Attacking the Search Engines

I am about to launch a new business that will involve giving very small groups of American tourists a personally guided tour of Southwest UK.

Whilst we have our company name and domain name already launched, I was thinking about buying another domain name to "attack" the search engines with! I.e., I am trying to get a second chance for the search engines finding and rating me with an additional, but slightly different domain name.

My question is this: If I choose a domain name with what I think will be the search words used to find us, will the search engines penalise me if I have it too long? What it the optimum length of words / characters I should be using for my domain name?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Kind Regards,

Chris and Pete M.

~~~Jill's Response~~~

Hi Chris and Pete,

Long-time readers are probably chuckling right now, knowing what's going to come next. It's probably not what you want to hear, but unfortunately, it needs to be said.

I can't answer your question about the length of your new domain name, because your basic premise is flawed. You don't need to "attack" the search engines at all. What you're thinking about doing is essentially "spamming" the engines with an extra domain for the sole purpose of gaining multiple listings in their results pages. They don't like this.

This is an old technique that was never a good idea, because it cluttered the engines' databases with useless duplicate pages all leading to one main site. That's not to say that the technique didn't work! It worked very well for many years. In fact, it probably works very well for the short term, even today. However, it's an unnecessary extra step in promoting your business, and a shortsighted one at that.

There's no need for an additional domain. If you have additional products or services, simply add pages to your existing site. Every page is a gateway to the rest, and they can all rank highly if properly optimized. You might be thinking that only your main home page can rank highly, and that's why you need a whole new domain. Or you might be thinking that getting found in the search engines is all about finding the best ways to *trick* them into ranking your site. If it ever was that way, it's not anymore.

You may also be thinking that keyword-rich domain names are what get sites high rankings. The truth is that domain names have little if any effect on where your site shows up in the spidering search results pages. When you see sites ranking highly that happen to have keyword-rich domains, chances are they're also optimized in other ways. It's those other things, i.e., keyword-rich Title tags, body copy and links pointing to the page, that are more likely responsible for the high rankings.

As to the length of any domain name, it's not really a factor. Choose domain names based on your company's brand, and make it something your users will remember. Many people (like me) don't bookmark sites, so memorable domain names that make sense are much preferred over keyword-rich domain names that look like canned luncheon meat!