Domain Names, and What Makes Them SEO-Friendly – 9 Factors

4GHadmin | 02 July 2019
Reading Time: 4 minutes

It’s not as easy as saying that it’s only those looking to make money who will put a major premium on having good search engine rankings. Being high up on SERPs – or search engine results pages if you’re not familiar with that acronym – will be important for anyone who needs to have reliable visibility for their interests in being online, whatever those interests may be. If you’re one of them then you’re likely putting the bulk of your focus into keyword optimization. That’s the way it should be, and that should continue to be one of your priorities.

Many people aren’t aware of the fact that their domain name also plays a role in how well their website ranks in SERPs. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like every quality Canadian web hosting provider in that we know that the success of people with their online ventures is directly beneficial to us as well. It’s for this reason that sharing information on SEO-bosting domains is something we know might well be good for the both of us.

So that’s what we’ll look at here today, and hopefully the information is ideal for anyone who’s about to register a domain name or for others who might want to reconsider their current one based on what they learn here.

Factors Determining a Domain Name’s SEO Value

Everyone’s familiar with Google’s authority when it comes to anything related to the World Wide Web. They’ve stated that there are some 200 different factors that come into play for SEO, and it turns out that domain name is one of the important of them. Choosing the right SEO-Friendly domain name should be one of the crucial decision for your business.

So, without anything more in the way of fluff talk, let’s get right to them.

  1. Make it a Brandable Domain Name if Possible

This one will apply more to companies operating an ecommerce website or one that promotes your business more generally. If you can incorporate your company brand into your domain name, it’s definitely beneficial.

That needs to be mentioned, because some businesses avoid using their company name in the domain name of their website. Considering Google values branding more than keywords, they’re missing the mark if so.

  1. Make it a Unique Domain Name

The best product or brand names are generally going to be unique, and this correlates directly to a more likely availability of the domain name. Not only that, but it will be better received by the users as well, and in a very short period of time this will start boosting your SEO rankings too

  1. Target Keyword

Choose a domain name that contains keywords about your business, products/services, etc. However, if your domain name has natural keywords then it is also beneficial and advisable. And if this is overly challenging, here’s a suggestion that may catch you by surprise, but is actually really effective! Ask your kids to tell you what word they’d most naturally associate with your chosen industry.

  1. Exact Match Domains (EMDs)

Exact Match Domains all target keywords you’d like your website to rank for. If this something you can do, then it’s very helpful and really fast tracks you towards better SEO. Do keep in mind, however, that branding is not included in this method.

  1. Aim for Domain Name ‘Fluency’

Having the domain name of your website communicate the right message is important. People will have a better perception of what your business is all about, and what you’re offering, when you making your domain name have some relevance to the product, service, or overarching industry. Domain name fluency is the name given to this.

  1. Be Conscious of the Length of Your Domain Name

Industry insiders have never really come to a definitive answer to how short or too long a domain name has to be in order to have the length be detrimental to SEO. That said, we’ve spoken to a good many very knowledgeable people about this and the consensus is that you should never have more than 2 separate words in your domain name.

Which leads us to our next point very nicely..

  1. Avoid Hyphens in a Domain Name

Using hyphens in a domain isn’t uncommon, but the plain fact is that you shouldn’t do it. Why? Hyphens are associated with spammy websites. There are plenty of filters out there to banish spam URLs from SERPs, and if your domain name has a hyphen then your website may suffer a similar fate.

  1. No Numbers Either

Numbers are also inadvisable. This is primarily because if someone hears about your domain name and then remembers it later with their phone in hand or in front of the desktop or notebook they may well find themselves thinking if they are enter the digit or spell it out when entering the URL. Try it once and be unsuccessful and they may just decide to give up on it.

  1. Domain Extension

A domain name with an extensions that qualifies as a Top Level Domain (TLD) is very advantageous when it comes to SEO. A .com domain is still the industry standard for TLDs, so if your domain name of choice has that extension available it’s worthy whatever cost there is to acquire it.

It absolutely boost the credibility of your domain as well.

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Domain Registrations So Far for 2019 Indicating Explosion of Online Businesses

4GHadmin | 18 June 2019
Reading Time: 4 minutes

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web nearly 20 years, it’s very likely that he had at least some envisioning of exactly how pivotal it would be in revolutionizing the world of information dissemination. Whether or not he foresaw just how integral it would be become to the worlds of business and commerce might not be so easy to assume, but of course here we are today in the middle of 2019 and it’s as clear as ever that businesses – any business – that doesn’t have a strong online presence is going to be at a MAJOR disadvantage.

While we’re obviously in the business of being a reputable Canadian web hosting provider, here at 4GoodHosting just because we’re in ‘the biz’ doesn’t mean that we’re any less sensitive to the demands of what it takes to have good, strong Internet marketing. After all, nowadays well over half of all business is generated – either directly (online purchasing) or indirectly (direct referral) – via the web.

That of course won’t come as a surprise to anyone, or it shouldn’t. It’s summertime now, so let’s say you’re in the market to buy an air conditioner for your often-too-hot condo. Do you start comparing products and prices with visits to retailers in person? Of course not, you may end up buying that product in person, but you’re going to do your researching and comparison online. We could go on further about all of this, but likely enough said.

However, as if we didn’t need any more convincing of this – it appears that the first half of 2019 has seen more domain registrations overall worldwide than during the entire year 2018. Talk about an explosion!

351M+ & Counting

That’s right, the number of domain name registrations for the first quarter of 2019 reached 351.8 million across all top-level domains (TLDs). All in comparison to the 4th quarter of 2018 which closed with a total of 348.7 million domain registrations for the entire year. For those not as swift with numbers in their head as others (myself included), that’s an increase of 3.1 million, and just so far this year. With the trend being that domain name registrations have grown by 5.4 per cent year over year, they’re on pace to pretty much obliterate that standard pace.

Popular Choices

Not surprisingly, it’s been the .com and .net domain extensions that are being snapped up most enthusiastically. Between the two there was 154.8 million domain name registrations over the first quarter of 2019, an increase of 1.8 million domain name registrations (1.2%) for the same period of 2018. This also works out to a combined increase of 6.5 million domain name registrations (4.4%) year over year.

As March 31, 2019 came to an end, no less than 141 million something .com domain names were registered, while .net domain names totalled 13.8 million domain name. Between both of them there were only 153 million new domain registrations through the end of 2018.

Country-Specifics Domain

Now China may identify itself as a Communist country (and indeed the way it represses digital communications via the Internet is regime-ish, but that’s a topic for another day), but there’s not debate that the inner workings of it are decidedly capitalist / commerce-oriented. 5 billion people makes for one heck of an expensive labour force AND consumer base. As such it’s no surprise that the largest number of country-code TLDs registered for 2019 so far have been for .cn domains.

The exact number of them? A whopping 156.8 million!

The ccTLD that comes in second, however, is almost certainly going to come as a surprise. The Tokelau Islands are found in the South Pacific, and have a population of about 1,500 people. It has to come as a shock that 22.5 million .tk domains have been registered so far in 2019! I’ll be inclined to look into why this is, and perhaps I’ll share what I’ve dug up in a future blog post here.

Back on topic though, the rest of the ccTLDs came in as follows:

  • .de (Germany) 16.2 million
  • .uk (Great Britain) 12.0 million
  • .tw (Taiwan) 5.9 million
  • .nl (Netherlands) 5.9 million
  • .ru (Russia) 5.8 million
  • .br (Brazil) 4.0 million
  • .eu (European union) 3.7 million
  • .fr (France) 3.3 million

Seriously though, what’s the deal with Tokelau? I’ve spend the last 5 minutes scouring the web and nothing to explain why 22.5 million domains have been registered for an island nation of 1,500 people.

Decline in gTLD Domain Registrations

A gTLD is a generic top-level domain and, in contrast to the explosion of the types of domain registrations pointed out above, registrations of these types of domains have actually decreased their pace so far this years as compared to the same period of 2018.

Total domain registrations for new gTLDs were 23 million in the first quarter of 2019. Registrations for these types of domains have decreased by 3.4%, compared to last quarter of 2018, where they numbered approximately 23.8 million.

Anyways, the long and short of this is that more and more businesses, ventures, and individuals are getting onboard given the proven-effective nature of making you, your business, you art – whatever it may be – explicitly visible to the entire world.

As the expression goes – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

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