Choosing the right URL is a very important decision to make for any new internet venture: not only will it be the first chance you have to present yourself to a new user, but it will also have a deeper effect in shaping your presence on the web both in terms of reputation and your SEO results. Choosing a URL is compounded by textual challenges, limited inventory, and confusion about extensions.
In some people’s minds Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an art darker than witchcraft; to others, it’s something incredibly proscriptive: do A, B, and C, and you’ll be number one in Google searches. Fortunately, SEO is not voodoo (or my pantry would be filled with chicken necks and newts instead of olive oil and cereal), but unfortunately it is not as simple as checking off boxes on a to-do list. It’s somewhere in between, and far more interesting.
A few times clients have asked us, “which is better, YouTube or Vimeo?” Even though I’m not qualified to weigh in on which service is better in terms of the technical quality of its video encoding (though certainly others have), I can declare Vimeo the winner in terms of its reputation and aesthetic. Let me elaborate:
