Should a URL reflect the book title or attempt to capture broader search terms? As in a book titled “Sherlock Holmes†should be at SherlockH.com or at consultingdetective.com ?
Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Perry Bernard: Does the website represent the book and only the book?
Dustin Lee Carlton: Perry Bernard , great question... It’s gonna be a website for a whole series of a dozen books. the hypothetical titles go “We Love Sherlock Holmes: Baskerville Hound†, “ We Love Sherlock Holmes: Speckled Band†, “We Love Sherlock Holmes: Fog Times†and on like that. So I thought the URL should be a catchy clip of the series title. But what does SEO know?
Perry Bernard: Dustin Lee Carlton this might depend on your marketing strategy, but there is advantage in choosing a domain name based on topic. The disadvantage is that it will be locked to that topic and doesn’t build Your Brand should you expand later.
Dustin Lee Carlton: Perry Bernard , thanks. there’s SO MUCH to not know! i’ll always be annoyed we didn’t get any SEO training in design school
Perry Bernard: Dustin Lee Carlton SEO is so important in any kind of business these days.
Dustin Lee Carlton: Richard Hearne I like that. But at the URL level does it really help anybody find anything? if somebody searches for “Sherlock Holmes books†will your URL place it in search results above sherlockholmes.com?
SHERLOCKHOLMES.COMSherlock Holmes – The Official WebsiteSherlock Holmes – The Official Website
Ammon Johns: Dustin Lee Carlton it is not that simple. There really are HUNDREDS of different signals that go into calculating ranking, and not a single one of them can trump all others. And certainly not the URL which was spammed to death with "Exact Match Domains" that Google actively built additional spam filters to downgrade.
Did you know that search.com was around years before Google? Did you know that Books.com predates Amazon? Which do you think ranks higher out of computers.com and apple.com? Brands beat EMDs both regularly and fairly consistently.
Being memorable and remarkable is far, far more important than keywords in a domain when it comes to getting citations and links. In fact often a too-exacting domain name looks cheap and spammy. Too obvious. Lacking any wit or originality.
Same in the real world. More than 90% of the time, the hairdresser operating at `Shirl`s Curls` will do better than the one at `The Hairdresser` but not quite as well as `Curl Up And Dye`, if all have similarly prime locations and similar service levels. It`s just how people are.
Richard Hearne: I`ll counter Ammon Johns above with this one word - brand. If you can build a successful brand "Sherlock Holmes Books" I`d say that will trump virtually all other signals. Having that domain would certainly help you to achieve that goal.
Ammon Johns: Richard Hearne I agree with the principle of that, but not in this specific, in that it would be virtually impossible to trademark "Sherlock Holmes Books". Any bookseller that stocks or trades crime fiction detective novels that includes Sherlock Holmes novels by Conan Doyle is going to be able to freely use the exact same words, create a domain name that is scarily similar, etc.
All that said, "New Sherlock Stories" could be a go, because these are, if I understood correctly, stories and books based on the character, but not by the original author. "Sherlock Today" or "Sherlock Lives!" could be even better, the latter especially after the heavy use of that phrase in the wonderful TV series with Benedict Cumberbatch.
Dustin Lee Carlton: I was believing that being memorable was more important than “search termyâ€. Thanks for all the feedback.
Richard Hearne: Trademarks don`t come into my thinking. I`m talking about building a site/business using the brand "Sherlock Holmes Books". It would be no trivial task, but I think that once Google sees "Sherlock Holmes Books" as an entity in its own right, ranking for that brand name will be much easier. Inbound links using that exact term would be very helpful, and thus why I think that exact match domain beneficial. Same thinking applies to "New Sherlock Stories". It could be called "Purple Monkey Dishwasher", FWIW.
Ammon Johns: Richard Hearne haha well, `barrier to entry`, or in other words, `stuff that limits competition`, is one of the first things I learned in real-world marketing.
But in this case it goes further than just not spending time on stuff anyone can see and copy and steal if it starts to work. It is connected to the fact that Google (and people) already have very strong associations for those words in this order. Sherlock Holmes Books is already practically an entity, and within that entity recognition are huge brands and very, very strong entrenched opposition.
Richard Hearne: In fairness, I made no claim to checking the relative competition etc., and I don`t have much knowledge regarding said books. For clarity, the example I used was to illustrate of the overall concept of being recognised as a brand. The example may not have been great, but the concept still holds.
Ammon Johns: Richard Hearne in general, after a couple of decades in various SEO groups and forums, if I`m going to suggest a keyword, especially if I`m going to put it into quotes to indicate it should be exactly as stated, I`ll always take a look at the reality of what I`m instructing by doing at least a little keyword checking. The last thing one wants, when advising and helping in a group, is for one`s specific advice to be wrongful or harmful if actually followed.
Richard Hearne: Ammon Johns I think you and I have a very different view on the depth of advice people should expect for free. That`s fine, but let`s not conflate the use of quotes as anything other than a way to delimit a string., and the string itself being anything other than an illustrative example.
For the sake of the OP - if you want/expect specific advice about an appropriate business name, then that`s very firmly into the realm of professional consulting which you may want to consider paying someone for IMO.
Ammon Johns: Richard Hearne I don`t think it comes down to what a reader expects. I think it comes down to the responsibility levels of the person giving advice, free or otherwise, to make damn sure it won`t be harmful or wrong.
Maybe you`re too young to know, Richard, in which case congratulations to you, but quotation marks are a lot older than computers and computing. Their meaning in the English Language, that which we are using to communicate in this group, is very clear. By all means feel free to research and double check what I say. You are not coding a response for a machine to read here, but writing to a person, so normally one would expect those to be the rules applied.
Even HTML has different markup for a BLOCKQUOTE and QUOUTE to that for CODE. So sometimes even machines care about the difference - especially when their aim is to display information to human readers.
Richard Hearne: Wow youre doing a good job of making yourself look very foolish.
Jim Munro: Thing is, we should always take note of the admin tag before making our criticisms and we should compose our words carefully, lest new members become confused by controversy from not knowing what is going on. You know I am a fan, Ammon. When donations were called for a few years back, I was one of the first to donate. I know that you have a long history too, but please remember that this group means a lot to me and consider extending a little leeway to your fellow admins in the spirit of friendship.
Should a URL reflect the book title or attempt to capture broader search terms? As in a book titled “Sherlock Holmes†should be at SherlockH.com or at consultingdetective.com ? 
