Even though most people do not think about it, it is pretty obvious that the name of your website domain or URL will impact how your site performs. As it is also known as is one of the most important elements that web searchers use to decide which sites to visit. Search engines are also capable of understanding the relationship between the domain name and the page contents, so appropriately structured domain names are automatically boosted up in the rankings. When I was starting my seo business, the domain name was one of the biggest considerations before I got started.
Domain Name Fundamentals
Essentially the domain name tells users of the World Wide Web who you are and how you can be found. The actual addresses of all domains are strings of numbers, however, since they can be difficult to remember. And relate to, these numbers are substituted by alphabetical names that can be read by human beings. All domain names have a number of components, the top-level domain name, root domain, sub-domain, etc. Read about SEO Services India
The top-level domain name
The top-level domain name, sometimes called a domain suffix appears at the domain name’s end. While there are literally thousands of them, most people will be familiar with TLDs like .com, .gov, .edu, .org or even .data, .book, and such like. The root domain is actually a combination of a TLD and your domain name and acts as a complete web address. That will typically point users to the home page of your website. For example, if your domain name is Top Burgers, you could have a web address like topburgers.com.
Sub-domains
Once you have your root domain established, you can have additional pages that can spin-off from the same root. These are referred to as sub-domains, and form the third level in the hierarchy of domains. Typically, the sub-domains are placed ahead of the root domain with the separation being done by a period. It is not essential for all websites to have sub-domains; however, they are useful when you have a number of pages. That needs to be distinguished from each other for both users and search engines.
Protocol
By default, the protocol that enables the actual transfer of data is HTTP, however, when the transfer is done by a secured server, you will need to have the HTTPS protocol in place. The additional “S” denotes that it is a secure server. And the site has obtained an SSL certificate that enables it to operate the HTTPS protocol. Quite apart from the technical stuff, domain names are important because it is a distinct feature of your website and a critical reflection of your presence on the web. Most businesses use the domain name to establish and reinforce their brand names. This means that domain names have a very important function to play in search engine optimization in terms of better rankings and CTR.
Making Your Domain SEO Friendly
Restrict the structure to a single domain and sub-domain: It can be very enticing to structure your website into sub-pages; however, there is no assurance that the mother domain’s ability to rank will get carried forward to the subsequent pages. It is more likely that the raking performance will be better if the site is restricted to a single domain and sub-domain. Of course, if you need language alternatives, you can and should have different sub-domains.
Domain Name Comprehensible and Easy To Read
While internet technology can translate any domain name to the number string that it actually uses to identify the URL. It is not advisable to choose the domain name arbitrarily because you need to keep in mind the process capability of the human brain too. This essentially means that the domain name should be very easily comprehensible to humans as well as the search engines that are increasingly trying to think and interpret information like human beings.
Adopting a domain name
By adopting a domain name that is easy to read and is user-friendly, you can positively impact on the quality of the outcomes of the visits. As far as possible, make the domain name memorable avoiding the confusion of numeric and deliberate misspellings as these seemingly smart tactics to look unique can backfire. Ideally, your domain name should tell users what to expect but at the same time kept as short as possible to make it easy to type in and share with others. According to https://moz.com, care should be taken to avoid using hyphens to separate words in the domain name as the practice is considered spammy and reduces readability.
Use Smart Not Exact-Match Keywords
Since keywords are a very critical part of SEO, one would expect even the domain names to try to incorporate exact keywords into the domain name. However, search engine algorithms have become smarter in their quest to deliver better and more relevant results for user queries and associate such domains with lower quality. The way to beat this problem is to choose smart keywords instead of exact matches as that works well for both users and search engines. A relatively easy way to discover smart keyword is to use one of the many available keyword research tools to identify keywords that can convey what you do or reinforce your brand.
Use Canonical URLs to Prevent Search Getting Confused by Duplicate Content
When structuring website content, you may often need to have the same content on different pages or have different URLs pointing to the same content. However, when this happens, search engines become confused because they cannot differentiate between the master content and the duplicate content and end up penalizing you with lower rankings. By using canonical tags, you can control the duplicate content from showing up in search results by informing the search engines which are the pages that have the original content.
Conclusion
Even as you need to appreciate that your domain name is extremely important from the point of search engine optimization and there are various ways of crafting it to make it SEO-friendly, it is equally important to understand the website itself must live up to the expectations of users. The SEO-friendly domain must deliver a very high quality of user experience, content, design, dependable brand signals, and a robust and intuitive internal structure as well for the website to succeed in its objectives.
