In a much simpler time, when SEO was as simpler thing, a website’s domain name could have a huge impact on its rankings.
But nothing lasts forever, and a few years back, Google realized that a domain alone, without any supporting quality elements, needed to be addressed.
The problem came from Exact Match Domains (EMD). Companies would buy a domain name that was little more than a keyword. At the time, that was enough to rank.
Now, things have changed.
So, the question has to be asked: how do domain names affect your SEO efforts.
Some SEO History: 2012
Remember how 2012 was, according to an ancient Mayan calendar, going to be the end of the world?
While the physical world is still here, Google made some changes that definitely shook up the world of domain names.
Google was tired of companies trying to improve their rankings and augmenting their SEO with weak websites that, nevertheless, featured an EMD.
If, for example, a company wanted to rank for “auto insurance price quotes,” it would simply purchase “autoinsurancepricequotes.com” and, boom, start ranking.
Of course, these sites didn’t have much content to actually rank. Just a few web pages with a lot of keywords.
Google, not being a fan of such things, significantly dropped the value of… well, I was about to say that they dropped the value of the domain names for SEO purposes, but that’s not quite right.
Keep reading to find out what I mean.
How Domains Impact Your Online Marketing
The thing is, there are a lot of SEO companies out there providing a lot of the same services – everything from technical SEO and strong content to paid search campaigns and social marketing.
While every SEO company is a little different, and comes at these services from different angles, they’re all based on the same theories.
While the approach to search engine optimization has changed, the theory has not. The goal is to provide quality answers to important questions, follow search engine best practices, and don’t let anything get stale.
These are things that everyone can do.
One unique element in all of this is your domain name. That’s something that no one else can copy.
So while a domain name may not contribute to your rankings like it once did, they can provide:
- Higher clickthrough rates
- More trust
- More attention in the search engine results pages
- More brand potential
Sending the Right Signals
You need to make sure your domain name is sending the right signals in order to get the most value.
If your only signals say: “Hey! I have a long domain that happens to match a long-tail and lucrative keyword!” then you may need to rethink your strategy.
A domain, when used correctly, should incorporate:
- Brand signals – Any mention or occurrence of your business domain name on a website will contribute to your branding efforts.
- Relevancy signals – If your domain includes a keyword, it will be bolded in the search engine results. Then, when people refer to your domain, it will associate your site with that keyword.
|Editor’s note: the information about the keyword being bolded throughout this article was accurate at the time of writing (2016), which can be seen in the screenshots. But this is no longer the case in Google’s SERPs. Expect a full update on this in the future.|
Domain Names and PPC
Online ads and paid search also work well together with a good domain name. In fact, some studies have shown that, all things being equal, text ads perform better with a relevant domain name.
At least, there was a time when they did. The case study cited above is a bit old – old enough that it’s safe to assume some things have changed. But it’s still an interesting study, not for the numbers it presents but the behavior it describes.
At the time, it was theorized that the strong ad performance of the generic, keyword heavy domain was because:
- The close match between the domain name and the product encouraged clicks
- The bolding of the keyword in the domain drew the eye
- It’s possible that domain name can impact Quality Score
These domain names could potentially deliver a higher CTR and higher total clicks, with the exception being when the competition is an extremely well known and established brand with a huge trust factor.
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The benefit here could be related to the very limited space for ads. If someone is ready to click an ad, it’s because they’re looking for a product, not a company. Highlighting the product with the domain name could potentially help.
However, the developments in the paid search arena might change this. Since all AdWords appear above the organic results, not to the side, the brand, rather than the keyword, could start making a bigger difference.
Domain Names and Reputation Management
Google, it seems, likes to display negative results for certain searches. If one of these searches is your brand, you probably don’t want them showing up next to your website.
Unfortunately, they can be really hard to push back off the front page.
Let’s look at a rather large and well known company. It has many people who love it, but a number of detractors, too: Amway.
(To be completely transparent, we do not have, and never have had, a business or personal relationship with this company. It is simply a recognizable name that is in an industry that is likely to have some detractors.)
The page 1 results for a search for “Amway” is mostly corporate-related properties with the profile off to the right.
Near the bottom, under the in-depth articles section, we see some results that question the validity of the business.
Page 2 is where we see start to see some outright hostility, but it’s surrounded by more corporate properties.
On both of these pages, there is a mix of domains that include “amway” in the domain name (“amwayconnections” or “amwayinsider”), but there are just as many – or more – that don’t include the brand keyword.
Most of them had the keyword somewhere in the URL structure, but even that wasn’t a sure thing (look again at the in-depth articles).
Again, it appears that the keyword in the title can help get you up there, but not as much as being the brand and being a trusted source for content or providing an opposing viewpoint.
The SEO.com Experience
So, now that we’ve been talking about domain names and SEO and how exact match and partial match names took a big hit, the most obvious question has to be: how did it impact an SEO company that just happened to be called: SEO.com?
Curious to know the details?
This is a story we intend to tell in the near future. Stay tuned for more.
Choosing the Best Domain
Whether you’re starting a new business or migrating to a more effective domain name, there are some things you should keep in mind.
- Pick a .com extension – This used to be absolute, but with the growing importance of brand, there may be some valid exceptions to this rule.
- Be short – Less than 15 characters is ideal.
- Be memorable – As all brands should be.
- Use keywords effectively – Avoid exact match keyword domains. Partial matches can be effective, but you should still think of brand first and keywords second.
- Be typeable – Hyphens, numbers, and special characters should be avoided.
- Don’t use multiple domains – Subfolders are more effective than sub domains. (More on this one in a future post. Stay tuned.)
- You can also get an accurate domain appraisal here if you’d like.
The Takeaways
Exact match domains took a hit as a ranking factor back in 2012, but they’re still an important part of online marketing for different reasons.
From what we can tell, Google won’t hurt you for including keywords in the domain name because it can easily spot any spammy signals around the domain.
What does that mean?
It means that if you have an exact or partial match domain name, then you better have the best content and the most effective SEO to back it all up.
If you’ve got all of that in order, then your unique domain may be enough to push your further up the rankings.
Your domain might not carry the same weight it did a few years ago, but it is a unique feature of your online presence that absolutely no one else can imitate.
So be sure you’re using it correctly.
There is a lot of possibilities here, and as long as you can back it up with a powerful online marketing strategy, it can still provide a lot of value.
Want to see how a range of online marketing services work together to deliver the best results? Download this free ebook to learn more:
Great stuff. I really liked that you pointed out that a brand name based domaine can improve CTR and credibility, both of which increase value. I work mostly on French Canada and it seems that Google.com rules are not updated in regional Googles like google.ca. I still see many websites doing very well in organic results just by having keyword-rich domains. Sad.
Sad… but interesting. That is definitely something that is worth delving a little deeper.
The last few and the recent algorithm changes make the SERP much cleaner than the past. Most of the time we used to see an EMD ranking on the top without any strong reason but things have changed today. Without quality content, good UX and authority backlinks it is almost impossible to rank just with an over optimized domain name. Google still needs to clean its local search results which is most of the time full of EMD business names.
That’s an interesting point about the local results. The reason for it might be related to the reason that EMDs still work for better PPC clickthroughs. It makes some sense that if someone is looking for a specific type of business in a specific place, they’d be more likely to click on the result that has the location in the domain name. Those extra clicks could encourage Google to continue to rank them high in the local search results.
It is a good point about local support for EMD. Our SEO agency does not have SEO in the title, and we still rank. But some of our local clients so have PMD, and it seemed to accelerate their rankings well.
May I ask if those results were on completely new PMDs that were purchased to target a specific product or location? Or did those local clients always have those domains, and then your SEO efforts worked more effectively on them than domains without the keyword inclusion? (This local element is definitely something I want to research a little more.)
If your domain is Not Related to Keywords then Try to Build Your Brand so User Can User Your Domain name to Search otherwise You can Put Keywords In Your Domain Name that will Help you to Rank Easily with your Targeted Keywords. Google Say it was not Working But Still Google Result showing that was working
This is a great article, perfect guidance for choosing domina names. I have a question, in recent days few top level domains are trending ( Few examples: .brand .academy .institute .digital). Is it really worth to use that kind of TLD & will they perform like .com and .org? Kindly advise.
My personal suggestion for selecting a domain name is to use your company’s name and branding in the domain. Keep it short and simple (KISS). Stick to dot com’s if possible/applicable. And as for SEO, get a good strategy for keyword use in search engine friendly URL’s and title & description metadata. Take some time to pick a domain that you can commit to using for the life of the business, after all website age is another important SEO factor.
I recently purchased a .org for a website that specializes on a certain game reserve.
The make-up of the name is http://www.name-park.org
Will this hurt me as I read somewhere that the – is a problem.
Thank you in advance for your reply.
Hello, between an old domain .info (2005) and a new domain .com (2017) i have, which choice is better for an international website ?
we have changed the domain name since two weeks or so, and so far dropped totally out from first results for our major keywords. The new domain does not contain the main keyword (taobao) and the domain is now ranked on 4th-5th page in google results. We are not sure yet if dropping this keyword from domain name influenced the ranking or the domain name move is still undergoing and it is not yet properly indexed/ranked by google?
p.s. some our other pages did get to the first positions in search results but it is for minor keywords with way less traffic
I was confused about choosing right domain name before, thanks for making it crystal clear for me.
Thanks for sharing these tips. How many keywords are safe in a domain?
which URL is better?
legal.videoproduction.com
or
videoproductionlegal.com
That’s an interesting one, and it could go either way, depending on a number of variables, such as: are you already working on/branding a videoproduction.com site? If you already are, then I’d say a subdomain added on to it (legal.videoproduction.com) would be better than buying and building up a whole new – and different – domain. You’re just adding a whole lot of extra marketing/SEO work for that. At the same time, legal.videoproduction.com probably isn’t getting the same kind of “authority boost” as it would if you went with videoproduction.com/legal. So there is a lot to consider here, but I hope this gives you something to think about.
Hello,
Nice article. I have seen many websites with exact match domain and that sites rank well on google.
So, i have a question, if i want to make a website on amazon affiliate or on particular niche for example, “best juicer for home” then should i buy the domain name that exactly math this keyword or not? Does this help me in SEO & search engine ranking.
Regards, Shubham
Thank You for providing us the valuable information, This is a very well written article but i have a doubt regarding something mentioned above “If your domain includes a keyword, it will be bolded in the search engine results”, does it really happen because i could not find it on Google SERPs. Please let me know if it really works.
That is an excellent question, and something that needs to be revisited in this article. This article was originally written in November of 2016, so about 2 years ago. And as you can see in the images included in the article, at the time, the keywords in the domains in the results for “Amway” or “car insurance” were indeed in bold. However, having just repeated those searches, it does in fact appear that Google’s SERPs no longer do that. So that’s a great catch and it shows how we need to revisit this article very soon and make sure it’s updated. Thanks, Saloni.
You guys only briefly touched on the importance of a .com extension vs. the plethora of other available extensions.
Can we get some more information or clarification on how important (or not) it is to have a .com?
I searching about domain effect or not our ranking. Here I learn lot of others things, like subdomain or other Google policy’s. I have no idea how I thanks to you, but wanna say just one things it is great article I ever read on internet about domain effect or not.
So now I decided to buy a new domain related my keyword related domain.
Thanks man, for this article.
Suggest me how to choose a good domain according to our business/keyword. Thanks in advance 🙂