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My Name is URL
To satisfy my URL-petite, I recently started a blog -- GoodURLBadURL.com -- showing pictures of URLs I encountered, with a label of Good or Bad based on the URL that was chosen and the way it was displayed.
You should see the looks I get (again, namely from my wife) when I interrupt TV commercials (interrupting commercials - now there's an oxymoron!) to take pictures of advertiser URLs or when I pull over to the shoulder to zoom in on a billboard and fire off a couple shots.
What Have I Been Smoking?
As Rory Gallagher put it, "don't know where I'm going, don't know where I've been." I can't explain why I'm so affected by URLs or why I feel the need to air my URL grievances to the world.
Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to parlay this URL-addiction into an AdSense machine. For now though, it's enough to simply scratch my URL itch and give me an outlet for URL-venting that does not require my wife feigning interest (I should point out that she's gotten really good at separating the good URLs from the bad and the ugly.)
Meet Aaron Goldman at Search Insider Summit Utah!
Aaron Goldman will be there moderating a panel on "Search Engine Idol" on December 04 at 11:00 AM. Top executives will be there. Will you?
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Register today and save.
As for what brought on this case of URL-itis, I'm pretty sure it has to do with my day job in search marketing.
What Do URLs and Search Have in Common?
With traditional search sponsored listings, marketers have a few short lines of text to make an impact so every last character counts. The same goes for URLs.
In a world where we're inundated with thousands of marketing messages each day, it's tough to stand out from the clutter. Marketers need a succinct, impactful message to really resonate. Ditto for URLs. Whether it be on a SERP or at the end of a 30-second spot, marketers have just a few seconds to make an impression.
And we know that offline media drives search activity. Research has shown that print and TV ads drive consumers online to search for more information. Of course, one of the main reasons for this is that people don't know (or don't remember) the URL of the advertiser for the product or service that piqued their interest.
Are Good URLs Bad for Search?
One might say that those of us in search marketing stand to benefit from advertisers using bad URLs. After all, confused consumers create a confluence of queries (say that ten times fast!)
But there are two key reasons I don't think we need to lose any sleep over marketers waking up to the power of a good URL.
The first is that no matter how memorable your URL is, there is still a significant percentage of the online population that can't (or doesn't bother to) differentiate between an address bar and a search box. There's an anecdotal stat I once heard that I love (and repeat often to marketers who don't think they need to "do search") -- two of the top ten queries on Google and Yahoo each month are "Google.com" and "Yahoo.com." Brilliant!
The second is that, quite simply, most of the good URLs are already taken. And, no matter how many great URLs might be available with alternate top-level domains (.biz, .name, etc.) no marketer wants to touch those (and for good reason -- it's hard enough to remember what comes before .com.)
What Makes a Good URL?
On GoodURLBadURL.com I list some best practices for marketing professionals who, like me, take this URL thing seriously. Here are the Dos and Don'ts I've come up with for selecting and promoting URLs. I'd love to hear yours, too -- either in the Search Insider Blog or the comments section on my site.
Dos
1. CapitalizeTheFirstLetterOfEachWord.
2. UseDifferentColorsOrBoldToHelpEachWordStandOut.
3. Whenever possible, use YourBrandName.com.
4. If .com is not available, use YourBrandName.net.
5. If .com and .net are taken, find a new brand name. Seriously.
6. Use YourSlogan.com when running an integrated media campaign.
7. Use subdomains when driving people deeper than your homepage -- e.g. Product.YourBrandName.com.
Don'ts
1. Don't include www. We know to go to the World Wide Web to find you.
2. Don't include http://. If your audience isn't Web-savvy enough to know where to type the URL, you shouldn't have a Web site.
3. don'tusealllowercase (canyoureallytellwhereonewordendsandthenextbegins?)
4. DITTOFORALLUPPERCASE
5. No-hyphens/or slashes.
6. Don't use acronyms, abbreviations, or numbers unless your brand is widely known as such.
7. Don't bury your URL at the bottom of a billboard. I'm the only nerd driving around with a 4x zoom lens to find URLs.
Happy URLs to You
Hopefully I've raised your URL-IQ a bit or at least made you URL-aware. What you do with this newfound URL wisdom is up to you. For your sake, though (and the sake of your family) I encourage you not to get too fixated on finding or creating the perfect URL -- it's not healthy.
As for those of you focused solely on search marketing who might be thinking that URLs don't matter since your Web site is always one easy click away (and, thus, people don't need to remember it) -- I wouldn't overlook the importance of getting every last advantage you can on a crowded SERP or in a content/contextual environment. Searchers are finicky, and even the slightest use of CAPS can get eyeballs away from competitor's placements. Not to mention, if you've got a bad URL and want people to skip the SERP next time and return to your site directly, your only hope is that they bookmark it.
And now I'll close with the Dixie Chicks classic -- Goodbye URL
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Cheers, AG
The same solution should be used for the hyphen. If both runnermagazine.com and runner-magazine.com point to the same website, there's no issue. In fact, I might get runnersmagazine, too, if I was setting things up.
URLs are cheap and getting multiple ones for frequent mispellings/typos, makes sense.
I love your suggestion #5, Aaron, to change the name of the brand if .com and .net are taken, though I might take a fling at .org in the right circumstance.
Since the net has become so central to so many of our business lives, and SaaS is growing so vigorously, I expect that it won't be long before we see companies incorporating the .com into their corporate identities - changing from OurBusiness to OurBusiness.com
Alan Z - to me, the hyphen is a great barrier to recall. I think back to when phone numbers were the main way people connected with companies and marketers tried to come up with easy to remember numbers. Fortunately the format was standard -- area code then 7 digits... sometimes a word if the marketer was lucky (eg, 800-COMCAST.) Can you imagine if people had to not only remember the number but what came in between? In other words, if people actually had to type in the parenthesis or hyphen for (800) 555-1234 and if that format wasn't standard for every set of 10 digits? Oy vey.
Yvonne - the difference between typing a keyword and an URL is that with a keyword, you're already online. With an URL that you encounter in a TV ad or billboard, you have to remember it until the next time you're online. As for your points about CAPS, I'd rather annoy people with having to type a CAP (if they don't realize it's not required) than risk them not remembering my URL at all. As for the www thing, as Alan C points out -- you can redirect traffic from one to the other.
Justin - good points about hyphens being good for searchability. I've been focused more on domain names and ease of recall from offline to online. But your point is an important one -- if you're not doing any offline marketing and search is your primary source of traffic, then hyphens may be the way to go (assuming KeywordRichURL.com is taken.)
Hugh - interesting URL's. Curious what you plan to do with them. One note -- I'd go USprepared (lower case p.)
Alan C - great points... thanks for your perspective. I did take a pretty U.S.-centric approach. I hope others around the world will weigh in with regional intricacies. For example, from what I understand, alllowercase is actually preferred in German as words are often built oneuponanother.
I found your enthusium for URL's amusing because I find myself doing exactly the same thing,and my wife thinks I'm nuts. Maybe so. Two years ago I started to search out possible URL's that might be worth having. I was only willing to buy .coms. I proceeded to buy approx. 400 and play with them. I'm still playing with them. Here are a few samples Taxprayer.com, Gemcoms.com, FreshBitch.com (my wife just loves that one), WhaleBlow.com, MyPhile.com......................many more. This infatuation with URL's can get carried away. You can see my attempt at doing something with them @ projline.ifp3.com
You might be interested in a little known trick for entering .com url's in your browser window without the prefix and .com. See number 10 on my Comprehensive 25 Step Blueprint for Initial Domain Name Strategies to Strengthen Your Brand (http://bigeduh.com/domainnames/a-comprehensive-25-step-blueprint-for-domain-name-strategies-to-strengthen-your-brand/). In my world this saves me hours of time!
Marketing friendly URL's can be pretty good as well - such as domain.com/slogan (particularly if dealing with a competitive keyword target). But it's just as important to 301 redirect as well if the URL actually points to a different web address when accessed in a browser. (Example: http://www.hp.com/designjet)
That's especially cool for local search - there are plenty of great opportunities to snag a URL to improve your results if you get creative in how/where you look for great names.
Thanks for a good discussion.
Minor quibbles – and I suppose the whole thing is subjective – include
* Outside of the USA we have alternative suffix issues to contend with as well * The dash can work – you sometimes need to ‘break’ a word simply ‘cos it looks right – try ‘hi–performance’ for example
I think Yvonne DiVita has missed the point about capitals – we are talking about how the URL appears aesthetically offline, not as it is typed into a browser.
Also Yvonne, the www is actually a second/third level of the domain that can only be created by the domain’s ‘owner’ – so someone else cannot create the same domain with/without the URL [sorry, being picky]. Most times, typing in only the domain name and suffix [eg nike.com] will redirect you to the www version. Though you are right it, is a techie thing and every web site should be set up so that even the most newbie [dumbest] user will end up on your site, sadly most techies do their own thing and don’t care about the user experience.
You need to keep in mind the aesthetic reasons like does it look good and will my site visitor feel like they can trust this domain or is it one of those spammy sites. I think if your careful and use it as a landing page for search engine traffic you could see positive results depending on your approach.
Also here are my urls:
AVmagination USPrepared 7tHaven
New one coming soon: PlanetGreenSolutions MonthlyMoneyIdeaClub
And, leaving off the www can cause problems... there are a lot of sites that don't use the www... and steal traffic from sites that do, by creating URLs without the www ...for a site that uses www. I know that's a design-techie thing, but... advising folks to ignore the www is as likely to send people to a "coming soon" page...as it is to send them to the page they are actually looking for. Everybody loses then.
I wonder about the prohibition of hyphens. Why not use them? Is there research to support this prohibition?
My clients are magazines, and like the The Mist movie you posted about in your blog, many magazines are in a quandry about their URL. For example, lets say there is a magazine called "Runner." Clearly, runner.com is already taken. Why not Runner-Magazine.com or Runner-Mag.com?
One positive of this is that RunnerMagazine.com will trigger a spellcheck error when included in any usergenerated viral messaging (including blogs, comments and email programs). Runner-Magazine.com will not.
What do you think? Is this an exception to the rule?