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Choosing an SEO-Friendly Domain Name

When you’re creating a website, it’s important to know that a good domain name can give you better rankings and visibility on Google. People usually want to include the most important keyword or a brand name. The decision is very important since this domain will stick with your website all along. Let’s see how you can choose the best SEO-friendly domain name in continuation.

Keep it simple

Most of all, your domain name should be simple. Avoid hyphens and numbers to make them easier to pronounce. While keywords are an efficient way to make your website stand out in Google search results, the brand name gives you more credibility if you use it as a domain name.  Research done by Karl Ulrich confirms this with the following conclusions:

l  Every additional character in a domain name after the seventh causes a 2% drop in traffic.

l  Addresses with fewer characters and no hyphens avoid traffic fines.

l  Repeated vowel and consonant sounds are associated with a lower rank.

Just think about so many spammers that purchase websites with a bunch of keywords in their domain name. By now, we’ve grown suspicious when we see a website called “www. win-prize-fast” and similar. That sounds amateur and nontrustworthy. It’s better to use your brand name, keep it simple and also build your brand awareness along the way.

Also, make sure your domain name doesn’t contain too many special characters because that’s not easy to remember and potential clients will be confused and prone to make mistakes. With this said, it is important to avoid any potential word games or misunderstandings. We can all agree that www.experts-exchange.com looks better than www.expertsexchange.com.

Have a vision

Even though you might be starting your business, the company might grow and in the future, you will probably have different products and services. Make sure you know ahead of time which kind of services you might embrace. This way, when you include them into your offer, your domain will still make sense.

Let’s give an example of that. If you name your website www.keto-recipes.com and you start writing about some other diets in the future, your content won’t match your domain name, which might end up confusing. You might consider some alternatives such as www.healthy-recipes.com or something more neutral sounding.

If you want to make a long-term decision about your domain name, you might want to hire a professional SEO agency, which will be able to help you and give you the best tips on that matter.

Combine brand name with the main keyword

You should use a Keyword planner for this part. The easiest way is to combine the most frequent keyword with some of the words of the brand name. For example, robertsdesign or smithjewelry, etc.

It wouldn’t be bad if you could investigate before deciding about your domain name. You can make a query with the relevant questions and send it to your target groups. If you are selling handmade furniture, enter some Facebook groups of furniture lovers and pass them your query. This is a genuine way to find out many things, among them whether your domain name corresponds to the purpose of your website and if potential buyers identify with it.

Don’t run away from words that sound too common. Your customers will probably be normal people, so they will immediately associate the word with the image they already have in their minds. However, avoid names that are too generic, because the competition will be huge. Make a research on the keywords and see which one of them is already highly in use.

Should you include a location in your domain name?

Including a location can have its advantages and disadvantages. Let’s say a couple of words about them.

The advantage is that the money invested in SEO services will pay off faster. For example, if you are a dentist, you need fast marketing solutions to make people come to you. Your target is people from your city since people rarely go to other cities for a dentist appointment. Your domain can be SydneyDentist or DentistInMelbourne, RobertsDentistMelbourne, etc.

The negative part is that you might be limited when you want to enter some other markets.

This leaves us to conclude that you should add your location in two cases:

l  You are sure that you will run your business for that specific market long term

l  You are willing to buy another domain if you want to expand to a different market

If you are not in any of these two groups, the simplest solution is to use .com, .org, or .net, since it’s the most versatile of all. Many spammers use .biz and .info, so these are quickly associated with some untrustworthy websites. The domain with the .com extension is 33% more memorable than others, which makes it the best option long term.

Use the domain name generators

If you lack ideas and you want to come up with a unique and relevant domain name, then domain name generators can be helpful. A domain name generator automatically adds the most popular and relevant suffixes. Here are some ideas on which tools you might use.

Domain name generators might not give you perfect results, but they can give a good idea, which you can later modify and come up with the perfect and unique brandable domain name.

As you are aware, picking a decent domain name for SEO is difficult and requires great consideration. You can use the aforementioned advice to help you think of an excellent name. Keep it simple, think about how your domain name will affect SEO, and then put branding front and center.

Your domain name should be chosen in a way that makes it simple for your clients or consumers to find your website if you want to learn how to choose a domain name that is suitable for SEO. Additionally, keep in mind that a good website is more than just its domain name and that you cannot exclusively rely on it to rank in search engines.