The importance of Domain and URL Optimization
First of all, it is important to know the difference between a URL and a domain name. A URL includes a domain and other components that make up a complete website address, while a domain name is essentially the name of the website. Typically, the first step for any business when creating their website is purchasing a domain. Often times, businesses overlook the importance of their domain name and put little to no time and effort into coming up with one. Domain and URL optimization is a crucial for the success of a website because it enables the consumers to find your site and remember it. The purpose of this article is provide you with SEO tips on Domain names and URL’s, so that you can optimize your websites performance and establish a strong online presence.
Tips for optimizing your Domain Name
The first thing to keep in mind when creating a strong SEO domain name name is Keywords. Come up with 5 of the most important and relevant keywords that you think best describe your site. In doing this, you are ensuring that your domain will be related to what the consumers are searching for. However, online competition is fierce and it would negatively effect your websites branding if it becomes confused with a popular site. More specifically, do not piggy back off of another businesses domain by making small variations to it like hyphenating, altering the spelling or making it a plural version of their name. Make sure that your domain sounds like a brand name and don’t over complicate it. Consumers will be able to recall it if it has a legitimate name that they can read, spell and pronounce easily. If you are already an established company that is well known among consumers, it is important to make sure that you cover all your online bases. If your brand name is creative and plays off a common word, but slightly changes the spelling, it is likely that users will misspell your name when they are searching for it. If this is the case, you may want to purchase this domain and redirect it to your site, so you don’t miss a small segment of your market. The goal when creating your domain is to make it unique, while still keeping it simple and easy to type. Other things to keep in mind are:
- Avoid lengthy domains.
- Refrain from using excess numbers and hyphens.
- Avoid trends; they are short-lasting and hard for users to remember.
Tips for Optimizing URL’s
One way that search engines determine the legitimacy of a site is by evaluating the URL, so here are some key tips to help you create the perfect SEO URL. Similar to domains, keywords can be a differential advantage that help set your site apart from the competition. Saying that, you want to make sure that your URL contains relevant keywords. With the abundance of websites on the internet, search engines can easily mistake your site as spam if it is overly hyphenated. Remember, hyphens are okay, just avoid including one after every single word. Additionally, it is imperative that your URL does not contain any uppercase letters because some web servers are case sensitive. For example, http://www.shirts/June/clothing is going to been seen as a different website than http://www.shirts/june/clothing. The outcome may result in your site being interpreted as a duplicate website and will hurt your sites organic traffic. If you have a website with this problem, you can 301 redirect the uppercase version, so that it leads to the same site as lowercase version to fix this issue. Some other key tips to keep in mind are:
- Relevant or not, any form of text is better than numbers.
- The shorter, the better.
- Users and search engines prefer static URL’s over dynamic ones.
Now you too are an exert on SEO domain names and URL’s!
For more information check out:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain
https://moz.com/blog/how-to-choose-a-domain-name-whiteboard-friday