Choosing A Domain Name Length
If choosing a domain name feels like a headache with too many choices, then we’re here to help.
This month, in our series of articles on choosing a domain name, we’ll look at the length of your name.
Our articles will help you choose the perfect name for your online presence.
Reading these before your Domain Name Consult will also help you get the most out of it.
Today, we’re looking at the length of your domain names:
- The length of your domain name
- How you spell your domain name
- Characters & numbers in your name
- Business or location-specific names.
- Domain name extensions.
- Keyword rich domain names
- Domain name legal research
- Buying from an accredited registrar.
- Buying domain names in your own name.
- Domain name statistics.
How long is your current domain name?
Short, Simple, and Memorable Domain Names.
Long or complex domain names are a surefire way to be forgotten. We host websites for many photographers and see this issue often, so let’s use them as a good working example.
Photographers seem to have the highest ratio of poor domain name choices to businesses.
This is because the majority of them put their names in front of the word “photography”. Thus creating the frequent problem of being unable to spell all the different names in so many ways.
You then end up with long domain names, too, leaving the visitor wanting to give up.
Take this bad example: “ambrosiaphotographychronicles.photography”
This is a deliberately complex example that demonstrates several SEO challenges:
- It’s lengthy (31 characters)
- Contains multiple words combined
- Has a difficult-to-spell word (“ambrosia”)
- Uses the .photography extension, which adds length
From an SEO perspective, this is precisely what you should avoid because:
- It’s prone to typos
- Hard to remember
- Difficult to share verbally
- Will cause lost traffic due to misspellings
Positive examples of good domain names:
- wesh.uk, a super short, memorable and an acronym for what we do.
- healthcoachhero.com, A Health Coach specialising in health conditions.
- facebook.com, the biggest book/directory of people on the planet, is easy to remember.
Benefits of shorter domains:
- They get more social shares.
- Have a better click-through rate in search engines.
- Are easier to display and type on mobiles.
- They’re much more email address-friendly.
Critical Domain Name Statistics:
According to a study by Gaebler on domain name length, the average domain length for the top 10,000 most popular websites is just eight characters. But, the average domain length for the top 1 million most popular websites is barely longer, at 10 characters.
Simple domains that are shorter and easier show:
Direct Traffic
Retention Rates
Social Sharing
Verbal Referrals
Money Saving Benefits:
Getting the right domain names with us, over the course of your business lifespan of at least 50 years, will save you at least £2000 on domain name renewals.
We’re on average 40% cheaper than any of the big corporate registrars.
It will also save you many thousands of hours and pounds on wasted marketing, trying to promote what nobody can remember.
It takes experience, SEO Knowledge, due diligence, and time to develop something short, simple, and memorable. As of 2022, AI is NOT the answer to this problem. ChatGPT or other computer-trained computers cannot relate to this or solve this problem.
A domain consultation will save you the trial and error and the expense of registering multiple domain names, only to keep changing your mind and wasting your money.
