The Importance of Domain Names – How Domain Names Shape the Future of Your Internet Marketing Campaign

Website marketing at its best is created the same way as you build a house: you start with the basics and you work your way to the top of search engine results pages by adopting a strategic approach that starts with the choice and registration of the domain name for your website and continues with the design of the website skeleton, the creation of the content to appear on your website and the off-page SEO strategy that makes your website visible for internet users.

In this system, the first step towards high page ranking is the selection of an adequate domain name that draws attention and prompts viewers to visit your site.

Why Is Your Domain Name Important for the Ranking and the Future of Your Website?

Basically, there are two important aspects your domain name can help with in your future search engines marketing efforts: keywords and branding.

Numerous companies use their main keyword in the domain name of their company website because websites that have important keywords in their names usually rank higher on search engines than sites with other words like the name of the owner in the domain. The reason for this phenomenon is that keywords are among the main ranking factors not only when search engines evaluate contents, but also when they rank websites.

There are two ways of creating such a domain name: you can either choose to have an exact match domain (EMD) or a phrase match domain (PMD) name for your site. If you sell engine oils, you can choose engineoils.com as an EMD name or engineoilshop.com as a PMD.

As for branding, the SEO implications of domain names are a bit less obvious, but not less important. If your domain name is easy to memorize, your website is more likely to come to mind when the members of your targeted community are looking for the products or services that you offer.

How to Choose the Best Domain Name for Your Site?

Let’s see what a memorable domain name should look like:

- It is short – the best domain name contains a maximum of two words.

- It is relevant – it is best to include a word that links your company to your industry or your specific niche. Internet users may have difficulties remembering industry-neutral domain names or they remember them, but they don’t recall the connection to its specific niche.

- It is unique – using generic phrases in the domain name is much less efficient than giving strong clues to the user from the very beginning.

- No special signs – hyphens or other special signs not only make remembering the domain name much more difficult, but they are also viewed badly by search engines.

Having a domain name that follows these guidelines can significantly improve your website’s chances of getting clicked on when users browse search engine directories and also making it easier for your audience to remember your domain after having read one of your materials published on article sites or on other media with the purpose of building backlinks.

If you have a promotion press release that presents an interesting event, your domain name will also appear in the anchor text of your material and it will work the same way as in the case of articles: it will link the event to your domain only if the release is well-formulated and your domain name is easy to remember.

What to Do Next?

Once you have the domain name, you should check whether it is unique. If it is, the next step is to get it registered with a host. The registration process is quite simple: all you have to do is sign up with a domain name registration service and follow the steps required by your hosting service. After having your domain registered, hosting companies usually charge a monthly fee for their services. The amount you have to pay depends on the type of the service you choose for your domain.

Getting Help from Professionals

An easy way to get a unique, well-formulated domain name is to buy one. There are numerous SEO companies that include the selling of domain names into their services related to marketing for search engines. Of course, you will have to pay a certain fee for these already existing domain names, but having the right name is essential for creating the right first impression, so investing into the right domain name is a really wise decision.

Like the old Latin proverb goes, “Nomen est Omen”, that is, your fate is in your name. If your company website has the right domain name, it will make all your future SEO efforts much more successful, including link submission, article marketing, social bookmarking and any other on-page and off-page SEO technique you want to include into your online advertising campaigns in the future.