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I would tend to agree with ThomasCasill. The length of the domain name on its own matters far less than the domain name itself, and how relevant it is to your website - i.e. probably either your company name, or something to do with your products or services. As long as the domain name doesn't exceed maybe 15-20 characters, or contain crazy amounts of dashes I think you should be fine. Choosing a name which is relevant and/or memorable and/or relevant is more important. Other important things you need to consider: - impact of changing domain name on your current ranking. A new URL will take time to get back into Google and you need to make sure you get the redirects from old to new set up right (i.e. 301 and 404 rather than 302). Also you need to make sure you put the effort in promoting the new URL and updating all the appropriate links in, etc. - keeping the entire URL simple is perhaps just as important as the domain itself. As long as the site is structured well and using a good CMS (if appropriate) you should have no problems choosing <a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/products/bananas/">www.mywebsite.com/products/bananas/</a> rather than <a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/products_page.asp?productid=123xyz&color=yellow&shape=curvy">www.mywebsite.com/products_page.asp?productid=123xyz&color=yellow&shape=curvy</a>. The first will look better in Google, be easier to type directly and also gives you the opportunity to include search terms in your URL. - avoid duplicate content. It's not good to have two domains with the same content, so I think it's best to avoid having both your old and new sites live with the same content. Choose a primary domain and stick to it, then redirect appropriately (or configure DNS?) to avoid the risk of being penalised for duplicate content. If I can find any hard facts to back this up, particularly relating to your original question about domain name length I'll post again. Hope this helps, James On 07:23:03 29 January 2008 ThomasCasill wrote: >Our company is rebranding and there is a feeling that we >should change our main web url from >(<a href="http://www.thismanyletters.com">http://www.thismanyletters.com</a>) <a href="http://www.thismanyletters.com">www.thismanyletters.com</a> >to <a href="http://www.thenewthismanyletter.com">www.thenewthismanyletter.com</a> . > >Now my feeling is that the shorter the url the better in >terms of click through rate and retention however I don't >have any actual stats to back this up and I'll need these >to win the argument. > >Can anyone help me to move this from a subjective >discusssion to one with facts? > >Thanks > >As per my understanding it does not make a significant >difference if your > web urls are >short or long only the thing that matters is >the simplicity of > your web urls. Web urls should >be simple and user should find it easy to > >memorize it.

I would tend to agree with ThomasCasill. The length of the domain name on its own matters far less than the domain name itself, and how relevant it is to your website - i.e. probably either your company name, or something to do with your products or services. As long as the domain name doesn't exceed maybe 15-20 characters, or contain crazy amounts of dashes I think you should be fine. Choosing a name which is relevant and/or memorable and/or relevant is more important. Other important things you need to consider: - impact of changing domain name on your current ranking. A new URL will take time to get back into Google and you need to make sure you get the redirects from old to new set up right (i.e. 301 and 404 rather than 302). Also you need to make sure you put the effort in promoting the new URL and updating all the appropriate links in, etc. - keeping the entire URL simple is perhaps just as important as the domain itself. As long as the site is structured well and using a good CMS (if appropriate) you should have no problems choosing www.mywebsite.com/products/bananas/ rather than www.mywebsite.com/products_page.asp?productid=123xyz&color=yellow&shape=curvy. The first will look better in Google, be easier to type directly and also gives you the opportunity to include search terms in your URL. - avoid duplicate content. It's not good to have two domains with the same content, so I think it's best to avoid having both your old and new sites live with the same content. Choose a primary domain and stick to it, then redirect appropriately (or configure DNS?) to avoid the risk of being penalised for duplicate content. If I can find any hard facts to back this up, particularly relating to your original question about domain name length I'll post again. Hope this helps, James On 07:23:03 29 January 2008 ThomasCasill wrote: >Our company is rebranding and there is a feeling that we >should change our main web url from >(http://www.thismanyletters.com) www.thismanyletters.com >to www.thenewthismanyletter.com . > >Now my feeling is that the shorter the url the better in >terms of click through rate and retention however I don't >have any actual stats to back this up and I'll need these >to win the argument. > >Can anyone help me to move this from a subjective >discusssion to one with facts? > >Thanks > >As per my understanding it does not make a significant >difference if your > web urls are >short or long only the thing that matters is >the simplicity of > your web urls. Web urls should >be simple and user should find it easy to > >memorize it.

2008-01-29T21:24:02+00:00

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2008-01-29T21:24:02+00:00