Impact of Domain Name in SEO & Social Media Marketing

When you are about to start a new website the most important factor is choosing a domain name. This will have an impact in the success of the website both in search engine optimization and social media marketing. How a domain name impacts SEO and SMM is shown below:

Should I Choose a Keyword Domain?

SEOs and marketers used to purchase domains which have targeted keywords to increase CTRs and rank well in the search engines. Let's see whether this strategy is still effective.
Most of them would purchase exact match domains, the domains which exactly match the targeted keyword. For example, if the target keyword is "buy green widgets" then the person purchases BuyGreenWidgets.com. The advantages of EMDs are:

• The keyword phrase included in the domain is one of the ranking factors.
• The presence of keyword phrase in the domain allowed other webmasters to include it in the anchor text while linking to the site.

After the recent Google updates, EMDs are not helpful as they were before. Most of the SEOs felt that EMDs and the keyword domains will become less beneficial in the coming future. You should not avoid keyword domains but keyword should not be considered as primary factor when you are choosing a domain.

Keyword Domains for Increased CTR:

A keyword domain can increase click-through rate on ads and search engine results pages in few cases.
In the study "How generic domains impact SEM campaigns" the ads in which the display URL, DivorceLawyer.com got 298% higher CTR than the ads with display URL VIadimirLaw.com.
You need to consider the following factors:

• What is the search volume? You can find the exact match search volume for the keyword using the keyword tool.
• What is the cost? The premium keyword domains are difficult to acquire as they are expensive.
• You need to check whether it is a .com? For example, keyword.info will have less value than keyword.com domain.

What is More Important than Keywords? Choosing a Brandable Domain

If you have a domain name which matches your target keywords then you can have some benefits but you need to consider brandability of the domain. Domain name is the basic way users can find to whom the link leads in search engines as well as social media.
Google likes brands. Some marketers assume that SEO is only about links and keywords. Brands are the solution. Choose the brandable domain for building a brand.

7 Tips for Choosing a Brandable Domain:

The following 7 factors to be considered when choosing a brandable domain name:

1. Pick a .com extension:
   You can choose .com domain extension as it is standard. Many of the users think that the website will end with .com and 75% of the sites have .com extension.
2. Be Memorable:
   Make sure that users remember your domain name easily. Brand is the total of how someone notices your organization. You can know how people noticed you if they remember your domain name.
3. Be Relevant:
   Your domain name should communicate your desired message. One of the way to test a domain is you can run a survey in Amazon Mechanical Turk with 100 people. You can ask the users to find the purpose of the company by giving your domain name. The responses you receive should be valuable and relevant to your domain.
4. Easy to Spell:
   Avoid misspelled words, hyphens and make sure your domain should be easy to spell. Even though if you purchase a domain name which has numbers like 1widget.com, spell the number as onewidget.com.
5. Sound Authoritative:
   Your domain name should be trustworthy because users look into the trustworthiness of domain. You need to avoid choosing the domain as bestwidget.com.
6. Shorter is Better:
   You can choose the domain name which is short with maximum of two words. You can notice the top domains having an average of 9 characters in their domain name.
7. Be Unique:
   You should build a unique and distinct brand by choosing unique domain name.