Question about full domain name vs abbreviation RE: SEO

[gwpriester]

I am working on a website for a company that does collector vehicle appraisals. The full name of the company is Collector Vehicle Appraisals of New Mexico.

The domain names Collector-Vehicle-Appraisals-of-New-Mexico.com and CollectorVehicleAppraisalsofNewMexico.com plus CVA-NM.com are available.

I am encouraging my client to use the shorter CVA-NM.com because it is easier to remember, easier to key in, and will work better on a business card.

If I include the full name of the company in the web site TITLE, is there any advantage to using the full name domain name over the short version?

[Boy]

What about registering them all three and using redirects to the main one?

[Cloud]

The only reason (and it's a good one) to have the keyword in the domain is for SEO, but in this case it is far too long. Do a quick adwords search traffic lookup and see which keyword/keyphrase is actually being searched for and try and integrate that into the domain name. If no one is searching for 'collectors vehicles appraisals new mexico' or very few are then it is pointless having such a long domain name. You cannot just build a business on web searches alone, you still have to use other ways of marketing your services and for that you need a good brand and a short name helps people to remember that brand.

[gwpriester]

But won't the full name in the Title do the same thing? And if we did use a full domain name redirect page to the shorter name, would we be penalized by Google for this?

[roly]

Hi Gary, for me Brand name is priority one. I do not see "Collector-Vehicle-Appraisals-of-New-Mexico" as a brand name so I would go with CVA-NM.com

Ciao

Roly

[Egg Bramhill]

Neither works for me. Some sites say restrict yourself to a single hyphen within your domain name, otherwise SE's may see this as spam.

My preference would be for vintagecarsnewmexico.com (not sure if vehicles or autos would suit the US market better) or perhaps the shorter vintagecarsalbuquerque.com

'Appraisal' is a very specific term. Would I use that as a search term? With my limited vocabulary, no. So I suggest you stick to 'vintagecars'. Does it really matter if you're buying, selling or valueing cars at this base search criterea point?

Vintage car appraisals can be better left to the Title.

In the UK there is a site "webuyanycar.com" which is heavily advertised, but if it weren't I'd never think of typing that into a google search bar.

[gwpriester]

Too late. collector-vehicle-appraisals-of-new-mexico.com is the done deal.

Question. If this is done without the dashes, will the search engines see these as separate words or as one long unintelligible word?

And Egg, he appraises more than cars. Motorcycles, boats, stuff like that.

[Scotty]

Well I would never remember the 'Collector-Vehicle-Appraisals-of-New Mexico' for doing a search... so I would say it is the wrong choice ..
Jim

[Egg Bramhill]

Search engines appear to be quite happy with words without spaces (hyphens) and appear to be able to pick out the individual words. I'd say the hyphen was more to do with human reading of domain names where the hyphen helps the reader to separate the words. The other issue is branding. I wouldn't fancy trying to tell a customer to visit Collector hypen Vehicle hypen Appraisals hypen of hypen New hypen Mexico dot com, hardly rolls off the tounge & as Jim says in no way memorable.

collector-vehicle.com would be better branding (collectorvehicle.com is all ready registered).

See LINK

[RKissane]

Gary,

In my company that I work for, our web site is p-s-s.com, pss.com was taken. This is one pain in the rear because when you try and give out the web address over the phone or in conversations, it is very hard to get the hyphen part across. The less you use the better it is. For print work the shorter the better and the less hyphens used the better. If your client puts the long name on a business card do they really think someone is going to type all that in to get to their web site?

As far as search goes, I would think most people would be using search terms like appraisals, New Mexico, classic. The address can help for SEO but the body of the web site will be what will get the ranking for SEO as long as there is good content.


Ray