Another useful way of SEO is by choosing a relevant domain name for your website as the name can represent relevancy for the search engines. If you use a relevant name, it can help Google (or other search engine) to determine your relevancy quickly. However, it is not mandatory to do so as most of times relevant domain names for your content would already be taken by someone else.
Make sure you choose an appropriate domain extension to represent your geographical location. For example, a domain extension of ‘.in’ indicates that your site might be located in India and a domain extension of ‘.com’ could indicate that the website is in USA. However, one is free to use any domain extension. The importance of using the geographically correct domain extension is to target the right kind of people who could benefit from your website and also for your website to get identified easily. Some popular domain name extensions are listed below:
- .co.uk (geographical location – UK)
- .com (geographical location – USA)
- .net (geographical location – USA network)
- .in (geographical location – India)
Domain name relevance and domain extension do help Google to determine how relevant your content is to the website theme as well as to your geographical location. But, if you do not give such a domain name, Google will take some time for determining this after it fetches all necessary information to identify your website accurately.
You can include keywords in your domain name for better relevancy. By doing this, you can slightly improve your site’s chance of appearing higher in search listing and get targeted traffic that make use of those keywords (in your domain name) for targeted search queries.
For our example website on technology niche area with theme based on “Apple smartphones”, we can use a domain name like www. applesmartphoneinfo .co.uk this indicates that our website has information about apple smartphones and that our website is probably based in UK. So, our website is bound to target British visitors.
Domain name age is another useful component to be considered for SEO. This is because an older domain name is considered more relevant and more established. Such domain names are considered to be likely to contain spam content or malicious content. Search engine algorithms keep introducing updates that penalize any spammy or malicious websites sooner than later. If a domain name has survived such updates over a long period of time, it means it contains genuine content.
Now, it is not impossible for a new Webmaster to get an old domain name for his website. There are plenty of websites, which can be used by buying and selling of domain names. If you like a particular domain name that is not available, you can check on such websites if it is available for auction or sale. Generally, many webmasters put used domain names on sale for higher prices. So, if you are ready to dish out extra money, you can still get hold of an old domain name at the start itself.
One can purchase or sell domain name on websites such as:
While purchasing an old domain name from some website, one need to check the following:
- Page Rank of the domain
- Age of the domain
- Links from that domain
To check the age of a domain name, one can use website http://www.123reg.co.uk . you can submit the URL of your domain and this website helps you to get information about its registration date and the person (or company) who registered it.
I’m a freelance Web Designer and SEO Expert I have been working as a web designer and Search Engine Optimiser for over 8 years, and have done lots of work over that time. My skills cover many aspects of graphic design, web design, illustration, search engine optimisation (SEO), Social media optimization (SMO) & Search engine marketing (SEM) and other technical knowledge.
Web Presence and SEO 
Thanks. Good article. However, new reports suggest that domain names are not as important as before. It seems that Google is not considering keywords in domain names seriously!
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