Question about full domain name vs abbreviation RE: SEO

[gwpriester]

Well it is a very long company name but "appraisals" is equally as important as "collector" and "vehicles".

As far as the dashes, I would tell potential customers "Collector Vehicles Appraisals of New Mexico dot com with a dash between each word."

[Egg Bramhill]

Personally I think you're concentrating to much on a keyword domain name Gary.

A bit like the difference between "facebook.com" or "facebook-to-start-sharing-and-connecting-with-your-friends-family-and-people-you-know.com"

It's really between you & the client. You asked a question & I'm just giving you my (non-expert) opinion

[Abikadabra]

Hi Gary. When someone types in a search term, google first crawl the domain for any of the search words requested before searching for any content in the main body of the page. The order of search is domain/url (ie web address, which includes what you have named your page to appear after the domain eg http://www.vehicleappraisalsnm/colle...les-new-mexico), followed by page title (in Web Properties), then it will look at the page description (also in Web Properties). For SEO purposes it is important to use the Web Properties setting and utilise the Page tab. If you can use common search words in the domain that is great, but you can also use these when naming your pages in the Page & Layer gallery, which I know you already know. For example, a common search term in all major cities of the world (probably not in Dubai) is 'wrought iron gates' followed by the city. Using this example, and the city Sydney, one of my sites pops up for wrought iron gates sydney... http://www.jbwroughtiron.com.au/wrou...tes-sydney.htm

You can see wrought iron in the domain, and wrought iron gates in the rest of the url. Wrought iron has been used twice on purpose, so if you use vehicle in your clients domain, and also the page url, as well as nm in the domain and then new mexico written in full in the page url then you increase your chances for SEO. The letters nm are recognised by google in your area as being New Mexico. For example, if you search plumber nm or art gallery nm you will get plumbers and art galleries in New Mexico so you do not need to have New Mexico in full in the domain.

Its also worth mentioning that no one really looks at your domain, unless it is on a business card. Most prospective clients come from the net and they will type their search, look at the page title and the description and rarely look at the domain. Also, your domain does not have to be the name of your business so your client can use the hyperbolic title he wants for the business name, but have a shorter more relevant domain name. Using a search tool, you will find that collector vehicle appraisals is rarely searched. However, vintage auto appraisals and vintage car appraisals is high, and google will recognise the words classic, vintage, antique and collector under that search term. So Egg has a very good point about choosing a domain that has search words that are commonly used. One of the highest search terms in NM for your clients industry in his area is vintage cars nm and most surprisingly the domain www.vintagecarsnm.com is available. Another high search term is vintage vehicles nm and surprisingly vintagevehiclesnm.com is also available. It may be in your client's best interest to persuade him to change to one of these domains if he wants to be indexed highly on google and not be lost in the deep net for 2 or more years. Just a thought.

[gwpriester]

Thanks for all that Abi. And thanks to everyone else who contributed their knowledge.

[ss-kalm]

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

Just to be a tool .... How is that shorter?

[Egg Bramhill]

Due to the second url being metric Keith.

Okay, a senior moment, it's not in any way shorter. I've no idea what I was talking about