How Important Is a Domain Name?

From a marketing perspective, a domain name is the single most important element of a website. Unlike a brick-and-mortar company, websites don’t have visual cues closely associated with them. Whereas potential customers can use visual cues to identify if a physical building is more likely a barber shop or a bank, they are not able to tell the difference between domain names. All domain names use the exact same format: http:// subdomain dot (optional) root domain dot TLD. Take, for example, http://www.google.com or http://www.bing.com. To an outsider, there is no reason to think that any of these resources would be a search engine. They don’t contain the word search, and if their brands weren’t as strong as they are, their gibberish names wouldn’t mean anything to anyone.

This is where people get confused. They see websites like this and think that the domain name doesn’t matter. They register domains that are hard to pronounce or hard to spell and figure they don’t have to worry. The problem is they don’t realize that the popular websites got popular not because of their domain names, but rather despite their domain names. Google was such an outstanding product with a plan that was executed so well that it could have had been named BackRub and still been successful. (Note: It was originally called BackRub. I am just amusing myself.)

A nonsensical domain name can hurt a website, making it harder for people (and search engines) to find that site and associate with the concepts that the site focuses on.

For the vast majority of websites, a “search friendly” domain name is best. The search engines will always be constrained by the fact that many people search for exact URLs when they want to go to websites. Of course, the most relevant and popular result for the query “myspace.com”

would be www.myspace.com. You can use this to your advantage. Say your clients own a hotel in Jammu. For them, the best domain name would be www.Jammuhotel.com so that they could rank for the query Seattle Hotel.

But what if a killer domain name is not available? You are not alone. As of the time of writing all of the combinations for .com domains with three or fewer characters were already owned. If you can’t get seattlehotel.com, you will just need to be more creative. To limit your ability to hurt yourself by being “too creative,” I advise you to look out for the following when registering a domain name: 

• Avoid hyphens: In domain names, hyphens detract from credibility and act as a spam indicator.
• Avoid generic, uncommon top-level domains (TLDs): Like hyphens, TLDs such as .info, .cc, .ws, and .name are spam indicators.
• Avoid domain names longer than 15 characters: People are lazy; don’t try to make them type a novel just to access your website.

This advice about domains applies mostly to people who are either starting out from scratch, or for whom purchasing a better domain is an option. If you’re an SEO, you’ll probably have clients that are stuck with the domain they have, either due to branding or financial constraints. If that’s you, never fear. While a smartly chosen, keyword-rich domain is often an ideal situation, plenty of sites succeed without one.