The Ultimate Guide to SEO Best Practices for Domains

Your domain name is simply the name of the website. The domain name is the address that allows users to access your website. Commonly, domain names are used to mark one or more IP addresses. The domains can be Purchased via the online registrars such as Love My Online Marketing.

For this article purpose we will use our web site as an example and our domain name is lovemyonlinemarketing.com .

So, In the case of >> www.lovemyonlinemarketing.com
The domain name is >> Lovemyonlinemarketing
The top-level domain (TLD) is >> .com

The subdomain is >> www.
(You could add your country code of >> .au/.uk/.us etc to make it more Country/Region specific)

Yes Indeed, you should. If we look at the domain name alone, you want people to remember your brand, company or the content of your website. A domain name that is SEO Friendly tells people about the website, the goods and services it provides and so on. However, choosing your domain name need not concentrate heavily on SEO, rather your choice of the domain name will reflect on what your website provides( your services/products). If your domain name accurately reflects your site and your brand, that is good SEO in itself. Clearly, when looking at domain names, you want people to know your brand, your company, and what you're selling, your services. An SEO-optimised domain name is one that is brand appropriate, niche specific, and communicates the website's intent and content.

1. Choose a domain name that’s memorable, use your brand name
2. Consider keywords that are both relevant and brand-specific
3. As much as possible stay away from using hyphens
4. Use the latest niche relevant TLD Extensions like .coffee if you are a cafe owner for Instance.
5. Keep It short and succinct and consider locations (use country specific suffix like .au, .uk,.ca, etc).

Getting the right message across to your domain name is crucial. Through making your domain name relevant to your niche or industry, people will gain a greater understanding of what your website or company is all about. For instance, If you are a veterinary practice owner in Melbourne, it makes it more sense to use "MelbouneVet.com.au" ("Melbourne Veterinary Hospital") rather than using something difficult to remember. Keep your domain short, easy to remember, and relevant to your niche/brand. By making your domain name relevant to your brand or industry, you can help your target audience to have a better understanding of what your website is about or what your business is all about.

When you have two words (for instance www. InstanceMeme.com) in your domain name, you may want to distinguish the terms with an easily readable hyphen: www. Instance-meme.com. But note that using hyphens often strongly relates to dodgy behaviour and reduces the readability of your website and also turns the domain name to a lesser memorable one. Most of the spammy websites use hyphen to get industry-specific domain names.

You can make your domain name industry-specific, with so many fancy TLDs available nowadays it will be interesting and exciting to use domain-specific TLDs. For instance, if you're a music band company, you can use the. band or If you are a construction company owner can use the .builders. There are many TLDs available to choose from as per your Industry. The target audience will have a greater understanding of what the business is all about, as well as search engines, that's why when using an industry-specific extension you have to be careful. Be sure in what your industry is, once you choose the specific extension, there's no turning back – you can't be a music band now, and decide months later that your industry is business coaching and then the .band extension would not be appropriate, you will have to purchase a new domain.

When you choose a particular Country, let 's say Australia , then use an extension (or regional suffix) ".com.au and it's the absolute best thing to do. Getting a geo-specific extension can help you rank for different countries where people are inclined to choose a local Business. You’re likely to only see country-specific TLDs/suffix that matches your home country. These suffix are highly restricted, and may only be registered by a company or organisation that operates within the same country. For example, only Australian companies may register the .au domain name.

As a matter of fact, you really don't need keywords in your domain name to get your site to score high. Search engines are well aware of keywords in domain names and deliberately prohibit site owners from building exact match domain names. Instead, you can concentrate on building a registered domain name which is perfect for your company offerings. Creating an online presence that is reliable and well-branded will interlink with SEO efforts. While your domain name is an important aspect of your website, the name itself holds no weight in the midst other 200 ranking criteria that Google uses to decide where the search results will find your content. The domain name is just one of variable out of 200 variables that google uses as criteria to rank websites in the list. Hence, the domain name has little to almost Nil impact with the SEO of the website.
Having said this, selecting a domain name as a business owner is a pretty important task, as it will become the brand identity of the business.

So while Google may have stated that domain names will not lead as previously to search engine rankings, the right domain name could provide:

a. Strong click-through rates

b. Respect , authority, and recognition

c. Strategic advantage over competitors

d. More brand opportunities

e. Good consumer activity that can affect the rating of search engines



If you want to get the most SEO interest out of your domain name, you need to try finding a balance between an overfilled domain and a well-branded domain; it's all about sending the right signals. It is well established within the SEO culture that Google can target exact match domains if the consumer is not cautious about the content of the website. And while domain names will depend on representing the organisation/business, your efforts would certainly profit from choosing a domain name that is SEO-friendly.

It is a lot easier to pick an SEO friendly domain name than you think, just keep it straightforward and concentrate on branding. Notice that it is not just in search engines that you may rely on your domain name – domain names are simply a small building block for a proper site. Having a domain name that is SEO compliant means so much more than using the appropriate keywords. Having a domain name that would affect SEO activities favourably requires concentrating on the identity that consumers would enjoy. As stated by Google's representative, Google will always continue to list and rank the most significant results whatever the domain name and extension. However, It does helps and pays to have a domain name that reflects strongly what your niche, blog or business is all about. The secret is, make sure you choose the best domain name for your business and optimise it by making the right SEO and great content for the best results.

By the way, have you tried to use the latest extensions like coach, fitness, cooking (many more in the list) for your websites? There are many new extensions in the coming list. Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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