Using Domain Names for Marketing
When Google, Bing, and other search engines calculate where your website stands in their search engine rankings, they look for two things: relevance and authority. Relevance refers to the quality of your content — that it's written naturally and easy for search engines to parse.
Authority, in broad strokes, is a popularity contest — how many people are linking to your site, and the quality and respect of those people. This is a simplification, of course, and today we're talking about another way to influence your site's ranking.
Your domain name is a way to signal your relevance to search engines. If your domain name is an exact match or contains close keywords for the search queries of your customers, it improves your site's ranking in the search results. For instance, we operate greatfallswebsitedesign.com, which shows up high in the search results for Great Falls Website Design. It's still important to have relevant content — the domain name alone won't catapult your search listing to the top.
Another factor which may influence your Authority is the length of your domain registration. By registering your domains for five or ten years, you're signaling a greater investment in your brand than you would by registering for a single year. While no search engine has confirmed that they use this metric, it appears nonetheless to have an influence on search ranking.
Authority, in broad strokes, is a popularity contest — how many people are linking to your site, and the quality and respect of those people. This is a simplification, of course, and today we're talking about another way to influence your site's ranking.
Your domain name is a way to signal your relevance to search engines. If your domain name is an exact match or contains close keywords for the search queries of your customers, it improves your site's ranking in the search results. For instance, we operate greatfallswebsitedesign.com, which shows up high in the search results for Great Falls Website Design. It's still important to have relevant content — the domain name alone won't catapult your search listing to the top.
Another factor which may influence your Authority is the length of your domain registration. By registering your domains for five or ten years, you're signaling a greater investment in your brand than you would by registering for a single year. While no search engine has confirmed that they use this metric, it appears nonetheless to have an influence on search ranking.