Domain names, how long is too long?

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Pluto $crillions

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Lets say that your tageting a very long tailed keyword, just as a random example lets say I was targeting "How To Run Five Miles In Under Less Than Five Minutes".

Would howtorunfivemilesinunderlessthanfiveminutes.com rank well for that keyword or is it just too long?

How about related keywords like "running fast"?
 
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I've never heard of google penalty's for too long of a domain name. I think there is a max number of characters that you can have in a name, but I don't remember what it is. I would imagine that you could rank it well for the exact match, but for phrases such as "running fast," I don't think the name would necessarily help you more then a shorter name with run/running in it.

If you are trying to develop a niche site based on the 1 long-tail that relies on organic traffic, this could be a great tactic. If you expect people to come to the site directly though, its a lot of characters to have to enter without mis-spelling something.
 
Its about what the user will think to be genuine, relevant and not so spammy. Why not get a shorter domain name with a subdomain for example or an inner page with more keywords in the URL. You need to seperate that overly long domain name somehow, it really hurts the eyes (and brain).
 
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A to long url looks suspicious so I try to keep them under 20 letters.
 
Katarina said:
Try saying the domain name while peeing. If you finished peeing first then it means its really long, no not your dick, your domain name.
Click to expand...

That is too funny.......



The long domain argument is similar to the domain with dashes one.

For ranking, not really going to make a difference, from the customers point of view yes it is. Personally I would go with something shorter that will allow you to target multiple related keywords and then make the keyword the page name.

shortrelateddomain.com/realllyreallyreallyreallyLONGkeyword

This opens up your possibilities on how many keywords you can target making it easier to monetize your site.
 
Good point, I never considered subdomains to help ranking for a keyword haha I don't know why.
 
Would you click this
howtorunfivemilesinunderlessthanfiveminutes.com ? Probably not...

What about this
fiveminutes.com/how-to-run-five-miles-in-under-less-than-five-minutes/ ?

You get the idea? :)
 
Pluto $crillions said:
Lets say that your tageting a very long tailed keyword, just as a random example lets say I was targeting "How To Run Five Miles In Under Less Than Five Minutes".

Would howtorunfivemilesinunderlessthanfiveminutes.com rank well for that keyword or is it just too long?

How about related keywords like "running fast"?
Click to expand...

If you're trying to taret that long term phrase, try to keep as much as it in the domain without it going too long. Try typing it into your browser. Do you feel it took too long for you to type "howtorunfivemilesinunderlessthanfiveminutes.com"? Yea, me too. Think of it from a direct traffic sense. What would YOU consider too much to type in? I think "fivesmilesfiveminutes.com" would be great to optimize for that keyword. It IS on the brink of being too long, but when I type it in I think it's reasonable. Basically to sum it all up, if you had to remember a domain and type it 100 times, which one would you be most likely to have the best time with?
 
It really depends on what you are trying to do with your domain. If you want to actually sell products and services its best to go with something that is short and brandable. If you have a domain that is godgivenright versus thatsmygodgivenright people are going to remember the domain and possibly save it for later.

As far as competing with keywords you still don't want to go with something that is super long because of type in traffic. I doubt many people are typing in thats my god given right. They are going to type in the main keywords god given right.

A hyphen would even be better than the long domain.
 
I don't necessarily agree with that, with all things the same - the no hyphen domain will outrank hyphenated one, at least in my experience.

volund said:
That is too funny.......

The long domain argument is similar to the domain with dashes one.

For ranking, not really going to make a difference, from the customers point of view yes it is.
Click to expand...
 
Depends on how general it is but usually I like to keep things under 3-4 keywords including a, i, or, etc.
 
Technically MAX .COM/NET/ORG domain name length is 63 chars. Other TLDs may have their own rules though.

I would never start a site with domain length > 20 chars (http://www.DOMAIN.com would be 6 chars long)

Also, I am pretty positive (do not have proof though) that SEO advantage does not apply to the long domain names (long I would say longer than 25 chars)

The reasoning for this assumption would be whoever coded a SEO boost for EMD would also realize that domain names > 25 chars would only be created to game search engines, and so they would just add a few lines of code to make sure spammy long domains are not getting any EMD boost. At least this is what I would have done in their place. I would also code in exceptions for sites like "blogger.com", etc
 
dowser said:
I don't necessarily agree with that, with all things the same - the no hyphen domain will outrank hyphenated one, at least in my experience.
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Hyphen or not actually makes no difference from Google's point of view.
 
like already mentioned here, using the keyword in folder is the best idea...
 
dowser said:
I don't necessarily agree with that, with all things the same - the no hyphen domain will outrank hyphenated one, at least in my experience.
Click to expand...

Actually I have tested this several times and I have not found any evidence that it matters to Google at all.

Now it will matter to your potential visitors (searchers) I have found that having two or more dashes in a domain converts less.

You get less clicks for that position than you would without the dashes, or just one as I have not found that just one make any significant difference in how searchers treat your site. Once you add two or more though the clicks drop off measurably. My conclusion is that searchers do not see anything wrong with just one but after that the site seems less trustworthy to them and they skip over it to click on the site below it.
 
don't go for more than 15 letter. between 15-20 is ok for long tail keyword.. but more long that this is simply f*****.
 
The full domain name may not exceed a total length of 253 characters in its external dotted-label. specification. And each label may contain up o 63 characters.

A long domain name is not advised as it is difficult for the user to remember it and bookmark it. It is certainly bad from user's standpoint.
 
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