On domain names.

[whythem]

When choosing a domain name is it best to pick a name that describes the business, for example www.motorbiketransport.co.uk. Does having a name like this make much difference to SEO and the search engines.

The reason I ask is that if I choose a name which describes my business I will have a domain name of some 25 characters, where as if I went with using my (unrecognised) brand name it would look alot better on my stationary and advertising, and homepage.

But my overiding concern is with SEO listings.

[LDN]

Get your comapny name one and use that as the main site - you can then buy the descriptive domain name and setup a blog on it - related to your field with plenty of links back to your company site. No harm in buying both and have them work for you. I wouldn't buy the really long descriptive domain and use that as the main one as it looks horrid in most cases and besides - you can use forward slashes for decent URL extensions from your main site. i.e: BRAND.COM/CYCLE-HELMETS and the like.

[whythem]

Oop's I made up motorbike transport co.uk and its real.

[klimakool]

i bought several names and my web guy linked them, so not only if you use klimakool.co.uk my main address we bought .com .org .info and a few addresses with specifics in them to broaden our pressence on the search engines. all these just divert you to my main page. just depends how much money you can throw at it i think. but it gets expensive and no way of telling if it pays off

[jon-]

The SEO benefits are simple. When someone links your domain from a forum like pistonheads, which auto links urls, you get keywords by default. So in my case, just someone writing "check out www.tyrereviews.co.uk " gives me "tyre" and "reviews" linking to my site.

I'm 99.9999% sure google will now account for this in some way, and reduce the relevance of the link.

I would rather have a snappy, memorable domain than a convoluted long one purely for search engines. If you can combine the two, then all the better.

[whythem]

jon- said:

The SEO benefits are simple. When someone links your domain from a forum like pistonheads, which auto links urls, you get keywords by default. So in my case, just someone writing "check out www.tyrereviews.co.uk " gives me "tyre" and "reviews" linking to my site.

I'm 99.9999% sure google will now account for this in some way, and reduce the relevance of the link

I would rather have a snappy, memorable domain than a convoluted long one purely for search engines. If you can combine the two, then all the better.

So having a description of your business as a domain name, has no benefit regarding keywords and listings? Does google filter out these type of results now, as jon says?

[LDN]

whythem said:

jon- said:

The SEO benefits are simple. When someone links your domain from a forum like pistonheads, which auto links urls, you get keywords by default. So in my case, just someone writing "check out www.tyrereviews.co.uk " gives me "tyre" and "reviews" linking to my site.

I'm 99.9999% sure google will now account for this in some way, and reduce the relevance of the link

I would rather have a snappy, memorable domain than a convoluted long one purely for search engines. If you can combine the two, then all the better.

So having a description of your business as a domain name, has no benefit regarding keywords and listings? Does google filter out these type of results now, as jon says?

It actually does but what people are saying is that - having a short and memorable domain is probably better anyway and with the right SEO, you can make it work just fine. Some will have both; a descriptive one and a business name one to cover both angles but make sure it's not just forwarding - have it work for you, so maybe turn the descriptive one into the company official blog or the like with links back to the main site, etc etc...

[M400 NBL]

You'd be lucky if it's available, but is some sort of abbreviation worth considering?
Or maybe a mixture of an abbreviation (or your initials) and a generic word.