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Abbreviations Make Bad Domain Names

October 31, 2009 on 5:07 pm | In Google Adwords, Internet Marketing | 13 Comments

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Almost every week I come across business owners who are committing what I consider to be one of the cardinal sins of domain selection – choosing an abbreviation.

For example: www.xyzpl.com.au or www.wxyz.com

Unless you’re IBM, this can be a very costly strategy for a few reasons:

Abbreviations are meaningless, especially to people who don’t know you. Does BBS.com stand for Brisbane Baking Supplies or Boat Building Services?
Because abbreviations lack meaning, they tend to be harder to remember… for your prospects and clients.
Keyword-rich domain names assist your organic SEO results, both directly (domain names are a ranking factor for search engines) and indirectly (keyword-rich domain names lend themselves to keyword-rich inbound links)
Relevant domain names dramatically increase your Google AdWords (and other PPC) Click Through Rates and conversion results. In some cases we have seen different domain names outperform others by up to 400% when tested in AdWords ads (like in this online marketing case study, for example).

So what do you do if you’re already using an abbreviation as a domain name? My advice is to seriously consider changing, or at a bare minimum investigate other domain names to “park” over your existing domain name.

That will allow you to at least test new ideas in Google AdWords and gauge response – then if the results justify it, consider a complete change.

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13 Comments »

13 Comments »

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Hi Will

By extension, doesn’t this mean all unique names are bad as domain names as well? If xyz.com is bad isn’t twitter.com equally bad? Or do you mean xyz.com is bad if you don’t market it well?

Steve

Comment by Steve Woodgate — November 1, 2009 #
Thanks for that Will, it makes perfect sense, why would someone want to abreviate their domain name when it’s obviously not going to help in searches.

I have one question for you along similar lines. I have a water restoration business (we clean up after homeowners have water damage). My website is waterdamageout trying to capture the keyword “water damage”. Would it have been better to have it as water-damage-out or water_damage_out? or does that even matter?

Thanks for your feedback…

Comment by Dan Puroclean — November 1, 2009 #
Hi Steve – thanks for dropping by and good question! No, I don’t think all unique names are a bad idea (in fact, I wrote a bit more about choosing business names in this post):

http://www.marketing-results.com.au/blog/2006/01/15/how-to-choose-a-great-business-name/

But for most SMEs who are going for a “direct-response based” strategy rather than an “awareness-based” branding strategy, I would recommend KeywordRichDomain.com.au over kwrd.com.au every time.

One thing you’ll notice about “branded” domain names (e.g. Flickr, Twitter, Odeo, Digg) is that they tend to have a pleasant cadence and are short and easy to remember.

Because people remember words better than abbreviations, “Twitter” is a much better name than “MBP.com” (MicroBlogPosts.com) or “NOOFC.com” (NothingOverOneFortyCharacters.com).

Comment by Will Swayne — November 1, 2009 #
Hey Dan – another great question…

Back in the day (5+ years ago), search engines such as Google had difficulty distinguishing separate words in domain names. Using hyphenated domain names was an effective strategy to get round this and gain some search engine benefits (hence, Marketing-Results.com.au).

Now search engines don’t need hyphens to make this determination – on ballance I would recommend WaterDamageOut.com rather than Water-Damage-Out.com.

Hyphenated domain names are still an OK option if the non-hyphenated version is taken.

Comment by Will Swayne — November 1, 2009 #
Totally agree with you on the importance of the domain name, which must be explicit for converting Adwords.
By cons, it seems that for natural search, this is less important than before?

Comment by Mr Assurance — November 8, 2009 #
A lot of people share your thoughts. I am finding it harder and harder to get a “clean” website name. I am having to use hyphens more but I don’t think it is such advantage, particularly if most people reach you through links instead of typing in the URL manually.

Comment by Josh — November 16, 2009 #
I agree completely, Abbreviations are bad domain names. Better think of something else, you can always come up with an original name.

Comment by Tantsuyut vsi — November 16, 2009 #
I agree with most of what you say, but these 2 billion people will be using .cn and .in domains.

Comment by bluetooth driver — November 24, 2009 #
I also agree with you, we need to think much about your domain name. Use abbreviations is wrong just as you have indicated you. I also think that it is said that a short URL is easy to remember but also a long name can be the answer. Compliements for site and Ihave subscribed to your feed

Comment by Paik — November 24, 2009 #
I think you’re right having a good domain name is essential if you want to drive traffic to your website but it’s quite difficult to think of a good website name. BTW I like your site, it is very informative, keep up the good work.

Comment by Webranes — February 1, 2010 #
I agree with you it is best not to abbreviate domain names and if possible use keywords. But, there are still some sites with abbreviated domain names that are known but basically they are gaming sites. Somehow I think it depends on the product or service that you’re offering.

Comment by Andrew@BloggingGuide — February 18, 2010 #
I have had personal experience with using abbreviations as domain names. It’s definitely not a good idea to use them especially if for niche related sites, whose focus would be gaining popularity quickly rather than becoming a brand.

Comment by Edward Michaels — March 19, 2010 #
Is it true that it is best to use only the keywords in your domain or can you rank just as high for the same keywords even if it is not in the domain name?

Comment by Making Affiliate — July 4, 2010 #