Choosing A Domain Name – Length
If choosing a domain name feels like a headache with too many choices, then we’re here to help.
In our series of articles on choosing a domain name, we’ll look at the length of your domain name this month.
We’ve compiled ten top tips articles to help you choose the perfect name for your online presence. It’s worth reading these before your Domain Name Consultation because we’ll walk you through the entire process of finding the perfect domain name.
How long is your current domain name?
Short, Simple, and Memorable Domain Names.
Long or complicated domain names are a surefire way to be forgotten. We host websites for a lot of photographers and see this issue often, so lets 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 other ways.
You then end up with long domain names, too, leaving the visitor wanting to give up.
Take this dreadful 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 shouldn’t do for any website because:
- It’s prone to typos
- Hard to remember
- Difficult to share verbally
- Likely to 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, International Health Coach specialising in health conditions.
- facebook.com, the biggest book/directory of people on the planet, and 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 takes experience, SEO Knowledge, due diligence, and time to develop something short, simple, and memorable. 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.
