The Power of Domains for SEO

While many webmasters are focusing on seo techniques and tactics, there is one aspect that often goes overlooked: the domain name. After link building, there are few things that can affect a site’s ranking like the domain can. This post will explore a handful of ways that you can improve your SEO by making a smart domain name choice.

Choosing a TLD

TLD stands for Top Level Domain, and this refers to the .com, .net, .info, etc. If your website was mysite.com, the TLD would be .com. This aspect can play a major role in the ranking of your site, as many TLDs are seen as spammy and unprofessional. For example, .info domains can be purchased for $.99 and are traditionally used by spammers: the search engines recognize this and will be more hesitant about ranking this site. This doesn’t mean, however, that the site will never rank, or doesn’t have the opportunity to rank well for their terms; but it does mean that they will have more of an uphill battle.

The question, then, is what TLDs should you be using? And .com’s are generally the best to use, followed by .org and .net, with all others coming in last. If at all possible, use .com every time for best results.

Using Keywords in the domain

If there was one factor about the domain name that has the biggest impact on search rankings it’s the keyword you use in our domain. Go to Google and do a search for any term: you’ll find at least part of the search term in the domain name of many of the top 10 results. It is vital to your future rankings to choose a domain name with your keywords before you ever build the site.

For example, if you’re targeting the term Oolong Tea, it would be best to find a domain like: OolongTeaHaven.com or OolongTeaOnline.com as opposed to something that doesn’t include both Oolong and Tea.

Registration Period

This is a secret weapon for many seo experts. When a new site is indexed by Google it is often put into a “sandbox” for a few weeks to a few months until it builds some backlinks and Google has had a chance to determine that it’s trustworthy. Wouldn’t it be great if you could virtually bypass the sandbox all together? Well, this strategy, along with the others in this article, can almost totally bypass the sandbox and get your site ranked within days. I have done experiments where I had a site indexed and ranking for my terms in under 24 hours, and I attribute much of that success to this technique.

Most spammers will only register their domain name for one year, as they don’t plan to invest long-term effort into it. Google recognizes this and if a site is registered for 2 years or more, there’s a much greater initial trust by Google to index and rank this site. If you’re serious about your site’s seo, this technique can’t be ignored.

While there are many aspects to seo, I feel that the domain name is really the foundation: other areas can be built on top of it, but if your domain isn’t optimized for seo, you’ll be facing an uphill battle. Start by using the three tips described above, then work at writing content and doing on-page seo, and finally build trustworthy backlinks to your site and over time, your site will outrank all the competition!