Vanity URLs should unique, relevant, and support your brand or message.
We know it’s a short week, but this week we’re going to focus on optimizing your URLs. Today, we’re focusing on vanity URLs. If you’re doing any sort of Internet marketing, you are investing in vanity URLs for your:
- Micro-sites
- Landing Pages
- Rapid Conversion Landing Pages (“Name Squeeze” pages)
- Priority Code Pages
- Free download pages
Likely, you’re using them on any promotional materials where you are externally pointing to the URL (likely in print) and hoping that the reader will remember it. This would be common in a magazine ad, or some place where you are not simply hyper-linking to the page online, but asking them to take note and visit it later on.
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A vanity URL should be unique, relevant and support your brand or message. So, after surfing sites like GoodURLBadURL.com and other URL junky sites, we’ve come up with a Do and Don’t list for vanity URLs:
Do capitalize every first letter of every word in your URL (example: PleaseRememberMe.com)
Do stick to a two or three word phrase
Do bold or add color to the second or middle word if your branding depends on using all lowercase in your URL to add emphasis and break up words (example: pleaserememberme.com)
Do avoid the “/” and instead add a sub-domain (example: Mtv’s AShotAtLove.MTV.com)
Do (if it makes sense) incorporate the .com into your logo (but only if you can keep it all on the same line)
Do use keywords in your URL (example: britneyspears.celebrities.com) if you’re hoping for organic search traffic as well (not good for Priority Code pages or other sites where you are tracking visitors by campaign)
Do spend time thinking about what phrase your users will remember
Do make it unique and relevant
Don’t come up with clever abbreviations (example: American Family Insurance uses the unbranded amfam.com)
Don’t add www to the URL (it’s 2007, people know already)
Don’t forget what your URL looks like on first glance (example: speedofart.com is Speed of Art… what did you think?)
Don’t break your URL into two lines for design sake, it’s likely that your readers will only see the bottom line (example looks like salespartners.com instead of inetsalespartners.com, and they use this logo/url for their promotional pieces)
Don’t add dashes in between each word just to enable a longer URL (example: i-do-it-because-i-can-not-because-its-good.com)
Don’t use acronyms
Don’t point a vanity URL to your homepage, unless you have a very, very strong call to action at first glance
Do capitalize every first letter of every word in your URL (example: PleaseRememberMe.com)
Do stick to a two or three word phrase
Do bold or add color to the second or middle word if your branding depends on using all lowercase in your URL to add emphasis and break up words (example: pleaserememberme.com)
Do avoid the “/” and instead add a sub-domain (example: Mtv’s AShotAtLove.MTV.com)
Do (if it makes sense) incorporate the .com into your logo (but only if you can keep it all on the same line)
Do use keywords in your URL (example: britneyspears.celebrities.com) if you’re hoping for organic search traffic as well (not good for Priority Code pages or other sites where you are tracking visitors by campaign)
Do spend time thinking about what phrase your users will remember
Remember, vanity URLs should support your brand/message and are usually for your promotional print campaigns. Maybe adding the .com to your logo isn’t what you’re going for on your site, and maybe using acronyms is fine if that’s how everyone knows you, for your homepage. However, if you’re looking for a slogan or phrase that will get you indexed in the mind of newcomer, it’s going to take more work.
