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Conferences The New MadBomber Marketing and SEO Forum Topic #651
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Roxy97team
Member since Mar-1-11
4 posts, Rate this user		 Mar-01-11, 03:06 AM (PST)
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"Domain Names How Long Should They Be For Sites?"
 
  
I am seriously confused as some times people say you need to use an exact match domain where as other times other folks say that I should be looking for the shortest names possible.

Now I sort of get that names like Google, Amazon and even CNN are pretty short (well really short actually) but does that mean they are short therefore they are succesful for SEO or is it they throw millions of dollars in promoting them.

Lets say I had http://dogtrainingsecrets.com would that fare better in the search engines than http://dts.com (I haven't got either so this is very hypothetical)

Surely logic dictates the site with the keyword does better but if that was the case other sites would always rank below and I know that isn't true.

Has any one tried building a two sites and seeing which works best as I am starting to wonder if direct match domain names are as important as I thought especially when you start to add extra words to them such as in this case "secrets".

When does adding stuff to a domain name cease to make it exact match would say mydogtrainingsecrets.com be worse than dogtrainingsecrets.com or would they be in principle the same?


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Kurtadmin click here to view user rating
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8892 posts, 5 feedbacks, 8 points		 Mar-01-11, 06:53 AM (PST)
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1. "RE: Domain Names How Long Should They Be For Sites?"
 
Google reportedly uses 200 factors when ranking pages. Exact match domain is likely one of them. And, and exact match probably has an advantage in the SEs.

However, that leaves 199 other ranking factors you can use to overcome the exact match.

Also, SEs aren't the only way to get traffic. If you are heavy into Twitter for example, the shorter URL can be a big asset.

Plus, the exact match is only for the homepage. What if your site has 10+ pages? None of them will be exact match, yet the goal is still to rank them.

The basic Bomber strategy is to cover all reasonable bases. Get some exact matches when you can, and when you can't, that's OK too.

-Boom boom boom boom.


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kelvin brownmoderator click here to view user rating
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638 posts, 2 feedbacks, 4 points		 Mar-01-11, 12:33 PM (PST)
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2. "RE: Domain Names How Long Should They Be For Sites?"
 
   To me the 3 biggest issues with domain name length, are as Kurt stated:

#1: third party social services ie. Twitter

#2: really long affiliate links, that may not fit every place you want to promote, and the ugly factor

#3: is in offline advertising. Usually the shorter the better as long as it still has meaning. As long as it is online, people can just click. Offline, spelling is an issue, laziness on the part of the person doing he entry...

kelvin

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sinnersteam
Member since Mar-1-11
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3. "RE: Domain Names How Long Should They Be For Sites?"
 
   Some great comments guys. I personally think this exact domain name thing could be overhyped after all not many exact domains rank for any really competitive keywords.


Both Kurt and KB make a really valid point about things like Twitter and Affiliate Links. I usually cloak mine and use 301 redirects but I guess if the domain was short enough that would be a better option.


Has anyone had much joy ranking really short URL's such as ABC123.com have always strayed away from these as I figured they would be really hard to rank but maybe I am wrong.


Apparently the numbers are used a lot by Chinese marketers and they all have some meaning some numbers are lucky and some not so they are worth less. Can't remember which so guess I won't be jumping in on the Chinese Domain market any time soon. :>)


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kelvin brownmoderator click here to view user rating
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4. "RE: Domain Names How Long Should They Be For Sites?"
 
  
>Both Kurt and KB make a really valid point about things like Twitter
>and Affiliate Links. I usually cloak mine and use 301 redirects but
>I guess if the domain was short enough that would be a better
>option.
>


If you are using anything other than your own server for short URLs, i highly suggest you start making a move from 3rd party system now. Sometimes things like twitter you can go back and forth. But most time it is better to spend the $11 for registering your own, and you can get low cost redirect programs to run on your own server for 25 to $99, one time.

Well worth - it in the long run, but that is another topic.

Kelvin


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