Advice on domain name for SEO please

Everything to do with using your own website to advertise your rental property. Design, usability, hosting, getting listed on the search engines, optimising your site, pay-per-click, etc, etc.
Moonshine
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Location: South Devon, UK
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Advice on domain name for SEO please

Post by Moonshine »

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been reading this excellent forum for several weeks and am very grateful for all the really good info and helpful advice that people share.

I now need a bit of advice about domain names please and haven’t seen my particular dilemma covered here. I have a little one-bedroom holiday cottage next door to our home in the UK that I’ve been letting for 15 years, but I’ve never had a website and need one now. I’ve decided on PMP (in spite of its limitations), but first I need a domain name. I’m unclear about whether, for SEO purposes, it would be better to use the name of the cottage in the domain name, or keywords. Some people on this forum seem to follow one approach and some the other, and using both would make my domain too long. I recently left Owners Direct and will not list on any of the sites that don’t allow owners to remain in control of all aspects of letting. I therefore have to rely on several smaller sites for bookings, and need my new website to be found, if possible, by people googling around for holiday cottages in this area. I’m not concerned about previous visitors as I’ll email them direct.

These are my options:

1. nameofcottage.com. The cottage has a very unusual name (22 characters) that I invariably have to spell out to people. Adding the name of the area or county would of course make it even longer. I don’t think it would be appropriate to add the name of our nearest town as we are very rural.

2. ourareaholidaycottage.com. To my surprise, this domain (using our actual area, obviously) is available (although the .co.uk equivalent isn’t) and that’s why I’m not saying where we are - in case someone else snaps it up. I think that these are my best keywords so maybe using them in the domain name would be good for SEO. Charles Cawley recommended this in 2012 on the PMP website, but someone else has said more recently that this approach no longer works so well and kevsboredagain doesn’t seem to use it on the holiday letting websites he designs.

So I’m confused. Which way to go? Advice please!
FelicityA
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Post by FelicityA »

I notice that a cottage near me has the name *town*holidaycottage.co.uk so I would be inclined to go for that (area in your case). I can't see how it would fail (I have tested it out with this particular one). I wish I had thought of that when I was choosing my own one.

On the other hand, I have as my domain name the name of my cottage.co.uk and then on listing sites which turn bad (i.e. the HA family!) you have in front of you the name of the cottage - what's not to google?? And people do, albeit with heavy hints.

So that is two conflicting answers really from me....
Moonshine
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Joined: Thu Jun 30, 2016 2:08 pm
Location: South Devon, UK
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Post by Moonshine »

Thanks very much for your reply FelicityA. Interesting that you have two conflicting views! In the second case you mention, I suppose that if the name of the cottage was the title of the homepage that should still bring up the website when the cottage is searched for by name?
FelicityA
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Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2010 2:54 pm
Location: Cotswolds
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Post by FelicityA »

Absolutely, Moonshine. You come up first if it is a unique name. There is one other cottage with the same name as mine that know of ( in a different county and associated with a recycling centre, not a holiday cottage, as far as I recall) but mine comes up first. But of course that might happen even if your name was not in the url as it would be in your text.
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