How do SEO and domains work together? Do domains matter for SEO? Well, the answer to the latter is, without a doubt, yes. Domains do matter for SEO. In fact, one of the crucial and essential building blocks for Search Engine Optimization is the structure of the domains and URLs.
Although the factors that affect and impact SEO rankings have, for the most part, evolved as the Internet progressed, crafting SEO friendly domain name is still an effective way to help your website get seen. Of course, that is the goal for those who are in the online world.
An SEO friendly domain name helps in boosting your website in terms of search engine rankings, as well as click-through-rates. Additionally, SEO friendly domains aid in establishing your business as a trustworthy and reliable brand in your niche. With an excellent SEO domain, for sure, more and more people will visit your website in no time. For a little help, here’s how you can craft an SEO friendly domain name that you can use to your advantage.
Make One Main Domain and Subdomain
Although it can be quite appealing and enticing to organize your website based on extra folders and sub-pages, there is no guarantee or assurance that the ranking of your main domain will influence your subdomains. The thing is, you will likely see a better ranking performance if, believe it or not, keep your content and blogs all together on one domain and subdomain. However, it could lead to a language-targeted version of your website, like en.mydomain.com.
Make it Readable
Sure, your domain is essential for building your brand in the online world and boost your website’s ranking performance. However, it is not ideal to just choose the details of your domain randomly and haphazardly. You must consider both human and computer processing capabilities.
By that we mean, ensuring that your domain is readable enough to your site visitors and search engine algorithms. A user-friendly, accessible, readable domain plays a massive part in creating a positive user experience, which can result to better outcomes for your website.
To put it simply, you should do anything that will make it easier for search engines and your site visitors to find you. A readable domain can be, for the most part, based on the industry, language, and location. To better understand, here are some must-dos on creating a readable domain.
Don’t add numbers
At all times, avoid adding numbers in your domain. It can often create confusion and can prevent your potential visitors to find you.
Be aware of the misspellings
It may seem smart and brilliant to spell a word in your domain incorrectly purposely, but these intentional errors could set your website for problems. As such, do avoid or be wary of misspelling.
Make it compelling and memorable
More often than not, it may seem like without spelling games or numbers, and you have nothing with you to make your domain as compelling and memorable as possible. Well, you’re wrong. Keep in mind that you are, for the most part, grabbing the attention of your audience. And you can do this by being on-brand, uncomplicated, and concise. Steer clear from ephemeral trends and try focusing on longevity. Try collaborating with other people to unleash avant-garde ideas that are relevant to your niche and mission.
Be intuitive
When crafting an SEO-friendly domain, it’s essential to, at the very least, give a hint to your visitors on what they can expect with your website.
Keep it short and simple
It’s important to take note that you will exhaust your site visitors if your domain has many characters. Keep in mind that most web users do not have the interest or patience to visit your website through a lengthy URL. With that said, keep it short. The shorter the domain is, the more users will go to your site. Furthermore, make your domain as simple as possible. For the most part, your domain must be easy to communicate, whether by search engine algorithm, keyboard, or mouth. The easier your website is, believe it or not, accessed, the happier your site visitors will be.
Avoid adding non-standard characters
In order to enhance the readability of your domain, you must avoid adding unwieldy characters. These characters can block the functioning parts of the web, such as browsers and crawlers.
Be wary of case sensitivity and hyphens
With SEO in mind, reconsider adding hyphens to your domain name. More often than not, it can make your website seem spammy and could make your domain unreadable. Try avoiding capitalized characters on your domain as it can often fail to process on various systems.
Readability encompasses many essential factors. For sure, you do not want your visitors to struggle to look for you. For that reason, create your domain that makes it easier for search engine rankings and humans to read. By doing so, you can boost and improve the user experience and SEO power of your site.
When Possible, Get Rid of Dynamic Parameters
First things first, what is a parameter? A parameter is, for the most part, a practical way to learn more about a user’s click. For example, they can keep a record of a certain campaign you are running, which is very useful, especially if you are to get more information about user behavior. Such parameters usually add values and keys to your URLs, such as ampersands, question marks, and equal signs.
However, the problem is, these parameters often lead to lengthy, unsightly, and bulky URLs. So, when possible, steer clear from dynamic parameters to have a readable URL. But if you think that they are vital for tracking crucial information, use them wisely and think about rewriting them for readability’s sake.
Minimize Redirects
No matter what your users are clicking on your website or how search engines are crawling your site, consider getting them from page one to page two via the shortest route. By that we mean, a page one to page 10 would be better, instead of page one to page two to page three, so on and so forth.
Keep in mind that the longer the redirect string, the slower it for a human visitor and browser to load the page. It is like you are telling search engines and users to wait in line. Additionally, with too many jumps, your SEO rankings can get skewed and messy. As a result, your web pages might lose their value.
So, do yourself a big favor and limit the number of redirects on your site so that both search engines and your site visitors are, for the most part, satisfied.
Use a .com TLD Extension
Although there are dozens of TLD extensions that are available for your domain, a .com extension is the most prominent TLD option on the web, and most internet users know it. As such, it might be a great idea to use it as its a brandable, accessible, and reliable option that can boost user experience.
However, we are saying that the other TLD choices are not as good as a .com extension. For the most part, your preferred TLD extension will not adversely affect your search engine rankings directly. But the problem is, some TLD extensions such as .info and .biz are, more often than not, tend to get less traffic and are, for the most part, associated with spammy websites.
However, what if .com is not available for your domain? If that’s the case, you can try using .blog, .net, or .club TLD extensions. Aside from a .com extension, these options are good bets. All in all, your TLD is essential. For that reason, pick carefully and think about its possible complications for SEO and UX.
Takeaway
Of course, creating and establishing your website domain is not like playing chess. However, in both, we can learn a lot of things, especially about location. Your domain, your SEO’s outstanding piece, is an integral aspect that will make your website get seen on the web. A killer SEO-friendly domain, will, without a doubt, help you to boost your SEO efforts, especially in increasing your search engine rankings.
