Choosing a domain name- branding issue

[cdx]

Hi...

It's my first massage on board- hello everyone...!

I am having hard time choosing a right domainname in a very competitive business and I thought it might be nice to hear few opinions about it.

I am building a website for renting paris apartments and currently, I am using rent-paris-apartments.com . I am not sure about this one because I dont know if it's easy to remember and if it will be easy to get inside the search engine... Also, when it comes to branding Vs Positions in search engines.

Any suggestions about other domain names ( have to be easy to remember + contain one or more keywords for earch engine).

Thanks for any help....
Cdx.

[littleFella]

Unless the site is meant for foreigners (non French), or is in regards to Paris, Ontario, I'm not sure if the use of English words in the domain name will be such a good idea. Most French can speak/read English to a greater or lesser degree, but they are pretty touchy on the subject.

You could also consider .fr instead of .com.

[cltwebs]

rent-paris-apartments.com in my opinion will be great for anchor text links helping with your SE ranking.

But what I have noticed is branding for regional market is more important sometimes that keyword descriptive domains.

May be try to shorten up your name to something like paris-rentals.com paris-appartments.com ? the shorter the domain name with hyphens the better from what I've seen.

Picking the right domain can always be a stomach twister.

[Nav2000]

Hey,

Here's an article (press release actually) that lists ten common mistakes when choosing a domain...

Click here for the article

It says to avoid hyphens b/c your visitors won't necessarily remember them.

Also, whenever I'm having trouble coming up w/ a domain name I use WhoIs.sc. Click on the "Domain Explorer" tab and you can enter in the words you want in your domain (ie 'paris', 'apts) and it will suggest a number of word combinations of available domains.

Good Luck!
Nav

[Runilo]

from a marketing point of view, the word "rent-paris-apartments.com " is thought to be very diffiult to remember. I even had to look it up again before i wrote it in this message.

If you think branding is what you need, then i would choose something like what cltwebs mentioned. Paris-Rentals or Paris-appartments or maybe a completely diffirientiated name.

I'm not a SEO expert but from what i've learned in these forums, it doesn't seem to be extremely hard to rank well on a term such as "paris apartments"

If i were to build such a website, i would consentrate the branding on other things than the name, because the meaning of branding is to get the visitors to remember you and come back. I would go with the users experience of your website and also his visit in one of your appartments.


I would first make sure to get ranked well on the search engines, then have a beautiful and very informative website, not like that other crap that comes out when you search for paris appartments, then i would focus the branding on the clients experience on the website and when staying at one of your apartments

What i beleive is the winner, is the most informative and good looking website found on the first page of the search engines, then giving the customers a good experience on their holyday, so they will chose you again, but for them to remember, have an easy to remember name such as paris-rentals.

Just a thought =)

[cdx]

mmm...

The problem with this business that it's overcrowded. Almost all the good domains are already taken (and the bad ones also...)

What do you say about RentingParis.com or RentingInParis.com ?

[Stats_Man]

One or two word domains are all gone, you're right. If you want the domain name for memory retention and SE keyword relevance there are some real GEMS still available. Like: APARTMENTFORRENTINPARIS.COM, good keyword list from that domain... apartment in paris, rent in paris, paris apartment, etc... traffic per day looks relatively good. You have a lot of work to do in beating the competition for SE positioning.