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!
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
-
Does blogging with a wysiwyg negatively affect SEO (vs. hand coding)?
Many bloggers use a wysiwyg editor to write posts. Are there any drawbacks to wysiwyg vs plain text? When I write blogs I prefer to hand code my text to be sure everything is optimized. My feeling is that wysiwyg leads to code bloat and generally fewer optimization opportunities. I have no real evidence. Is there any reason not to use the wysiwyg editor?
On-Page Optimization | | Jason-Rogers0 -
Phone number formatting - Periods vs Dashes
Are there any best practices on phone number formatting regarding using periods XXX.XXX.XXXX vs dashes XXX-XXX-XXXX? What about using parentheses on the area code (XXX)XXX-XXX? This is regarding a phone number on a contact apge...
On-Page Optimization | | WorkhorseMKT0 -
Multiple domains for the same business
My client purchased over 500 URLs for targeting various customers and ranking for different keywords. It is for the same business though. What is the best strategy to deal with this kind of approach in your opinion. They use different meta data for each of the URLs starting with brand name in meta title. Are there any other points to keep in mind when developing strategy for all those URLs. Is this a good approach?
On-Page Optimization | | alicaomisem1 -
Blog on Subdomain vs. Subdirectory - Best Practices
Hi, I have recently been told that it no longer impacts authority or rankings if a blog is set up on a subdomain (blog.domain.com) rather than a subdirectory (/blog). However, I am reluctant to do so because I remember learning how blog subdomains did not adhere to SEO best practices. Would anyone be able to shed some light on the latest SEO best practices regarding this topic? Many thanks, Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Multiple domains vs single domain vs subdomains ?
I have a client that recently read an article that advised him to break up his website into various URL's that targeted specific products. It was supposed to be a solution to gain footing in an already competitive industry. So rather than company.com with various pages targeting his products, he'd end up having multiple smaller sites: companyClothing.com companyShoes.com Etc. The article stated that by structuring your website this way, you were more likely to gain ranking in Google by targeting these niche markets. I wanted to know if this article was based on any facts. Are there any benefits to creating a new website that targets a specific niche market versus as a section of pages on a main website? I then began looking into structuring each of these product areas into subdomains, but the data out there is not definitive as to how subdomains are viewed by Google and other search engines - more specifically how subdomains benefit (or not!) the primary domain. So, in general, when a business targets many products and services that cover a wide range - what is the best way to structure the delivery of this info: multiple domains, single domain with folders/categories, or subdomains? If single domain with folders/categories are not an option, how do subdomains stack up? Thanks in advance for your help/suggestions!
On-Page Optimization | | dgalassi0 -
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 -
Www1 and www domain
hi, I have a client who has an e-commerce business. My client does not want to fill the pages with too much content and has set up a www1 version with the same domain-name as the www. The plan is to create a lot of content and push www1 in ranking and then sending users (via links) to the www for ordering. Although there will be no duplicate content published on www and www1 this seems like an odd strategy, especially since the www already has a good page rank, and I'm not sure about how engines view a www.domain.com and www1domain.com situation even with unique content in each. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | vibelingo0 -
Image file name, is it important
If I use the same image all over my site, do I need to change the file name to avoid duplicate? Different alt text will be use on those images
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze2050