Thread: Is 4 words too many for domain?

I've come up with a couple solid options for a domain name and I feel either is good and memorable but wondering if 4 words are too many?

Each has 3 keywords in it out of the 4 words and one of those three is my city's name which is what this site will be targeting. I can come up w/ a 3 word name but it will lack in keywords but obviously be shorter to type and remember. Two of the words are "real estate" so can't do much there (especially since they are good keywords)

Thanks for any suggestions!

Four words is a little long, ordinarily, but in the scenario you describe it may well be the best. In fact, very likely so.

Certainly for SEO purposes with the business you are representing I think the three words you identify may be exactly the three words people would put into a search engine when looking for the indicated information. If you have a fourth word that makes it more attractive for a name, well and good. People who know it will use it.

But if they are just looking for real estate in that city, searching for "(yourcity) real estate," they would also get you. And very likely you can rank number one or at least on page one.

I have more than one name registered for some domains. In your case I would definitely recommend it. That is, I would try to register the three word domain name, "(yourcity)realestate.com," if it is available and then redirect it to your actual site with whatever name.

That will virtually guarantee first place on page one of google for anyone who searches "(yourcity) real estate" and in the description you will have your name, etc. This extra registration will cost you less than $10.00 per year. Your fullly named regular listing would probably also come up on page one.

I would go for it.

Thanks for the feedback James.... I was actually thinking the same thing with regard to the search engines because the keyword tools through Google do show those three words typed often so hopefully it will work out in my favor. Its good to get a second opinion....

Originally Posted by roryc

I've come up with a couple solid options for a domain name and I feel either is good and memorable but wondering if 4 words are too many?

Each has 3 keywords in it out of the 4 words and one of those three is my city's name which is what this site will be targeting. I can come up w/ a 3 word name but it will lack in keywords but obviously be shorter to type and remember. Two of the words are "real estate" so can't do much there (especially since they are good keywords)

Thanks for any suggestions!

It depends on whether you plan to use your site offline as much as online.

Imagine trying to tell friends your domain or mention it over the phone, or even your email or name on a business card bob@oneword-twoword-threeword-fourword.com if it was 4 words long?

If you plan to only be an online presence, the 4 words in the domain is no problem at all to my knowledge... you may want to check about the maximum length of URL in google's indexing policy though...

One of my domains is going to have five words in it. Everything that sounded good was already taken, so I've decided to go with the long domain name. That way I'm able to get two keywords in the name instead of just one & can also avoid having to use a non "com" domain ending. Not sure if that's the best way to go about it as I'm pretty new to this, but I'm going with it. The site it strictly for online, so I'm not too worried about people remembering the name.

I've seen many Site Build It! sites with very long domain names, and they seem to be doing well. If you're not too worried about people remembering the name from memory, I'd say go for the four word domain name.

Right. The three words, "cityname real estate" may not be very memorable or either the name you will give your site or your official domain (the place actually located if you use the four word more dynamic name). However, by adding and redirecting that domain you will get the search engines of extremely targeted traffic.

As you would know, getting 50 targeted readers like that is worth getting 5,000 untargeted ones.

I think it will be fine as long as there targeted keyword phrases your going after in the search engines.

Google relies more on seo in general. So you need more than just your keyword phrase in your domain name to be ranked high. But it does help.

I found Yahoo puts a lot of weight on domain names and you could be ranked high just by the name of your website good luck!

2 create a website . com is 4 words and it is doing well and easy to remember of course, so it works for some and not for others.

Thanks for all the advice! That helps... I'll be registering the domain tonight

Hey rory,
I'm a little late on commenting, and it depends on what the four words are I suppose, but when I see four or five word domains like buy-best-cheapest-cameras.com on the search results I tend to assume they are spammy and don't click on them... just my opinion.

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yes, I agree but i've decided not to use any hyphens in the name so hopefully it won't come across that way...

Four words is absolutely fine, unless you're name isn't something like "website about fantastic psychology.com" or something like that. Many websites have 4 word domains and they're doing fine.

I use three to four word domains all the time (Never dashes). If you decide to use it offline and you feel people won't remember it you have a couple options. Create simple business cards you can use vistaprint they real cheap. Or what you can do is create one that is shorter and catchy and just do domain forwarding to where you want them to go. That could solve your offline issue of people forgetting the name of the site. If and when you do Offline Networking.

The number of words really depends on what they are. Recently I was involved with an organization which I sit on the board of directors and had a subcommittee develop a site RentThisPropertyNow. It cost them $10,000. (This project started before I was elected to the board) It had horrible SEO and no presence on the web. Their solution to increase traffic was to spend $5,000 on Ad-words.

The site was suppose to reach out to people looking to rent. So they missed the whole boat on good title. 19 letters long, telling people to rent not encouraging to rent and the list went on.

My suggestion was to get a name like RentalWI.com or RentalWis.com. I also gave a list of SEO help. I even bought the two domain names and offered to donate them. (Now I have them sitting and gathering dust.

The site itself was great and salvageable. In the end, they just shut the whole site down and wrote it off.

Choose your name well.

Woah! Yeah I actually chose the name before I made my site. I am only 14 so I'm no business man!

I wanted to make a website that hosted games but then I realised there was so many of them and i wanted something more unique. Like weight loss. So now I'm going to make the site THEN buy the domain :]