PM
I'd use option 3, but making the longer name the main focus. While shorter is generally good for branding and typing, I agree with Steve B that random initials are generally not easier for me to remember or type. Obviously there are exceptions like IBM or ATT, but those are the exceptions.

I particularly hate it when law firms pick something like frgslaw.com or qsrands.com. Their initials may be meaningful to the firm itself (firms tend to refer to themselves internally by their initials) and maybe a few clients, but to other people dealing with the firm, they are meaningless.

billbenson
01-06-2009, 12:53 PM
I'd hyphenate the keyword url and register a brandable url and do a 301 redirect from the brandable to the hyphenated url.

seolman
01-06-2009, 07:02 PM
Which would be a better domain to have for a website, i am just using a sample here as i don't want to give away an idea.

Websitesandgraphics.com OR wandg.com OR both with all marketing pointing to the full domain.

The real answer is: choose a domain name that is easy for people to remember. If it's bamabama.com so be it so long as it's easy to remember and type into the browser.

It will make little difference to your SEO. If by chance you can work in a keyword or something about your business like "websites" or "whatever" that's great too.

Examples:
Twitter
Google
Digg

The important thing is ease of recall.

billbenson
01-06-2009, 08:01 PM
I've got to disagree with you on this one Soelman. I have a site that does well, and there are only two possibilities. One is the keywords are in the url hyphenated. The other is site age. The url keywords are by far my largest search term.

Lets say you are selling hp printers. I'd register hp-printers.com (probably taken, but you get the idea), H1 on every page would be HP model xxxx printer. Natural text about the hpxxx printer.

I've also had a lot of success with renaming via htaccess. hp-stuff.com/printers vs hp-stuff.com?id=473.php

It's not exactly a scientific study, but my results anyway, are pretty obvious when you look at the stats.

seolman
01-06-2009, 08:32 PM
I hear you Bill, but I would venture to say your site probably does well due to incoming links and the level of competition.

I've SEO'd well over 150 sites and regularly outrank hyphenated keyword rich domains for highly competitive keywords. There is a tiny benefit to having the keywords in the domain if you can get it, but it's secondary to other SEO factors such as incoming links. That is why I always recommend to my clients to get easy to remember domain names.

I've found that Google pays less attention to the hyphenated domains, Yahoo tends to pay a higher level of attention as does MSN. Google pays much more attention to incoming link weight, and that will be the main factor in determining the ranking of the site in the final analysis.

billbenson
01-06-2009, 11:05 PM
I think you have to really look at this stuff on a case by case basis. Site is in a huge industry with only two major players and maybe 10 companies that sell subsets of the products. That certainly changes the playing field. So the HP example is really just an example, but probably not relevant for HP products.

I tend to feel that if your h1 is HP Printers and your title is HP Printers and your URL is HPprintersRUS. G will figure out that the site is about HP printers.

Also, worth noting, most of my traffic is via adwords. Worth noting though, after several years I'm starting to get quite a bit of natural SERPS traffic.

So the question I ask myself is does optimization for AdWords give you a clue as to what works for natural SERPS? Personally, I think so.

I also think that if you are selling lawnmower blades, a URL of of HPprinters or HP-Printers.com will hurt you from a SEO standpoint. I suspect HPprinters.com vs hp-printers.com doesn't matter much if your text, title, or h1 contains HP Printers. It sure won't hurt you unless you are trying to brand your company.

seolman
01-06-2009, 11:41 PM
I think you have to really look at this stuff on a case by case basis. Site is in a huge industry with only two major players and maybe 10 companies that sell subsets of the products. That certainly changes the playing field. So the HP example is really just an example, but probably not relevant for HP products.

I tend to feel that if your h1 is HP Printers and your title is HP Printers and your URL is HPprintersRUS. G will figure out that the site is about HP printers.

Also, worth noting, most of my traffic is via adwords. Worth noting though, after several years I'm starting to get quite a bit of natural SERPS traffic.

So the question I ask myself is does optimization for AdWords give you a clue as to what works for natural SERPS? Personally, I think so.

I also think that if you are selling lawnmower blades, a URL of of HPprinters or HP-Printers.com will hurt you from a SEO standpoint. I suspect HPprinters.com vs hp-printers.com doesn't matter much if your text, title, or h1 contains HP Printers. It sure won't hurt you unless you are trying to brand your company.

Yes, but we're only talking about the domain here. I completely agree with you as regards H1 tags, smart page titles and naming pages etc. these are all good ideas to give any search engine a clue about what page content is about. It also helps your site visitors know where they are.

I'm only saying as a stand-alone item the amount a domain brings to the party as regards SEO is very little. But don't get me wrong. If the domain name hp-printers.com is available I'll take it. The major players in SEO are really page title and incoming links. Example: I googled "hydroponic plants" - you can see the page title has the greatest influence in the results. If you were to check the incoming links on the top sites you will probably discover the highest ranking sites have more incoming links with the anchor text "hydroponic plants".

The site with "hydroponics" in the domain is not in first spot. If it had more incoming links with the right anchor text it would overtake the others.

http://www.beranked.com/images/hydroponics.png

orion_joel
01-07-2009, 12:26 AM
Wow, some great conversation on this topic. While i am still planning to do everything under my current business name, the reason i am looking to get another site is that i want to better display the individual product range separately to the rest of my site. It is what i am hoping will be a highly popular niche area of the products that i offer.

Additionally at this point i did choose to register just the longer version, which is cablesandconsumables.com.au and the short version i was considering was candc.com.au. However the more i thought about it the more i realized i would be probably trying to focus more on the full words in marketing so that people knew what the site was selling. It was a easy choise in the end when i went to check availability and they had 40% off the domains, which means i got a .com.au, for less then cost of a .com after currency conversion.

Additionally when i was looking round on godaddy they were offering .info for $1.38 AU and i picked up 6 different ones which i may be able to work some decent sites onto. I just could not go past 6 domains for $10.

seolman
01-07-2009, 12:33 AM
I want to make clear here I'm not saying that Bill is wrong and I'm right. Bill is correct to say the domain influences the search engine results. My contention is: the influence a domain has on the results is not huge so choose something that is easy to remember or perhaps related to your business in a different way (besides the fact that most great domain names are gone - another factor to consider).

Example: if you plan to sell mountain bikes you could try to get a domain like offroader.com or something. It doesn't have to have the words mountain-bikes.com or some variation on that theme to be successful in the SERPs.

vangogh
01-07-2009, 01:07 AM
For fun I'll add a few new thoughts to the mix about domain. I also think brandable is more important than keywords in a domain, though if I can get a keyword into a domain and still keep it easy to remember and type I'll gladly add the keyword.

Not too long ago Google seemed to give more weight to exact match domains. For example if someone searched 'hp printers' and your domain was hpprinters.com or hp-printers.com you probably came up number one. I think the idea was you might be searching for that domain since you essentially typed it. If you type IBM into a search engine isn't it likely you're looking for the IBM site (though why you went to a search engine I don't really know)

I don't think the exact match is carrying the same weight today though. I'm generally not seeing the exact match domain showing up #1 like you used to see.

One place where the keywords can help is in the links. I'll use my own site as an example. A natural way people might link to my site is to use Van SEO Design in the anchor text since that's the name of the business and the site. That should lead to more links with keyword like design and seo in them. So while the keywords in the domain itself may not do much to improve ranking, the same keywords in the anchor text of links pointing back to the site could.

Similarly people may grab a URL when linking to a page. If your URL is keyword.com/keyword2/keyword3-keyword4.html you have a link with a lot of keywords in the anchor text simply because you have them in the URL.

That's likely how keywords in a domain help. By the eventual anchor text you get as opposed to the keyword actually being in the domain itself. Sure it can help search engines figure out what your site may be about, but it can also be so abused and spam that it can only be given so much weight.

That's a lot of speculation on my part, but it's how I see what's going on.

billbenson
01-07-2009, 12:53 PM
I think Seolman and I agree. I just think frequently the cumulative effect of a lot of little things ads up, so if it makes "sense" to put it in the url I would do it. I'd rather have abc.com than lawnboy-lawnmower-blades.com though.

Does anybody have an opinion on page names? I've had good luck with domain.com/hpxxxprinter.html for example. The page name is also optimized for hpxxxprinter as well, but I have other pages that don't match and they don't do as well. Again this is AdWords, not natural SERPS.

vangogh
01-07-2009, 01:01 PM
I think you should always name files in ways that are relevant to people and search engines. I'd sooner use hp-printers.com/laser/color.html than hp-printers.com/cat1/product_id365

The first URL makes it clear what the page will be about where the second is anyone's guess.

Will the keywords make a difference in where the page ranks? Probably help some, though it certainly isn't going to catapult you to #1 on it's own. I'd look at it similarly as domains. Sure if it makes sense get a keyword in. It may help some and there will be people who use the URL as anchor text.

It will also add in naturally using better anchor text internally. You're home page on hp-printers would likely link to Laser, which would then link to Color. Color would link back up to Laser. By structuring things around keyword themes you can reinforce those keywords internally easily and help search engines identify what your site is about.

Do a search for keyword themes or keyword theming or siloing. There's plenty of content on the subject.

Business Attorney
01-07-2009, 02:46 PM
I also think brandable is more important than keywords in a domain...

I think this, too, varies on a case-by-case basis. It's probably true in every case where you want return traffic, whether type-in or search engine generated. I'd rather be YouTube than AmateurVideosOnline, for example.

But if nearly all your traffic is one time traffic generated by search engines, then SEO rules the day. Given the nature of my site on limited liability companies and the fact that most people look up the information only once when they are forming their LLC, I don't expect many returning users. To me, the brand value is almost meaningless.

I'd equate it somewhat to a local hotdog stand versus the pushcart hotdog vendor on the beach. Several of our local hotdog stands are well known in the area and when you mention Mustard's, Fluky's or Superdawg, the brand means some thing. People will travel to get the hotdog they want. At the beach, money and effort spent branding by a vendor would be nearly wasted. The branding would not be apparent to the average visitor who perhaps had never bought a hotdog at this particular beach before and never would again.

I see both types of sites regularly when I use the Internet. Both have a place, and it really depends which one your site aspires to be.

vangogh
01-07-2009, 03:29 PM
One point about brandable vs keywords is you don't automatically have to sacrifice one for the other. For example shoes.com would be both brandable and keyword rich (assuming your site is about shoes)

I think because of companies like Google and Yahoo, etc people now think brandable means made up. It doesn't. It's about being easy to remember and aligning with your business.

We've mentioned printers in this thread. Maybe printers.com or laserprinters.com would be your first choice. Both I assume are taken. You could easily use something like printersboutique.com or printers-boutique.com are both still brandable and unique enough where no one owns them. They also get in the primary keyword printers.

seolman
01-07-2009, 04:25 PM
I think Seolman and I agree. I just think frequently the cumulative effect of a lot of little things ads up, so if it makes "sense" to put it in the url I would do it. I'd rather have abc.com than lawnboy-lawnmower-blades.com though.

Does anybody have an opinion on page names? I've had good luck with domain.com/hpxxxprinter.html for example. The page name is also optimized for hpxxxprinter as well, but I have other pages that don't match and they don't do as well. Again this is AdWords, not natural SERPS.

I'm definitely with you on this one Bill for all the reasons already said. user-friendly and SE friendly.

seolman
01-07-2009, 04:30 PM
I think this, too, varies on a case-by-case basis. It's probably true in every case where you want return traffic, whether type-in or search engine generated. I'd rather be YouTube than AmateurVideosOnline, for example.

But if nearly all your traffic is one time traffic generated by search engines, then SEO rules the day. Given the nature of my site on limited liability companies and the fact that most people look up the information only once when they are forming their LLC, I don't expect many returning users. To me, the brand value is almost meaningless.

I'd equate it somewhat to a local hotdog stand versus the pushcart hotdog vendor on the beach. Several of our local hotdog stands are well known in the area and when you mention Mustard's, Fluky's or Superdawg, the brand means some thing. People will travel to get the hotdog they want. At the beach, money and effort spent branding by a vendor would be nearly wasted. The branding would not be apparent to the average visitor who perhaps had never bought a hotdog at this particular beach before and never would again.

I see both types of sites regularly when I use the Internet. Both have a place, and it really depends which one your site aspires to be.

In fact URL's should be compared to business names. If you grab an URL like mountain-bikes-utah.com and later you span out into ATV's and camping gear you'd probably wish you had grabbed a broader domain name like utah-adventure-gear.com or something similar. Very good analogy Dave.

billbenson
01-07-2009, 05:58 PM
In fact URL's should be compared to business names. If you grab an URL like mountain-bikes-utah.com and later you span out into ATV's and camping gear you'd probably wish you had grabbed a broader domain name like utah-adventure-gear.com or something similar. Very good analogy Dave.

My tendency on this one would be to have a generic corporate site and other sites for the specific products. Something like OutDoorStuff.com and also register MountainBikes.com and ATVs-Utah.com etc.

I don't know that putting everything under one umbrella site is the best approach. Seems like managing the sites in the second approach would be easier and SEO would be easier?? Dunno?

seolman
01-07-2009, 06:44 PM
My tendency on this one would be to have a generic corporate site and other sites for the specific products. Something like OutDoorStuff.com and also register MountainBikes.com and ATVs-Utah.com etc.

I don't know that putting everything under one umbrella site is the best approach. Seems like managing the sites in the second approach would be easier and SEO would be easier?? Dunno?

It really depends on how closely related the products are. If all your gear falls into a similar market vein I prefer a single site and a slow steady SEO approach. If the products are as different as chalk and cheese, sometimes different sites are better. Maintaining two separate sites can be tough from an SEO perspective. If you have a site that is well optimized it is easy to keep adding pages and building on strengths so adding one more product to the same bag is always advantageous when possible.

orion_joel
01-07-2009, 07:48 PM
I guess i am just going to have to see how i go with the domain that i end up choosing. I think i should be able to brand it pretty good, and if i do find a problem i can always later on buy another domain that is shorter.

I think the benefit this time in a site that is for by business in Australia is getting a .com.au, while many of the good ones are taken there are still a few that are available.

billbenson
01-07-2009, 08:35 PM
Let me put it this way Seolman, I started in the year 2000 managing a corporate site for a small distributor of Telecom stuff. At that time, the distributor had a corporate site, but it was just a couple of pages. We started another site which was geared toward online telecom sales. Telecom stuff was dieing off in that time frame with the dot com crash. Telecom equipment could include everything from Central Office Switching Equipment to concrete splice boxes that went in the ground for connecting fiber optic cable.

As time marched on, margins on the telecom switching equipment went way down and the concrete boxes were a much better product line. You don't really think of concrete boxes as telecom, but they were.

As I was learning web design, I did a combination. A couple of products I started new sites on, some of them I put under the corporate umbrella. The concrete boxes can be used by water utilities and a ton of other industries than Telecom. Eventually, the telecom business died off to nothing, but we are still selling concrete boxes today on a concrete box site.

If I had it to do over again, I'd break every product into a separate site. With market changes, it is much easier to separate that from old dead wood that the corporate site was attached to. While you could put everything under one umbrella site and drop products that die off for one reason or another, I don't see there being much more work having the corporate site (which probably doesn't change much), concrete boxes.com etc.

This is probably one of those there is no right or wrong way issues, but it does give you the flexibility of concentrating on the sites that make money. This one went from telecom ->concrete boxes. Nobody planned on that. Today, the concrete boxes business is dying off because the manufacturer cut our margins to the point it doesn't make sense. I still have a domain for concrete boxes that has been around a long time and can be shifted to something else.

So I kind of like fragmenting things. Its really diversification in a way. With a parent umbrella site you have a good story for clients that say who are you. You could do it with subdomains as well, but I don't really like subdomains as a small timer. It works well for news.yahoo or maps.google, but not an approach I like for the small business in general. Of course there are exceptions.

For the concrete box site, I used a generic name like billsStuff.com. In this case, that worked well because I now have an old site that I can move in a different direction in the future.

So its really not as simple as just looking at one angle such as SEO. Maybe with the concrete box site I could slowly add plumbing stuff on the site and drop the boxes? It got hacked recently and I haven't messed with it, but that's a different issue.

seolman
01-07-2009, 10:01 PM
Hacked? What a bummer.

You can really approach it either way Bill and you are right, SEO is just one aspect of the issue. In some cases I tell my clients not to consider SEO at all. For example: some sites have specific life spans and then die off (ex: new home community sites). Not worth even thinking about SEO. Some Corporate sites prefer only to rank well for their business name and that's an easy thing to accomplish so SEO is a breeze. The rest they accomplish through traditional print, radio and TV advertising, then they promote products through sub-sites as you are suggesting.

My comment was based on someone who is planning on using the web as their primary means of marketing and depending heavily on SEO to promote multiple related products. Frequent market changes and product changes would certainly have a great effect on whatever strategy you choose.

greenoak
01-09-2009, 09:52 AM
good discusssion...and im in the same spot...picking a name...
all i will say is ive been to several places with graphics i like.....and the only one i could possible return to is THE GRAPHICS FAIRY because i can remember the name...
hope that helps...as im maybe more typical and average, than a super organized shopper who would have recorded some long hard to remember name somewhere...or than someone with great skills who could track all the places ive been on the net....
maybe the question is do you want ? actual people to remember your name and find you or the engines of the web to remember your name and find you.......
ann

vangogh
01-09-2009, 12:22 PM
Ann that's a good point and is exactly the reason why a brandable name is the better option. You'll buy from the graphics fairy because you remember the name. When you need to buy you'll go to them and they'll make a sale. You won't need to spend time searching or deciding who to buy from. The sale in a sense is already made.