Daily Domain Name Registration Blog

Continuing on the same theme as yesterday’s post about domains for online integrity, there are a few more myths I’d like to dispel, or at least modify slightly:

Aren’t short domains better than long ones?

Really, this is a matter of individual domains. SportsCars.com (10 characters) is worth more than ngxng.com (5), despite the fact that the latter is shorter, because SportsCars.com conveys meaning. Of course, SuperFabulousSportsCarsForYou.com (29) is worth less than SportsCars.com, but this is not just because the former is ridiculously long; it is also because the meaning is diluted by all those extra modifiers.

In general, you should never compromise on meaning to make your domain shorter. iloveyou.com (8) is much more valuable and useful than iluvu.com (5) because it’s easier to understand and to type. I recently saw i-p-o-d.com (7) up for sale on eBay - completely worthless, because it’s very difficult to type in and looks like it fell off the back of a lorry. In general, avoid superfluous hyphens or substitutions (no ‘4′ for ‘for’ or ‘2′ for ‘to’). If you hyphenate, do it consistently (properties-incypress.com is less valuable than properties-in-cypress.com or propertiesincypress.com).

Sometimes, long domains can be memorable. NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown.com (23) is an example of a long domain name which is very memorable. If you can’t get a five or six letter domain that conveys your meaning or expresses the feelings you want to put across - especially if your website has a light-hearted theme - you could try a super-long domain instead. Bear in mind that if you do choose a long domain, you should register the hyphenated version as well, and you should also register misspellings which are likely to be common.

Be creative. There are lots of rubbish long domain names, stuffed with generic keywords, which look cheap and are pretty forgettable. But it’s quite possible to create an eye-catching, memorable and amusing domain which is more than 20 characters long.

Also remember that if you are going for a keyword-rich domain, a longer domain can contain more, and more specific, keywords. Yes, business.com might receive some type-in traffic, but how targeted will that traffic be? If someone does a Google search for ‘business’, there is a huge number of things that he or she could actually be looking for. If your domain name is investmentinbritishbusiness.com, your domain is going to help you a lot more with targeted search engine traffic. Think about what your target keywords are going to be, and consider using them in a long domain name.

This is Web 2.0! I need syllables such as ‘chat’, ‘web’, ‘net’, ‘tech’ etc. in my domain name.

No. No, you don’t. Not if you want to be distinguished from all the millions of other websites using exactly the same set of generic, clichéd terms in their domain names. I’ll say it again: be creative. Just because you’re a software company, it doesn’t mean you have to call your business somethingsoftware.com. Use your imagination.

Resources:

Domain generation at Nameboy.com.

Helena Henderson on choosing a name for your online business.

Web 2.0 business name generator. Ha.