Is your URL too long?

Is your URL too long?

Mine is www.iowalandscapephoto​graphy.com . I also have www.iowalandscapephoto​.com which redirects to the first one.

It's descriptive and leaves no room for confusion, no doubt about that, but I wonder if it's too long for practical use. I've had it for less than a year and if I do something shorter this is the time to do it. FWIW, I am thinking of just linking the shorter name to the already-established longer name above. The shorter name would simply be a portal to the existing website.

Here's why I am thinking about doing this...

1) I know that most people browsing the web click links after searches, so no issue there.

2) The name doesn't properly fit on a business card at a decent readable font size.

3) When I tell people the name in person their eyes glaze over, and I can tell that some lose interest right there because remembering "that much" is too much for them.

Thoughts?

A teacher from an e-commerce class I took back in college always told us that when you're picking a domain name it should be something that you can easily read/remember if you see it on a billboard driving by at 60mph....not like that translates well into photography because I doubt you're going to plaster your URL on the side of your car or on a billboard but definitely the shorter the better.

I think the things in your favor are that you don't have any words in your URL that can be spelled any differently, you don't have any double letters in a row ( ii, ee, etc. that can easily be missed or skipped over when looking at an address), and personally I think it's easy to remember if you were to tell it someone.

I have the complete opposite with my URL. It's very short but I have two words in mine that can have various spellings. http://www.andierae.co​m Andie can be spelled andy, andi, and Rae can be Ray, but that's the sacrafice I made when choosing it. With the popularity of websites and people buying up every URL known to man you're going to have a really hard time finding the best of both worlds.

Shorter is better.

I think shorter is better, if the words aren't common or if there's double letters, hard to spell etc..

Longer urls sometime work better, if the words or phrase, are memorable.

In your case, photography vs photo is a personal choice, but people don't generally think/use the word photo as a replacement for photography. A photo is a singular item as photography is a trade.

I think the term photographer vs photography is valid, but with just photo, I"m not so sure. If I was to do a search for a landscape photographer in Iowa, I'd use just those terms: iowa - landscape - photographer or photography. I wouldn't use photo as that to most people would return a landscape photograph taken in iowa.

See what I mean?

Now, there's no reason you couldn't keep the name as is, but use the photo version for marketing materials etc.. I do that a lot.

I think of the top ten urls I can remember and even though many of them are not "words" by definition they are memorable.
They are also all fairly short.

Mine's seven letters.

I wouldn't worry about the long URL. Heck, mine is only a few letters smaller than yours and I don't care about the length. You and I do the same type of photography and I'll bet most consumers are going to search for a specific landmark/location then the whole state of Iowa. I would try and work on your interior pages for SEO.

If you have the money, then sure, buy a shorter URL and point it to your main site.

For good or for bad, I have made my decision. Thank you all for your feedback, btw.

www.iowalandscapephoto​graphy.com = This is still my primary website and URL, and will continue to be. Everything will point to this. Official, professional, web searchable, etc.

www.iowalandscapephoto​.com = Points to primary. Got it earlier "just because". I am not aware of anybody else other than myself even being aware of its existence.

www.iowa-photo.com = This is the new shorter URL. It also points to the primary, but this is what will be on new business cards, and what I tell people verbally (most likely), and so on. The intent is to be easy to remember when I talk to people in person, etc.

Yeah, it has a dash, and that was unavoidable. The version without a dash has been taken by a local photog for over 10 years now. My desired version (iaphoto.com) is the one taken by GoDaddy last week that I mentioned in another thread, but the more I think about it, the more I like the one I got... even with the dash. I only hope it doesn't cause confusion with the other guy. Fortunately he does weddings and portraits and people, so we don't conflict that way.

You might want to delete your emails from that post. Spam bots could harvest them.

cdifoto wrote in post #11005975
You might want to delete your emails from that post. Spam bots could harvest them.

Good point. Thanks.

Ditch the http:// and www, they're assumed and plus you don't need them anyway. Just iowalandscapephotograp​hy.com works if typed into a web browser.

tim wrote in post #11006473
Ditch the http:// and www, they're assumed and plus you don't need them anyway. Just iowalandscapephotograp​hy.com works if typed into a web browser.

You know that. I know that. Many people know that. I have found over my lifetime that you shouldn't take what should be common knowledge for granted, and that some provision should be made for those who don't know.

For my own sanity it heads off the inevitable question... "Do I need to put a 'www' in front of that?".

I think you made the right choice with your urls, that should work very well.

photoguy6405 wrote in post #11008639
You know that. I know that. Many people know that. I have found over my lifetime that you shouldn't take what should be common knowledge for granted, and that some provision should be made for those who don't know.

For my own sanity it heads off the inevitable question... "Do I need to put a 'www' in front of that?".

just to re-iterate that point, people do strange things. For example, my fiancé will type any website she wants to go to into google. Say she wants to go to facebook. Even though she knows the url is facebook.com, instead of typing it into the address bar, she'll go to google and type "facebook.com" into the search field and click on the link google gives her. I've told her many times she doesn't need to do that, but it's a learned behavior and hard to break.

So, you shouldn't ever take anything for granted, especially when it has anything to do with computers.

photoguy6405 wrote in post #11005887
My desired version (iaphoto.com) is the one taken by GoDaddy last week that I mentioned in another thread, but the more I think about it, the more I like the one I got... even with the dash. I only hope it doesn't cause confusion with the other guy. Fortunately he does weddings and portraits and people, so we don't conflict that way.

Just an FYI. Godaddy didn't register iaphoto.com....a gentleman by the name of John Newsome did. Info at: http://who.godaddy.com …photo.com&prog_​id=godaddy

John registered it through Godaddy and has parked it there...that's why you see godaddy on the site and in the WHOIS info.