Once upon on a time, your website domain could have had a major impact on your site’s rankings. That changed a few years ago (2012 to be exact) when Google changes on its rules so websites that may have good domain names but very little “content” were compromised.
One thing that hasn’t changed, but has been emphasized more, is original quality content, relevance and always aligning with search engine best practices. A component of this is your domain name – it’s unique, only you can have it. A good domain name will get you more brand recognition, trust and higher click-through-rates (CTR).
EMDs (Exact Match Domains) are domain names that include keyword phrases. For example, let’s say you are selling hair products and want to rank for “quality hair products.” The EMD you would most likely use is qualityhairproducts.com.
PMD (partial match domain). PMD or EMD with bad user experience and low quality content would experience a steep downgrade in rankings.
As long as you have great content and a good SEO strategy, a strong and unique domain name may rank you higher.
Here some tips:
- Use your brand name
- Don’t use exact match domains. Partial match domains are OK but a brand name is always more effective
- Choose a .com extension
- Make it memorable so users can easily remember it
- Keep it short, 15 characters at most
- Avoid numbers, hyphens and special characters
- Avoid misspelling words on purpose. It’s a no-no for branding
- Make it easy to spell
