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How do people feel about long urls?
Old School url conventions had us putting the name of the business in full in the domain because it helped Google to find it and rank it high. Keywords were of utmost importance in Google rankings, and if any of your keywords were part of your URL, that was weighted even more highly.
But the problem is that you end up with these really long URLs that have the full business name. So you have to type this whole thing in, but the positive side is that you could find just about any business' website by taking a chance and typing their name into the address bar. I still find websites this way and only go to Google if that doesn't work.
So nowadays, linkbacks are the more important method of getting high Google rankings. The more independent websites (that are not link farms) that link back to you, including blogs, the more important Google thinks you are, because people are talking about you.
This means that the specific characters in the URL are much less important, but for non-Google advertising, it still helps to have an easy-to-remember URL, like for business cards and ads.
The point of all this is that I'm ready to buy the domain for the Polyamory Media Association that I am creating, which will bridge the gap between the poly community and the media. We will be maintaining a database of poly people who are interested in talking to the media, including their relationship setup, what types of media they're interested in, etc., we'll offer media training, and we'll also screen media requests as well as actively pursue media events. I've been calling the organization PMA for short, and I finally decided to create www.pma.com only to discover today when I tried to buy it, that pma.com was already taken, as well as every other suffix possible for pma.
My next instinct is to go with the full URL, polymediaassociation.com but I'm resistant to such long URLs even though I tend to prefer full name URLs.
So, I'm throwing this open to suggestions. What kind of URL would you like or be willing to follow or be able to remember if you wanted to find this website?
TAKEN:
pma
tpma
pmassociation
pmassoc
pmagroup
thepma
POSSIBLE OPTIONS:
polymediaassociation
polyamorymediaassocation
polymediaassoc
anthing else?
*UPDATE* polymediagroup.com is available, and I suppose I could always change the name to PMG, I just like how "association" sounds. I'm trying to come off as professional as possible, it's a national organization, so I don't want it to sound like a local poly group or run by a single person (it's not, I have lots of associates who are helping me).
*UPDATE #2* I just thought about possibly changing the name to polymedianetwork.com since I've pretty much ruled out polymediagroup. The pros: shorter than polymediaassociation; no double letters; the word "network" is very similar to "association" in connotation. The cons: still longer than pma.com or polymedia.com; I have to change the name and the acronym to PMN and I don't know if I like how it looks as well as PMA; "network" implies a looser connection than "association" but not significantly so.
Old School url conventions had us putting the name of the business in full in the domain because it helped Google to find it and rank it high. Keywords were of utmost importance in Google rankings, and if any of your keywords were part of your URL, that was weighted even more highly.
But the problem is that you end up with these really long URLs that have the full business name. So you have to type this whole thing in, but the positive side is that you could find just about any business' website by taking a chance and typing their name into the address bar. I still find websites this way and only go to Google if that doesn't work.
So nowadays, linkbacks are the more important method of getting high Google rankings. The more independent websites (that are not link farms) that link back to you, including blogs, the more important Google thinks you are, because people are talking about you.
This means that the specific characters in the URL are much less important, but for non-Google advertising, it still helps to have an easy-to-remember URL, like for business cards and ads.
The point of all this is that I'm ready to buy the domain for the Polyamory Media Association that I am creating, which will bridge the gap between the poly community and the media. We will be maintaining a database of poly people who are interested in talking to the media, including their relationship setup, what types of media they're interested in, etc., we'll offer media training, and we'll also screen media requests as well as actively pursue media events. I've been calling the organization PMA for short, and I finally decided to create www.pma.com only to discover today when I tried to buy it, that pma.com was already taken, as well as every other suffix possible for pma.
My next instinct is to go with the full URL, polymediaassociation.com but I'm resistant to such long URLs even though I tend to prefer full name URLs.
So, I'm throwing this open to suggestions. What kind of URL would you like or be willing to follow or be able to remember if you wanted to find this website?
TAKEN:
pma
tpma
pmassociation
pmassoc
pmagroup
thepma
POSSIBLE OPTIONS:
polymediaassociation
polyamorymediaassocation
polymediaassoc
anthing else?
*UPDATE* polymediagroup.com is available, and I suppose I could always change the name to PMG, I just like how "association" sounds. I'm trying to come off as professional as possible, it's a national organization, so I don't want it to sound like a local poly group or run by a single person (it's not, I have lots of associates who are helping me).
*UPDATE #2* I just thought about possibly changing the name to polymedianetwork.com since I've pretty much ruled out polymediagroup. The pros: shorter than polymediaassociation; no double letters; the word "network" is very similar to "association" in connotation. The cons: still longer than pma.com or polymedia.com; I have to change the name and the acronym to PMN and I don't know if I like how it looks as well as PMA; "network" implies a looser connection than "association" but not significantly so.
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no subject
Date: 5/13/09 05:38 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 5/13/09 05:55 pm (UTC)From:polymediaassociation seems like the good middle ground between full name and length to me.
no subject
Date: 5/13/09 06:00 pm (UTC)From:I like polymediaassoc, or just polymedia, myself.
no subject
Date: 5/13/09 06:02 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 5/13/09 06:04 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 5/13/09 06:14 pm (UTC)From:about "poly media group", i like the warmer feeling of the word 'group', but the phrase "media group" calls to mind media corporations or conglomerates - so that i more immediately think of a group of polyamorous media companies than a group of media-friendly poly people
no subject
Date: 5/13/09 06:15 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 5/13/09 06:24 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, that's the feeling I was getting with that phrase, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly about it bothered me. I said about that I thought "association" was more "professional", but that wasn't quite the right word. More like it had the connotation of a network of people working together, as opposed to "media group" which, as you said, I think has gotten co-opted by media conglomerations, which we are not.
PMA isn't going to be associated with a media group at all, we are more like representatives of the poly community who wish to reach out to the media ... not a media group who happens to be poly.
no subject
Date: 5/13/09 07:04 pm (UTC)From:If that's taken, polyassoc might be an alternative.
no subject
Date: 5/13/09 07:28 pm (UTC)From:2. polymediaassociation.com, .org, .net ..
no subject
Date: 5/13/09 07:40 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 5/13/09 09:28 pm (UTC)From:I like the *sound* of polymediaassociation, but having two doubled letters in a row makes it feel awkward for me to type/write.
polymediagroup avoids those problems, though I do agree with
no subject
Date: 5/13/09 09:38 pm (UTC)From:At the moment, I'm leaning towards polymediaassociation because all of the shortened forms that aren't acronyms get too close to that media group connotation that I'd like to avoid.
no subject
Date: 5/14/09 01:38 am (UTC)From:pma.us IS available - there's a little link in the bottom right that says goes to a sales inquiry: http://titan.net/domsales.cgi?dm=pma.us (ha-ha!). i've no idea how to tell if their asking price is reasonable though...it looks expensive to me, but maybe it's actually normal?
no subject
Date: 5/14/09 02:09 am (UTC)From:HELL NO!
An unowned domain costs only $10 to purchase. I'm not making any money off this project and it costs me the $10 to buy the domain plus $50 a year to host it. That's a big enough out-of-pocket investment.
So this is what I was saying about property being owned by someone else, just not used anywhere. There are many services out there that will look up the availability of domain names, and my web host already looked up all permutations of pma.whatever and said they were all unavailable. At over a thousand dollars, I consider .us to be definately "unavailable".
no subject
Date: 5/14/09 02:11 am (UTC)From:I am not willing to purchase a domain from someone who already owns it because they price-gouge the buyer. I will only buy totally unowned, available domains.
no subject
Date: 5/14/09 03:52 am (UTC)From: (Anonymous)Someone looking for it will find it easy enough.
I like this idea of the poly media association! Our local poly group has recently decided to add outreach and activism to its focus (on top of socializing and discussing). I'm particularly interested in the outreach and activism part of it.
no subject
Date: 5/14/09 04:04 am (UTC)From:Other exciting sub-committees include a youth-outreach specifically geared towards college students and a group specifically designed for dealing with members of the psychiatric and mental health communities, as well as another group (of which I am a part) that is teaming up with CARAS to create and support academic research about polyamory, and I think there was a request for a committee to form a support group for friends and family of poly members, sort of a PFLAG for polys.
no subject
Date: 5/15/09 01:45 am (UTC)From:pma.us !!polymedia.us !!
no subject
Date: 5/15/09 03:37 am (UTC)From:All that means is that I'll have to buy .com anyway and redirect even if I *wanted* some other suffix, which I don't.
Very few websites have enough of an association with another suffix to make people remember it against the pull of the .com. Almost no one I know remembers that Wikipedia is a .org, for example, and that's a pretty big website and the organization association is strong enough that you'd think people would remember it. But they don't.
no subject
Date: 5/15/09 06:31 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 5/15/09 06:33 am (UTC)From:oh, and note: polymedia.com can be a home-base for "poly media network", "poly media association", anything. so no matter what you want the full acronym to be, if you're sure on "poly" and "media" (and i don't see those changing :P) then polymedia.com will work.