Domain Authority Impacts SEO AND PPC
Did you know that carefully choosing a domain name is one of the most important things you can do when starting an online business? Not only do domain names serve as an online home for your business and a foundation for your website, but they can also boost your website in search engine results. The benefits of a great keyword-focused domain far exceed the costs.
The rule of thumb for ensuring a domain name is a good one is to make sure that it is:
Relevant: Does the domain reflect what a visitor is looking for? For example, the company sells supplies for pet owners. Apart from being descriptive, these domains include keywords, signaling to search engines that the domain/website is relevant for similar keyword searches.
Memorable: Is your domain easy to remember? Think of how many radio or tv commercials you hear and see that mention a website URL. How much easier is it to remember if the domain is short, descriptive, and ends in “.com”. A memorable domain name can produce type-in or direct web traffic. Consider ease-of-remembering when you go to purchase your domain name.
Unique: By purchasing the .net, .org, .mobi, etc. variations of your chosen domain name, as well as synonyms and iterations of your domain, you can ensure that your competition doesn’t get its hands on your part of the web.
Not only does a unique domain produce search engine traffic, and type in traffic, a recent study indicates that having exact match domain names (for your targeted product) can improve your Google AdWords Quality Score! By studying a small sample, an Internet company in England proved that exact match domains resulted in a much higher CTR and number of impressions. The study featured the same 3 ads, but with different display URLs. The URL that contained the term that people were searching for received the most clicks.
Considering that companies spend billions of dollars a year on these paid search ads and that having a Quality Score of 10 can reduce the average cost per click by 30%, there are significant savings to be realized. Conversely, having a Quality Score of 1 can increase the average cost per click by 600%!
Exact match domains have always performed well in organic search results as well… often muscling out the competition (which often has larger budgets). Considering all of the above, it is a no-brainer to say that carefully selecting and purchasing a premium domain is a very wise investment of your time and money.