One of the most commonly asked questions relating to search engine optimisation is ‘How important is a domain to SEO?’ As search engine optimisation (or SEO) has become an increasingly well known, and well understood, term over the last few years, many existing website owners are wanting to begin SEO campaigns on websites that are already built, live and reasonably well established. These site owners are aware that the vast majority of content on their website will be able to be changed, if necessary, with little hassle. Unlike the content however the domain name itself is often a little more effort to change. This article will look at how a domain name can impact upon an SEO campaign.
The domain name that is used for your website can prove beneficial for both human users and search engine bots that crawl and index websites. Along with proper titles, headers and appropriate content the URL is one element that search engine spiders will take into account when ranking a web page. Out of the URL the most important part is the domain name. In the spiders eyes a website that has a keyphrase related domain name is more likely to be an appropriate site than one that has an unrelated domain. More important than this however is that the domain name appeals to potential visitors, for example, a site that is ranked eighth in Google could potentially gain more traffic than the site in first if it has a domain name that is more appealing, and sounds more appropriate to the search. Additionally, if a website has a snappy and memorable URL there is a high chance visitors will remember it and navigate directly to the site the next time they are looking for a similar product.
The domain type should also be considered depending on the scope of the website. If the website only plans to target the UK market then they will likely be better off a .co.uk domain which will be easier to achieve local rankings with.
I brought this topic up with my
web design Edinburgh company and their
Search Engine Optimization department were able to provide invaluable assistance.
Ultimately if a website has an established domain that is not proving detrimental to their success it is very unlikely to be worth the effort of changing the domain name. However if a website is being built from scratch, or the domain is holding the website back, spending some time carefully selecting a domain name could definitely yield some benefits.
