Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
My Domain Name - short vs relevant
-
I'm creating a website for my new web design company in Vancouver. I'm looking to target such keywords as "Web Design Vancouver", etc.
I have another company with a hyphenated domain name which is terrible when I'm on the phone and my client asks me for my domain (hard to say, always spelling it out).
Also I wanted to have a good snappy name for my new business so I found a 6 letter .com and matching .ca for my company.
My question is: is it best to use a short domain name or is it better have my keywords in the domain name?
eg. xyz.com vs xyzvancouverwebdesign.com
Thanks
-
Thank you for your quick responses. I'm not going to purchase other domains such as xyzwebdesign.com as I'm only going to be SEOing one domain, in particular it will be xyz.ca, I do however own xyz.com and xyz.net and will 301 redirect those to the .ca.
Because I'm a company in Canada I figure I should optimize my .ca, and make that my main domain and not my .com.
-
What about getting both domain names anyway? I always thought it is good practice to buy the related domain names so the competition can't get them? You would redirect/point the longer name and the hyphenated names to the shorter one. I'm not sure of any seo benefits except the competition doesn't benefit from your name.
-
That is what I was gonna suggest too. In general I favor short domains, even though bookmarking has come so far in the past 10 years. Everyone bookmarks everything these days, so you don't need to worry as much about spelling and remembering a long name. With that said I still like the short domains.
Branding will be a big part with the shorter, new domain name. You can make up for the lack of keywords in the domain name with some quality content and strong, local links.
-
If you can get a really good relevant domain then go with that, but a hyphenated domain is not really good. I personally have found that I would rather go with short and easy, given the absence of good keyword domains.
SEO can't be my only strategy, especially for a new site, so being able to tell people about my site verbally and them find it easily is more important to me.
-
I agree, get a great domain name that is short & user friendly and concentrate on building the brand. You can still SEO the site and as Elias mentioned, any benefit of exact match domains is being slowly chipped away so concentrate on your users.
I wish I had known what I know now when I registered my company and domain name!
-
Hi Jonathan,
This is difficult....You have to balance the benefits for the visitors and the search engines.
Although, having relevant domain names still works for gaining good rankings it is not as powerful as it once was. It may eventually not be part of Google's algorithm at all with future updates.
Due to that fact alone I would go with the short name and concentrate on targeting Vancouver web design on-page and with links. I think this would help to future-proof your website and would be more user friendly.
On a side note - I would avoid hyphenated domain names as it is widely believed that Google uses this as a spam indicator.
I hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Moz bar not working on https://www.fitness-china.com/gym-equipment-names-pictures-prices
Moz bar not working on our website about gym equipment names https://www.fitness-china.com/gym-equipment-names-pictures-prices How long fix it?
On-Page Optimization | | ahislop5740 -
How many hyphens are allowed in page titles or image names?
When I was going through certification, I was told it should be limited to one or two. I was curious if there is a change.
On-Page Optimization | | SeobyKP0 -
301 vs 410
Hello everyone! I'm going through a large list of old 404 links that search console has given me and a lot of these links need to be 301'd. My question is, should I 410 some of these links if I can't find a good place to 301 to? Or is there another thing I should do that is better practice. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | KathleenDC0 -
Is it OK to shorten your brand name in your title tags
If your title tag is over 55 characters, is it generally OK or good practice to abbreviate your brand name (at the end of the title tag) for the sake of the other keywords in the tag?
On-Page Optimization | | AliMac261 -
Image File Names for eCommerce?
Hi everyone! I'm wondering about naming my product photo file names for an E-Commerce site. Let's say I say have product named Abe Lincoln in the **Print **category for sale with 4 images, relatively similar but from different views for example.Could I name them as follows? 1) abe-lincoln-print.jpg 2) abe-lincoln-print-side-view.jpg 3) abe-lincoln-print-close-up.jpg 4) abe-lincoln-print-font-view.jpg Or is that too many keywords for the page? Should I be worried about keyword stuffing? Plus once I add in title and alt tags and descriptions this could also increase the keyword count for "abe lincoln print"?
On-Page Optimization | | TheFlyingSweetPotato0 -
Generic domain for SEO versus Brand name
I am currently building a retail e-commerce site in a highly competitive area. We have a generic brand name; e.g. kitchen-knives.com and we also have another brand name, e.g. 'slycers.com' We have 3 options that I can see and I would like to know which is better for SEO. Build generic.com as a blog site. Link to brand.com 301 redirect from generic.com to brand.com. Use generic.com as anchor text in all links 301 redirect from brand.com to generic.com . Use generic.com as anchor text in all links Also, if there are other better options, then I would appreciate the input! thanks
On-Page Optimization | | cestor0 -
How do we handle sitemaps in robots.txt when multiple domains point to same physical location?
we have www.mysite.net, www.mysite.se, www.mysite.fi and so on. all of these domains point to the same physical location on our webserver, and we replace texts given back to client depending on which domain he/she requested. My problem is this: How do i configure sitemaps in robots.txt when robots.txt is used by multiple domains? If I for instance put the rows Sitemap: http://www.mysite.net/sitemapNet.xml
On-Page Optimization | | nordicnetproducts
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.net/sitemapSe.xml in robots.txt, would that result in some cross submission error?0 -
Change in Product Name
My site - http://www.guru99.com/quick-test-professional-qtp-tutorial.html Currently caters to an automation testing product from HP called Quick Test Professional popularly know and searched as QTP Recently HP changed the product name from QTP to HP Functional Test. Considering this , what do I do with exiting QTP pages and how do I optimize the site moving ahead...
On-Page Optimization | | krishrun0