How Important is your Domain Name?

When you're choosing a domain name, how important is the actual domain and who is it important to? The things you have to consider are: User experience, search engine rankings and branding. Please bear with me as I delve into this topic a little deeper.

Choosing a Domain Name

Before you start looking for an unused domain name, or even a previously used domain name, think about the top-level domain (TLD). From an SEO standpoint, domains ending in .com, .net, or org used to be preferred over others because it was believed that they ranked higher. Even if that was true, the rules have since changed. The only thing you have to worry about is not selecting a TLD that isn't commonly used (except for Internet marketing) or cheaply obtained like the .info TLD. Of course, you need to select a TLD that's appropriate for your region or type of website planned.

If you're looking for a short domain name, you need to stay away from the .com, .net and .org TLDs. Since they've been around the longest, it's rare to find available domain names of less than five or six characters. From a branding standpoint, the domain part (before the TLD) should match your brand, whether it's used in conjunction with a "brick-and-mortar" store or something else. Even a commonly-used acronym or nickname for your brand can be used effectively. In the Philippines, "macdo.ph, for example, would probably be just as effective as "mcdonalds.ph" because "macdo" is what people say here when referring to that fast-food franchise.

From a user experience perspective, you want to choose a domain name that accurately reflects what your website is about, at least in most cases. A website specifically about Chihuahuas should have that term located somehow and somewhere in the domain name. The reason is simple. People tend to follow links that are descriptive of where they want to go. You can't always do it with page titles or even anchor terms, but you can always do it with domain names and every link pointing to your website will contain a domain name.

Domain Names and Search Engines

Google, the most prolific of the search engines, used to only look at individual pages and rank them accordingly. The game has changed but the players are the same. The difference is Google now looks at the entire domain, starting with the domain name. By evaluating the website as whole, it's easier for an algorithm to find something out-of-place and discredit it.

Paid posts, for example, are no-nos in Google's eyes and can cause an entire website to be penalized. When looking at a website as a whole, it's easy to pick out a paid or sponsored post that isn't relevant to your website.

Domain names aren't as important when multiple subjects are covered in a lot of content. This domain name, Untwisted Vortex, is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I write about so many different subjects that categorizing and tagging them is difficult, to put it mildly. With this particular website, the page titles are much more important than the domain name. The domain name could be xyz.com and still work as effectively as what I'm currently using, meaning that in my case, the domain name itself have very little value. While my website isn't extremely personal, it IS personal to some degree and it's very general in content.

When you find people using their names, or some other obscure words, as their domain names, it's either for branding purposes or for a personal website. Whether Lindsay Lohan builds a personal or professional website, for example, her name is her brand and she can choose which way she wants to go with it. It works that way with just about any celebrity or well-known name.

We non-celebrities, on the other hand, have to be more creative because we can't build a brand solely on the reputation or popularity of our names.

Domain Names and Website Titles

From a user experience perspective, website titles should somewhat match the domain name. With websites that don't focus on one particular subject, however, it isn't as important. Such is the case with a website like "Another Opinion Among Many".

From a branding perspective, it wouldn't be a good idea to title a website differently from the domain name, but I've seen it done. What effect does it have on search engine rankings? I'm not convinced that it plays a major role unless the keywords in the website content are relevant to the title and domain name of the website in question.

My "Coffee, Tea and Me" blog is an example of a website that will always rank well as long as the subject matter is relevant. The keywords are in the title, in the domain name and in the majority of the blog articles. It's one of the reasons that I don't write articles for it as often as this website. If I can't write a relevant article, I just won't write it.

Your Final Choice

In the end, the subject matter determines what your domain name should be, at least the part before the TLD. In some cases, the TLD is just as important. I mean, if you don't live in Russia, it wouldn't be a good idea to use a .ru TLD.

Of course, you also have to be careful how your domain name is read. Because domain names are not capitalized or punctuated, compound words can be mistaken for something entirely different than intended. In cases like that, it's probably a better idea to separate the words with hyphens.

You also have to be careful to choose a domain name that doesn't have negative connotations. I personally wouldn't choose a domain name like "cybercriminal" or something like that. Any domain name that draws the attention of the wrong kind of people should be avoided. Again, that's only my opinion and the method to your madness might be completely different than mine.

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