Help with picking domain

Hello,

I need a little help to choose the best domain-name since i´m a bit unused to the international market (i´m from Sweden). I´m gonna set up a tourist-oriented site with info about the city of “La Rochelle”. This page is designed to appeal to international visitors, mainly British and Americans but also others in most of EU.

a .com-domain would ofcourse be the best, but sorry to say that´s not an option. So I have these as options to choose from:

larochelleholiday.co.uk
larochelleholidays.eu
larochellevacation.eu
larochellevacations.eu

I understand that holiday/holidays is the common term in England while vacation/vacations is the U.S. equivalent (unsure about the rest of the EU though). If I was only targeting visitors from England I would probably go with the first option, but the question is if co.uk is better then .eu in general or only in England. I´m also not sure which variant of the word (ending with or without S) is most correct to use.

I´d appreciate any input from both American and English people or webmasters used to working towards both markets.

PS: Never mind the city La Rochelle, it was just as an example because it is a popular destination for British and internationals.

Hi ch0sen. Welcome to the forums. :slight_smile:

a .com-domain would ofcourse be the best, but sorry to say that´s not an option.

Why? I can’t think of any reason why that would be the case, and for something international, it’s worth shooting for. If it’s just because the domain name(s) you want are already taken, you just need to be creative. :slight_smile: It’s worth putting a hyphen in there anyway, so that the key words are distinguished, such as larocelle-holiday.com.

I would also look at the reverse: holiday-larochelle.com.

If you have the cash, why not just get them all? Of course you can choose one to put on your business cards and such later.
But for now, since domains don’t cost as much as they use to, just go ahead and buy them all out.

ralph.m: Thank you, sorry to say all good names revolving around this with .com is already registered, unless i wanna use something like holiday-lar-oc-helle111.com which i don´t.

shanshan: I already have registered them and I´m asking which one to use, to use them all would not be realistic as it would be a lot of work unless i want duplicate content which i don´t. I´m gonna use 1 of them and then 301-redirect the rest, just need to know which one to go with.

ralph.m, after thinking a bit “outside the box” I actually might have found something that could be an alternative ending with .com

larochellerecreation.com … would that be a better alternative to the my previous choices? and which term is most correct: larochellerecreation.com, larochellerecreations.com or larochellerecreational.com

I’d say the first, but perhaps get the hyphenated version and redirect the others towards that. It easier to read the hyphenated version, and then google can better pick up the separate words. Although, “recreation” is a bit of a mouthful. I’ll bet there are still more options—like, maybe, “-getaway”, “-relax”, “-repose”, “-delight”, “-discovery”, “-diversion”, “-away”, “enjoy-”, “discover-”, “explore-” …

Thanks for your input and Yeah, i will go with the hyphenated version since it looks better, and i´ll redirect the one without.

II believe you´re right about the word in itself but i really wanna emphasize the holiday/vacation-meaning and from what I understand “recreation” in the modern sense almost meanst the same since that is what you do on your holiday/vacation nowadays wheter you do sports or just relax… since i cant get vacation/holiday with .com then i want the closest i can get where one still immediately thinks of vacation … I hope i´m on the right track (since english/american is not my mother tounge)?

“holiday” is indeed more of a British English term (for “vacation”) than American, so if the US is your main market, “vacation” is better. “Recreation”, though a valid word for what you are describing, probably isn’t used a lot by the average Joe. I’m still not convinced you can’t fit “vacation” or “holiday” neatly in there somehow, but I can’t help with that as I don’t know your real key word. (Feel free to PM me, though. :slight_smile: )

you´re probably right in that I could find something with holiday/vacation in it … but i´m afraid that even with something like larochelle-vacation.com which is a nice domain in itself i run a great risk of sending people to my competitors on larochellevacation.com or similar. There´s also the issue with vacation vs holiday as you also pointed out … because i want to target the US, English and EU-market all in one, which seems hard when they use different terms for it … whereas recreation atleast is the same everywhere, but maybe not the first choice of word … this is difficult, i wanna get it right at the beginning to so i don´t end up wasting marketing funds just to change my mind later.

Personally, I wouldn’t worry about that. In a way, it’s more for your competition to worry about.

whereas recreation atleast is the same everywhere, but maybe not the first choice of word

Yes, the same everywhere … in that’s it’s not used much anywhere. :slight_smile: Where I live (in Australia) “holiday” is the more used term, but “vacation” is still much more used here than “recreation” (which isn’t much associated with holidaying or vacationing). “Recreation” is what you do on the weekend.

It’s not all about the domain, anyhow. The content of the pages is more important, so you can use both “vacation” and “holiday” in your text. Your domain could even be holiday-vacation-larochelle.com. If you have a business name, though, I’d still reflect that in the domain.

Ok, I hear what your saying …

If i have these choices instead, which would you choose then:

larochelle-vacation.com
vacation-larochelle.com
vacationlarochelle.com
larochelleholidaying.com
larochelle-holidaying.com

larochellevacation.com” is registered to what i would consider a competitor, allthough no site is currently active on it. “larochelleholiday.com” and different versions of that is registered by a lot of different competitors where most have an active site on it.

Probably either (or both) these:

larochelle-vacation.com
vacation-larochelle.com

But I’d also consider an s on vation:

larochelle-vacations.com
vacations-larochelle.com

Why not type a few phrases which could describe the site into Google Keyword Tool and see which is searched for most in the UK / US / EU.

That will give you an indication of what’s being used most commonly and where.

Might help you make a decision?

I must say, I am very confused. I just ran through larochelleholiday.com larochelleholidays.com larochellevacation.com and larochellevacations.com with http://instantdomainsearch.com/ and every one of them is available for purchase for less than $10 through GoDaddy.

The OP made clear above that this was just an example, rather than the actual desired domain. :slight_smile:

(It wouldn’t be a good idea to post the actual desired domains.)

I apologize for missing the line at the end. We have built more than 60 websites and have never had anything but .com domain names.

I would urge you not to resort to using dashes. There is absolutely no need at all to worry about inserting keywords in the domain name. Google got rid of that liitle boost last fall with the EMD algorithm update.

Instead, come up with something you can build a brand around. Something glamorous, refined, exotic, precious or rich (or nice sounding foreign words that mean the same) followed by travel/holidays/getaways/excursions/vacations/escapes/adventures (or similar) and tack .com on the end. Sterlinggetaways.com immediately came to mind and is available, for instance. If the name of the city is the most important thing, the same thing applies - tack a word on at the end or the beginning of the city name. Start plugging things in and I’m sure you’ll come up with something excellent. I’d try to help more but it is awfully hard to do with a hypothetical!

:tup: +1

Hi, why not larochelletourisme.com :wink: Or larochelletour.com , seelarochelle.com

Don’t worry so much about the exact match domains. Get your main word in there, sure, but then just mix it up with some other word to make it sound interesting.

Step two is to create great content on your site and get social sharing going to it which will boost you pass your competition anyway. Also, of course, get your Google authorship in place which is going to count more and more as time goes on.
Finally, it’s worth looking up who owns any inactive domains and making them an offer.

I recently grabbed a brilliant domain which, by chance, had recently expired but was not yet on the market. I snagged it for $69. Delighted!

It’s worth checking the who is to find out if someone with and inactive domain has got their phone number in their and give them a bell.

Best wishes

Malc