Importance of Website Domain Name in Search Engine Optimization

By Asif Iqbal

Website domain can play very important role in your SEO campaign, search engines take very valuable information through your domain name. You can be credible, authentic, more reliable, and more valuable for search engines. You’ll come to know how effectively you can take benefit from your domain name.

Why to have Keywords Specific Domain Name

Keywords specific domains, or keywords in domain names are highly valuable to search engines, such as www.seoservicespakistan.com where “SEO Services Pakistan” is a keywords, but I would always recommend to have brand specific “easy to remember” domains, you can’t have a single keyword or phrase for a website, can you? Then why to have a keyword specific domain name? You can always keep keywords specific files or directories to support your SEO work and be flexible with domain name, since domain name is going to be your online identity and your direct traffic will heavily depend on your domain.

Is Your Website Domain Easy to Remember?

Website domain name is as important as the identity for any brand. There are more than 100 million registered website domains in the world, how many website domains one can remember? Selection of most appropriate domain name for your website is one of the very important aspects of building your image on internet. Why I say most appropriate domain name is just because finding best domain name will be one of the most difficult tasks.
Strategy to Select Best Domain for Your Website

There are three ways through which you can select most appropriate domain name.

  1. Company Name Based: Example www.5icreations.com where “5icreations” is company’s name
  2. Catchy Title Based: Example www.tradekey.com where “Trade Key” is title
  3. Keywords Based: Example www.webservicespakistan.com where “web services Pakistan” is a keyword phrase.

Whenever you will select domain, keep these elements in mind and try to select a domain which can help you in search engine positioning and also in online branding.

Google takes Old Domains as Gold!

Google gives more importance to older domains comparatively than newly registered domains, the older the domain better the chances of getting good rankings in Google. Here one thing should be kept in mind that the domain registration details should not be refreshed or updated frequently, if you update or change domain registration information, then there is a chance that Google will consider your domain as new, since there are people who have made it very profitable business, they registered domains and sell them.

Avoid Being Suspect, Get Credibility by Your Domain Name!

Search engine have become very smart, they can track server statistics, domain whois info and compare these information with the available contact information at your website, if information doesn’t match they can give you poor rank or no rank. That’s why it is always advisable that you have same information at website and at domain registration, don’t try to update server information too often or else search engine can take that modification as a change in ownership and your domain becomes fresh once again.

One Year Domain Registration vs Multiple Years Domain Registration

Normally people register their domains for one year even though there is a possibility of registering domains on monthly basis by domain registration companies. Recently the trend has changed now smart businessmen are registering their domains for multiple years, why this change occurred? Why people are investing more money on domain registration?
Newly registered domains are just like infant babies to Google, they have almost zero reliability, credibility factor from their domain registration, there is only one way for those infant babies is that they get themselves registered for multiple years, if they want to be credible and reliable to Google eyes. Google has been always a logical company and there is a logic behind this credibility factor, those websites which are registered for one year or few months can adopt black hat SEO techniques or they can be involved in any short term activity to bring quick ranking, it’s just because they have invested very less amount of money

How Search Engines Treat Sub Domains

Search engines give equal importance to sub domains as they give to domains but there are website which are excessively using sub domains for their promotion. This indicates that very soon search engines will have strict policy related to sub domains.

Domain Name Tips

  1. Try to select “easy to remember” domain name, after all we all need to increase direct traffic rather hoping from search engines
  2. If you’ve already taken domain, try to have keywords specific files or directories
  3. Register your domain name for multiple years (five or ten years)
  4. Mention your contact details clearly at your website
  5. Keep the same contact information at website and at domain registrant
  6. Don’t mess with sub domains but it’s always good to have few relevant sub domains
  7. Take care of Canonical URLs
  8. Avoid geographical/country specific domain, unless your target market is specific
  9. .com is still the most popular domains in search engines and in people
  10. Don’t modify domain information, it can refresh your domain’s age according to search engine