One of the first things to consider when setting up your website is what to choose for a domain name. You want something catchy, something relevant, and something that is easily identifiable with your brand.
But do you also need it to be SEO-friendly?
What makes an SEO-friendly domain name?
There are two main components to an SEO-friendly domain name – branding and keywords. A branded domain name is one that contains your company name or personal brand in its URL. Think of something like www.bbc.co.uk, or even our own site – www.netnerd.com. In these examples the domain name and the brand are the same. Anybody looking for your company will find your website first.
Keyword domain names, on the other hand, are looking to attract people searching for a specific service in a certain location. Something like leicestercoaches.com or gloucester-barber.co.uk would be an example of these domains. They may not have their location or their service in their brand name, but their domain name has them front and centre.
Keep it simple
However you choose your domain name, it’s important to keep things simple. Both the branded and keyword examples above tell you what to expect from the website in question. They are easy to remember, relevant to their business, and they engender trust in the user. This is key to successful SEO.
More complicated URL addresses – including loads of subdomains, folders, and page redirections – raise immediate red flags for many would-be visitors, even if they are 100% legitimate.
Secure a quality domain name
Like it or not, the main choice for domain names that ends in .com. In the early days of the internet, people were happy to delineate their site by location (using .co.uk for a UK company, for instance) or by status (using .org to denote a charity or non-profit organisation). These days, people are preconditioned to think of .com as the top-level of domain name suffixes, rightly or wrongly. Many registration sites will offer all kinds of suffixes, some at knock-down prices. Just be aware that it could impact your SEO.
If you’ve settled on your domain name, it’s important that you register it as soon as possible. This prevents the possibility of someone else snapping up your preferred domain and leaving you with something less effective. To see if your perfect domain name is available, use our domain availability checker right now. Once you know the domain of your dreams is still up for grabs, you can register it today, direct through NetNerd.
