For any online business, choosing an appropriate domain name is crucial to get people to recognise your brand, but it can also heavily impact on your SEO efforts. Here’s why domain name choices still matter if you want to boost your search ranking.

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Promoting Your Brand

Google places a great deal of emphasis on how it ranks websites in accordance to how a domain name measures up to a brand identity or authority. Brand signals, when your name crops up on your website or the internet, are powerful for SEO, so incorporating your brand into your domain name is one of the best strategies you can adopt to boost your ranking.

Exact-Match Domains

You could be forgiven for thinking that using an exact-match domain name that includes a specific keyword phrase could help to boost your SEO profile. This was the case at one time, but Google put an end to that. According to Searchenginejournal, the exact-match domain update crushed keyword domain websites in the rankings, with average ranking sinking to record lows. Think carefully about incorporating keyword phrases into your domain if you want to maximise your SEO potential.

Don’t Forget the Extension

It’s not just the domain name itself that you need to factor in for SEO purposes, as you should also consider the extension that you use. High-quality extensions include .com or .co.uk, whilst .biz or .us are often associated with spam, so choosing these could demote your brand.

Avoid Confusion

Many brands like the idea of using a creative domain name, but make sure this doesn’t backfire. Some names can lead to confusion or may be tricky to spell correctly, so using these may have a negative impact on Google’s rankings. Understanding what works well and what doesn’t with regards to domain names requires expertise, so contact an SEO agency in Dublin or elsewhere, such as www.rycomarketing.ie/, to make sure your domain name isn’t letting your SEO efforts down.

You might also think that choosing a long domain name will make your brand stand out, but in actual fact it won’t do you any favours. Choose a short domain name for maximum impact, typically no more than 15 characters. Avoid using hyphens in your name, as this can also create confusion and may affect how Google ranks your site.