Creating a new website consists of many different concepts. What style to use? What colors? What about the biggest decision of all? The domain name could be the most important of all these elements. When it’s time to choose a domain name you have two general approaches. One is to try and create a domain name that matches what people are searching for when they look for a product or service. The other is to create a brand identity with a domain name. We will discuss both approaches and the pros and cons of each.
For example, a hypothetical company called Creature Feature offers pet grooming in Seattle. A customer searching for this service might use different search terms but let’s say that, through keyword research we find that ‘Seattle pet groomer” is a typical search. Do we create a matching domain or do we want to create a customer brand? If we not restricted to a domain name, perhaps a good matching name would be seattlepetgroomer.com. Since this domain names matches a potential client’s target search they will likely see an initial jump in page position over a non-matching domain since the search engines give relevance to the URL. This benefit can often be short-term. This is because a URL is only one factor the search engines consider. A site’s age, for example, has a large impact. So as a non-matching site’s age grows, they may rank similarly .
There might also be some adverse effects of going with a search matching domain name. Knowledgeable searchers may see your domain name as an attempt at an advertising scheme. Also, if a domain owner wants to expand their business offerings they will want to still make sense to the selection. “Ultimately, the biggest detriment to an exact match is the lack of a brand association since the company name is not involved,” says Kyle Beauchamp of a NJ SEO Company.
The other way to go is with a brand or company name as the domain decision. This typically means using the company name as the domain name. This can create a brand association with your customers in the long-term. Think of common name brand products or services. Often their names are meaningless from a product perspective. The name Ford, for example, is known for cars and trucks but has nothing to do with them by name alone. Also, a typical SEO approach is to use keywords and phrases as internal slugs so that their URL still caters to the search engines. An address like mystore.com/what-I-sell can both retain a brand and make the URL search engine friendly.
While some people would rather have a domain that sounds like a brand name, there are still several advantages to finding a domain that matches customer searches. You will definitely see a bump in search results for that search term and site lets searchers know that its content is relevant to their needs. Of course not every domain name is still available and sometimes the lack of a decent matching domain may force you toward a non-matching selection. They key is to find an matching domain that fits the company well.
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