HACKER Q&A
📣 koots

Long or Abbreviated Domain Name?


advancedlearningschool.com Or alschool.com Or al-school.com

I will also have an email on a business card, so john.smith@advancedlearningschool.com would be too long. Or is it ok?

What do you guys think?

  👤 throwaway123xxx Accepted Answer ✓
Third option: Change the name. Domain names with common words are not good for SEO and don't stick in the mind.

Otherwise, when it comes to domain names, always get both if you can afford it.

👤 bradknowles
Why not both?

The long name could be the official one that will get good SEO, the short name(s) can redirect to the longer one.

👤 LinuxBender
Based on previous experience of registering domains for marketing groups, I would suggest that unless you are advertising on the radio and/or television, long name is fine. Short easy to type / remember domains are important if the person only ever hears the domain. Even using short names, one can redirect to the long name domain. Redirects can be useful if you are building a map of discount/promotion codes in URL's. My personal preference is to keep those redirects on the purpose-made short domain, keeping that clutter off the primary domain and out of the marketing groups CMS.
👤 hairofadog
advancedlearning.school is available.

In my opinion, long is better than abbreviated. Nobody is going to type it - they’ll either click or it’ll be auto-filled - but you’ll have to say it pretty frequently, and “alschool” will have to be spelled out carefully so it won’t be heard as “ale school” or similar (that’s “a” as in “alpha”, “l” as in “lima”, school dot com).

If you’re willing to drop “school” from the domain name, advancedlearning.us and advancedlearning.club are available.

👤 meowster
I agree with the third option: Choose a different name.