Your domain name is your name that is uniquely associated with your website, brand, and company. Choosing a name to define your business is essential and it is good to keep in mind how that name and branding will be perceived both in a word-of-mouth and digital sense. Within the digital space, search engine optimization (SEO) is a tool used to get your website/URL to appear at the top of search engine results pages. There are many complicated and technical layers to SEO and how to strategize using it to benefit your business’s marketing strategy.
It is good to keep in mind that there are some cases where choosing specific keywords to be within your domain name can affect your SEO ranking. While SEO is always evolving and could change in the future, it does not hurt to see if the name you have in mind for your domain name has strong keywords that could improve your chances of appearing higher in search results. Within this guide, we will go over how SEO can impact your domain name so you can be more strategic when thinking about how to market your domain name.
SEO is ever-evolving, and search terms or keywords that were once popular can eventually lose popularity over time. Some websites may have exact match domains, meaning that their domain is an exact match to a specific keyword search term. If you try to use an exact match domain such as foodforsale.com to promote something like food or restaurant business, you could be restricting your business to that specific niche.
While having those keywords can benefit your domain in appearing in search results, it can also hinder any expansion or growth for your business or company. Additionally, having a name as generic as possible can turn people away from clicking on your website. This mainly has to do with the fact that there are a lot of scams and spam websites out there, so having some personalized branding is a good tactic to showcase your business as trustworthy.
HigherVisibility did a study to showcase if keyword-focused domains performed better than business name-related keywords, their results demonstrated that it varies heavily depending on what industry your business is in. While they say the proper selection of keywords for your webpage addresses remains an important part of tailoring your site for success with search engines as well as users, your website should not have to rely on keywords if your brand name is too unique.
While the main advice is to keep your website name short and memorable, it is good to research potential domain names, keywords, and competitors to see how your potential domain name compares. For example, if you are in the finance industry, words like ‘debt’ or ‘credit’ are strong keywords to have within your domain name.
Although if you choose not to have those specific keywords within your domain name, that does not mean you cannot rank for them. If your website and marketing team focus on SEO you can rank for those keywords via blogs, website copy, and even social media can help boost your SEO rankings.
One thing to keep in mind when choosing a domain name is that you can have a different top level domain name than .com. As the internet continues to grow and more and more domains are registered each day, it makes it difficult to find the name you want under the .com top level domain name. However, there are thousands of unique top level domains to choose from that can assist you in personalizing your branding. .Vegas is an example of this, since having a .Vegas top level domain can add the already established Las Vegas branding to your website.
People assume that a .com is the only option, but SEO does not discriminate against top level domain extensions, and having a .Vegas will not hurt your SEO ranking results any less or more than if you were to own a .com domain.
If you already have registered a domain name, but want to improve your SEO ranking, you can focus your efforts on creating valuable content on your website that highlights and showcases those SEO keywords to boost your ranking. Generating backlinks, which are links from other websites to yours can also help with not only your SEO ranking but your credibility as well. Each time another website uses a backlink to your domain name/website it is telling search engine results that you are in fact a trustworthy and relevant source to users.
You can get backlinks using referral sources or even broken links, but one of the main ways to get backlinks is to generate informative and useful resources that people want to link to. There is a variety of content you can publish to your website to gain SEO rankings, from blogs, videos, infographics, statistics, and more. There is something for everyone no matter your industry to showcase to clients, customers, and even competitor businesses.
The short answer to this is: It depends on you and your business. The longer answer is, if SEO is a major priority to your business and you want to incorporate it into your branding then yes, you should look into developing a keyword-centric domain name. However, if your business just wants to create a unique name that is an open book for different marketing, branding, or even product offerings then no an SEO domain is not detrimental to your business ranking higher in search results.
Ultimately, when choosing a domain name it comes down to where you want to align your branding and how memorable of a name can you choose for customers to remember. This is one of the many reasons why .Vegas offers the ability to give domain names extra flair to websites that want to align themselves with Las Vegas branding.
Interested in having a .Vegas for yourself? Connect with us today and turn on the excitement of being a part of the Las Vegas branding. Have questions or need assistance? Contact us at support@the.vegas and we will gladly assist you with any questions, comments, or concerns.
