The success of any online business depends on its brand visibility on the internet & thanks to Google’s algorithm, everyone gets a fair share of opportunities to generate traffic & climb up the search results.
Your domain name is decisive when it comes to crawling up the SERP (search engine result page) ladder, for it allows you to:
- Generate Leads
- Gain Traction
- Expand your portfolio which involuntarily helps in boosting your brand awareness.
“A domain name simply highlights what’s your brand’s all about & it definitely matters in SEO”
To put it in simple words, domain names are like a list of contacts on your phone. For a moment, let’s just consider IP addresses as contact numbers with lengthy digits. There’ll be a time when your brain simply won’t be able to discern every other digit!
Now you have this new feature where you could save those numbers in words. The task to remember has become way easier now since you don’t have to deal with all those long boring digits. You identify who’s who with their name & it’s just like the way it should be.
Now let’s expand this idea into a universal registry, where there’s a unique number behind every person on this planet. Type a specific name & get the contact number irrespective of place or time.
Domain name follows this mechanism closely. Every website has a unique IP address but it’s the name that stands out & lets the user identify closely to what they are looking for. Therefore, choosing a friendly SEO name is a win-win situation because there’d be individuals out there who are looking for what you have to offer. The reason for you to be out there in the first place.
“Branding & Keywords are really crucial for one to climb up the search results.”
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Things to consider while choosing SEO friendly Domain Names
Branding:
It highlights what your brand stands for. It sums up everything in a single glance to an audience. For example, Tesla won’t do any good if their domain name begins with best-electric-cars-in the world.com. People identify with the brand & when people hear about Tesla, they could picture almost everything about it in split seconds. The same goes for every other brand, that people, in general, are accustomed to.
“We like to seek out brands & associate ourselves with it.”
A crisp & concise brand name goes a long way if you are just starting up. Well, if you’d like to play the spelling bee, that’s a completely different scenario but rule number one in marketing has always been to dig out a name, which places itself easily on the tip of the tongue of your target audience. Promotion & awareness play an equivalent role in this regard & if you are confident to place your own domain name then it would only do good to build trust in more unique ways.
Keywords:
The other option is to choose keywords for your domain name. Keywords identify your target audience with the product & services they are looking for. If you are in the business of selling custom-made footwear, then you can rack up some traction on your website with customfootwear.com as your domain name. It does not highlight your brand or business in any sort, instead, it focuses on the service aspect.
Keywords could be rewarding if the SEO strategy is just put right. They have to be consistent with your content otherwise they run on the thin ice of losing credibility in no time.
You could always go for SEO services that are in high demand. SEO stands for search engine optimization. For e.g. An SEO company obtains high-ranking placements in SERP (Search engine result page) to improve the visibility of your business online. SEO experts manage social media presence, content, design, PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, etc & have become an indispensable part to drive businesses.
Exact Match Domains
Exact match domains have been subjected to criticism in the past & Google acted swiftly by changing its algorithm. To put it in simple words, lots of unauthentic websites were gaining attention because their domain name consisted of the exact same keywords which anyone could type on Google.
For example, if you’d type watch movies online, it’s surprising to see Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Mubi not making it in the top results. So Google decided to weed out low-quality EMDs from its engine & is continuing to do so.
Dubious websites always run the potential risk of harming someone’s system with a malware attack. Most of these unreliable exact-match domains were creating havoc all around. Times have changed & now users can easily recognize a website’s credibility with its domain name.
Choosing TLDs
TLD known as a top-level domain is the last part of your domain name. Widely used TLDs are:
- .com
- .org
- .net
- .co
If your target market audience is global then .com works perfectly fine since it’s easy to recall & is widely used by companies & businesses around the world. If you have devised your business strategy geographically & only cater to a specific region then country-code TLDs would certainly push you to higher places.
Examples are:
- .ca
- .us
- .uk
- .fr
Google doesn’t give much priority to TLDs. They rely more on the familiarity basis as one would be more accustomed to .com’s than .info’s. Spammy websites use the latter more than the former. So be wise when you choose a TLD because it usually revolves around how trustworthy your website could be.
Uniqueness
In the world wide web business, you’ll come across the same domain name with different TLDs which happens more than often. It’s always advisable to buy the domain name from the same company that’s hosting your site. A unique domain name beats everyone in the race and lands you in a better position to grab hold of other TLDs of that same name, which could be used for redirecting purposes later & improve the strength of your website.
When purchasing a new domain, do a little homework on whether it was used in the past or not. Hopefully, the chances are low but it could turn out to be that the particular domain name that you have set your eyes on was a trouble-maker with Google & you clearly don’t want to see yourself in the same situation as the previous domain owner.
Things that will definitely help you climb search engine results:
- Brand Identity
- Services, Products.
- Visual Structure
- Unique & Valuable Content
- Trustworthy TLD
- Easily pronounceable
Things that will only hinder your chances:
- Domain Length
- Numbers
- Hyphens
- Unreliable TLD
- Misinformation
- Unreliable sources
- EMD ( Exact Match Domain)
Conclusion:
Google runs on user experience & it’s something that it’s always looking to constantly update. SEO-friendly websites are always user-centric and never compromise on the quality of the content & its visual structure. Finding a unique domain name is the first little step for you to reach out to a wider audience but its branding should be your number one priority & all the other pieces would fit perfectly in no time.
Image source: Freepik Premium
