Importance of Domain Name in Search Engine Optimization and Ranking

What did the domain name get to do with SEO (search engine optimization)? If this is your question, then you have reached the right article because here we are going to discuss the relationship between domain name and SEO.

Mostly people select their website with any name they think will be the best and start promoting with it, but fact is that domain name should be the first aspect when you plan to develop a website.

Here are few points that you should remember when selecting your domain name:

1. Select a business keyword: Always try to select a domain name that is related to your business, services or products. If you are a company providing handicraft items, then you should select a handicraft related name. This may be any product you think will the best to define your art. If people hear your website’s name, this will reflect your work or business. They will automatically make an image and will be in contact to you keeping that in their mind.

2. Search engines’ preference and domain name: Search engines give preference to the domain name. For instance; if someone makes a search in Google, for a keyword or keyword phrase, Google servers with result that contains a list of websites. Here you can see that websites with that particular keyword in their domain name have chances to get a better rank, so domain name is one of the several factors that are counted by search engine while they rank a website in their results.

3. Select a keyword using AdWords keywords selection tool: You can select your domain name with the help of Google’s AdWords keyword selection tool. Just type your business keyword in the search box of this tool and press the “SEARCH” button. This tool will provide you a list of related keywords that are searched on search engines’ search and content networks. This tool will show the Global Monthly Searches, local monthly searches and global competition on each of those keywords. Now try to select a keyword that has less competition and a good global monthly search.

4. Hyphen in the domain name: Using a hyphen (-) in your domain name will be a good idea, if domain name is not available without space between words, while selecting your website’s name. Choosing underscore (_) in domain name is not acceptable because search engines ignore underscores and combine the two words as a single one.

5. Beneficial for sub pages: Suppose you want to target a keyword phrase that contains two keywords out of which one keyword is in your domain. This time you can just make a sub page

containing another keyword.  You don’t need to put both the keywords in the name of that sub page. Search engines will consider both the keywords in ranking.

I think these tips will help you while considering a domain name for your website. If you are really serious about your online business, then you can’t ignore the search engines’ preference to the domain names.

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