The domain name you select for your website is probably the most important decision you make, as it will impact your web presence for years to come.
Domain names matter because they send an important signal to search engines, as well as your customers. So what should you bear in mind before selecting a domain name?
TLD
Top Level Domain is a much misunderstood issues. When the Internet was first started, it was much simpler than today. Whilst things have evolved, some of the original legacy signals play an important role, hence they determine your performance in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
The most important signal embedded in a TLD is your “Geographical Target Audience”, also known as your “Geolocation”. If you select a domain name with .fr, you are signalling that your target audience is people searching from France, or .es means your primary target is searches carried out in Spain, and so on.
The reason most people prefer .com as their TLD, is because it is “non-Geographical”, which means your target audience is “World Wide”. The .com TLD was created to distinguish a domain as “commercial” (hence .com), vs .org for non-profit (which is no longer the case), etc. So anything with .com was assumed to be a commercial enterprise, with global customers.
So choosing .com, or anything non-Geographical such as .net, allows you to compete for global searches rather than specific country level searches.
Keywords
It is important to ensure your most important keyword is included in your domain name. So if your are selling properties, then “Properties” or “Property” should be in your name. Ideally including your location or area that is the main focus of your business.
Presence of these keywords in your domain name, plays an important part in how your website performs in Search Engine Results Page (SERP) in the future.
Purpose
It will help clients, as well as search engines, when you state what you do in your domain name. So if you are a Restaurant, then call it something with “Restaurant” in it. There are now myriads of TLDs that allow you to select a trade, for example .property or .hotel, which are not only non-geographical, but are also clear about what your business does. However, these tend to be more expensive, as there are fewer Registrars that sell these domains, hence less competition, which pushes the prices upwards.
Age
Now we are getting into more complex issue. We know new domains do not do as well in search engines as older domain names (here is an article on why age matters). This means finding a domain name that is established, and is for sale, is a good strategy to shorten your time in appearing high in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
However, beware that not all domains for sale have the same power, no matter what price is being asked.
The value of the age for a domain name depends on many factors including (in order of importance):
- When it had a live website on it last? – The longer a website has been off line with a “For Sale” page, the lower the value as it will lose its SEO power very quickly. Typically, anything with longer than 3 – 6 months has lost most of it “SEO link juice”.
- How long the old website was around? – The original domain should have had an active website for at least 3 years, otherwise it is no better than a new domain name. The longer the history the stronger the “SEO link juice”, but anything less than 3 years is not worth much.
- How well optimised was the original website? – This is of course not as important, but if the website was optimised with high Google Authority, then it is worth the money, as the likelihood is it will have good quality inbound links.
- How many inbound links ? – Check the inbound links and also the quality of links. Hundreds of links from “directory” pages are worthless, whilst a dozen links from high ranking website are worth a lot of “Link Juice”.
Summary
Selecting your website domain name will have a profound impact on your website performance in search engine results page. There are some basic rules you must follow, before selecting a name. They may be boring and not very creative, but the point of a domain name is function and not style.
If you want help with selecting an appropriate and high performing name for your domain, contact us to see how we can help.