With Domain Names, Is Shorter Better?

We get this question all the time, is a shorter domain name better or is a long tail descriptive domain name better?
I think the question here is, I can’t get the shore domain name that I want, so is it better to look for another domain name that is short or do I just keep adding qualifiers, creating a long tail domain name, until the domain name is available?

We say, and all research agrees, go with another short domain name.  So many people keep adding qualifiers and numbers and hyphens and all sorts of crazy things to their domain name so they get the one they want but it just doesn’t work.  They think the more junk they throw into the domain they are going to get one they like and they just wind up confusing people.

Let’s give an example so you know what we’re talking about.  Let’s say you’re a real estate broker, well Home.com is gone so is RealEstate.com so you decide that you’re going to try RealEstateCa.com but that’s gone, so is RealEstateSoCa.com.  Many people then think, RealEstateSoCalRental.com would be a good idea or even Real-Estate-SoCal-Rental1.com might be a good idea, it’s not!

For some reason people get so hooked on one domain name that they’ll do all sorts of crazy additions to get it, instead of looking for another short domain name.

The studies have shown that the longer the domain name the more chances there are for someone to misspell, miss communicate it or not remember it.  Think about each and every letter or character in the name as an opportunity for someone to type the name wrong.  As we all know, your domain name is really just your address where people can find you, if someone types your domain name in wrong, they are just getting lost.

If you don’t think that is a problem, just think, every time someone gets lost on the way to your address, they might be going to your competition and that’s the problem.

Short Domain Name you Can Find on DomFind:

People also aren’t going to type Real-Estate-SoCal-Rental1.com, they’re going to type, RealEstate.com or RealEstateSoCal.com they are never going to find you, and they are going to be going to the other real estate company, who will only be too happy to take their business.

So here’s our advice: find another domain name.  There are plenty of other domain names that are perfect for the Real Estate industry.  In fact, we have a few hundred domain names perfect for real estate on our site, all .com and all ready to go.  If you don’t like the domains on our site, fine, there are other domain name sites, just find something short.

If you want to read more about why shorter domain names are better for business we have another article with a few more points that you might want to read.

Please let us know what you think about this article by posing something below.  We’d also love to hear some real life experiences even if you don’t agree with us.

Do you have a disaster story involving a long tail domain name?  Or even if you want to suggest other blog topics we’d be more than happy to hear them and discuss them at a later time.

Thanks for reading!