What domain name is best, short and sweet or long and descriptive?

1 points by 422long 7 years ago | 2 comments

Yet another project and I'm once again in the market for a new domain. I'm torn between something short and sweet vs. something that is longer and more descriptive.

I've been down this road before and feel burned after selecting a more generic name for a service that required some name recognition (appointment.one in this case - there was just no way to Google it).

On the other hand I have done well with a more generic name that depended on long-tail SEO (10s of millions of pages linked from something like descriptive-name-with-dashes.com).

The new venture will be long tail SEO focussed again but I also want the domain to feel less fly by night. Are people more or less likely to click with the following scenarios:

* coffee-maker-review.com vs beantalk.com (so limited keyword overlap)

* best-domain-name-generator.com vs. fleetnam.com (so no keyword overlap)

The former in each example feels more descriptive, but I also feel like clicking on it would bring up a page filled with ads and zero useful content. That said, the latter options are more easily skipped over if you were to quickly scan the search results with the old eyes glazed over.

If you don't intend the project to ever have brand recognition is it a misstep to go for inventing a new word?

What have you done successfully / unsuccessfully?

smt88 7 years ago |

If it helps, I believe Google no longer heavily weighs keywords in domains because of the proliferation of names like coffee-maker-review.com.

There's a reason there aren't many high-value brands like "Table Manufacturing Company". Airbnb isn't "Other Person's House Rental", either.

Go with the name that can be the best brand. That might still be somewhat descriptive, but it doesn't have to be a synopsis of the site.

CMUKPMR 7 years ago |

Exact Match Domains (EMDs) are regarded as spammy, particularly the longer more hyphenated ones, so something snappier is better.

Snappier is more memorable, easier to type, easier to write (on media, signs etc), easier to say, discuss and has more brand value.

If you’re looking to optimise for long tail searches then just focus on making the site as genuinely valuable and as high quality as possible for the product or service.