Domain names...how long is too long?

[mbomb]

I just picked out a 4 word domain name so I could grab the .com. It's 23 characters long. I had originally chosen a 3 word .org domain, but figured the .com would be better for an authority style site. Would the longer name have an adverse effect on my SEO efforts? Thanks.

Mike

[radhika]

There are many domaind names more than 23 characters long.

And as far as I know, it doesn't have any effect on search engine ranking as long as you promote it regular way. But difficult for your visitors to remember though.

.

[Sean Ski]

Look at all of the most successful websites... shorter is better. easy words to remember and easy to say - you can't always just come up with a great name on your own so go to marketplace.sitepoint.com and look for some good domain names

[Pipinscott]

It depends on how easy it is to remember and how prone it is to spelling errors. But only you can figure that out because we have not seen it <grin>

[mbomb]

The domain name is "keywordphrase"reviewzone.com

Is that simple enough to remember?

Mike

[cragar]

I love the fact that so many people are still so arrogant. Shows me that there is a lot of room for growth.LOOK>The truth is this>If you don't have an outright "AWESOME" product>Short name branding is USELESSSSSS.Long domain names get great FREE traffic if you know what you are doing.
Take for instance>out of the blue thought to make a point here>the name-
freetrafficgenerationtips.com
If you set your keywords for each page created in procession(With relevance to the page)you will get tons of traffic and who cares about BRANDING>They are going to click the link.<<DAH How many Brand names do you know that are short and are owned by IM'ers.NONE!!Or at least very few,even if you have been IM'ing for a while now.
Back to my story> freetraffricgenerationtips.com
Overlapping keywords and strings:
free
free traffic
free traffic generation
free traffic generation tips
traffic generation
traffic generation tips
traffic tips
tips

SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Google just indexed each of your pages using those keywords.
Instant success<NO BUT> over time you will gain ranking and by using other SEO techniques like link exchanging and backlinks<even from here at the forum you will gain traffic and a higher ranking.
SOOOOO do you understand now. I think you got the domain before you really knew what you needed to understand. Want some help? See me at
admin(at)thenofluffmarketer.com

[AidanKay]

Short domain names are good for building brand awareness and looking authoritive. But longer, more keyword optimized domain names are better for the search engines (max. of 64 characters, I think).

So ask yourself, are you looking at building a brand.. or a 'search engine' site?

[mrozlat]

choose the one that is better suited for your SEO efforts... a good domain name can do wonders to get ranked for ongoing targeted traffic!

[acedalright]

I think people get hung up on short 6 letter domains, but to tell you the truth, most people remember whole words better than garbled versions made shorter.

Some of these new sites are proprietary words like yurbo and tumblr, whilst tumblr is popular because it's downright awesome, others struggle to brand themselves.

A website like red-apples.com is easy to remember, so is big-red-apples.com, so there is nothing wrong with clear, crisp words even if there is 2 or 3.

[Nicholas William]

my feedback is: try to keep the words in your domain to a minimum, so as close to your niche keywords as is possible

[Dan C. Rinnert]

My longest domain name is 6 words, 38 characters.

I grabbed that one when the limit went from 26 to 63 characters. At the time, I registered through my web host and the change was so recent they didn't know it could be done.

[don15432]

In my opinion your domain name shouldn't be more than two to three words. What works for me when I want to choose a domain name is to take my main keyword and add another relevant word on the end since I know that nine times out of ten my main keyword(s) will be taken. For instance, if your main keyword is "web traffic" adding the word "builder" at the end will give you a great domain name and you will still have you main keyword(s) in your domain name. Just make sure the domain name doesn't go past three words that are seven characters long.

[mrozlat]

Originally Posted by don15432

Just make sure the domain name doesn't go past three words that are seven characters long.

what has that got to do with anything? from an SEO point of view... who cares? google certainly doesn't!

[waihon]

Technically speaking, the maximum number of alphanumeric characters that is allowed in a domain name is 63.

However, when determining your own domain name, you may want to consider the maximum length of domain name that is allowed in PPC advertising programs. Google AdWords, for example, allows only a maximum of 35 characters for Display URL.

Unless you're 100% sure that you (or your affiliates if you have an affiliate program) would never make use of PPC to drive traffic to your website then you shouldn't ignore the above limitation.

[Jhf14]

It kind of depends... if you are targetting repeat visitors, then 12 characters max (in my opinion)... if you are looking for SERP results, then I suppose it doesn't matter... you could even have dashes inbetween the keywords to break it up a bit. A shorter domain is going to be remembered easier... so go with that if you can. Also, go with a ".com" always!

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by don15432

In my opinion your domain name shouldn't be more than two to three words.

Originally Posted by don15432

Just make sure the domain name doesn't go past three words that are seven characters long.

But why is that your opinion, Don? (It sounds very strange advice to me.)

[mbomb]

Lol....let's keep this going

[mrozlat]

is this too long lol ?

---> w**ww.howtomakeoutwithjapanesewomen4idiots.com

[theimdude]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

But why is that your opinion, Don? (It sounds very strange advice to me.)

Alexa what is you take on this domain

iamtheproudownerofthelongestdotcomdomainnameinthew holewideworld dot com

that make sense

[mbomb]

Here's a nice "single" word domain. Too bad it's already taken

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch.com the longest single word .com domain name

Another interesting domain:

The longest list of the longest stuff at the longest domain name


I've often heard about the necessity of short domains for branding purposes, but after giving it some thought, I'm leaning towards the 4 word domain. It contains my main keywords, plus a few 3 word keyword phrases that get 3000 and 9000 exact phrase searches per month.

Branding isnt as important to me as SEO, but to this point, the longest domain that I've ranked in the top 3 was 3 words long. I'm cool with the 4 word domain as long as it doesnt hurt my rankability(is that even a word?).

Anyone managed to get top rankings with a 4 word or greater than 23 character domain? Tell us your thoughts.

Mike

[theimdude]

Originally Posted by mbomb

Anyone managed to get top rankings with a 4 word or greater than 23 character domain? Tell us your thoughts.

Mike

Mike I have a number of domains that have a wp site on it with +- 5 articles on it made up of a few keywords some in the forex and others in the diet market. I have done no marketing on these domains.

I also have a few with good names with a sales page on and just been standing. I though when I bought these sites they are my key to financial freedom. Well it has been a loooooooooogn wait and no sales.

I also tried domains such as best-real-estate-in-city-name.com and nearly got 100 domains like this for a number of cities under the pretense that I will dominate the market with these keyword rich domains in the real estate market.

Well It didn't help as although the domains was there with some content on indexed in google the only traffic I got was +- 0-5 visits a day

As I am learning more about article/social/backlinks marketing and have seen the results I will be going that route of marketing as to me a domain name is worth not much unless you do SEO on it.

[Alexa Smith]

Hmm, I see that Floccinaucinihilipilification dot com - Yes... someone had to do it. has already been registered.