SEO Blog

Good news, if you’ve always dreamed of dropping the rather uniform .com or restrictive .co.uk, you can now create your own domain. ICANN officially confirmed that it would now be creating unique names for those businesses with the desire and $185,000 to do so.

That’s right, if you want to have your own .domain then you better have a fair amount of money set aside to make your dream come true. The premium cost is likely to deter all but the biggest corporations; however, the impact on the Internet is huge, creating one of the biggest shakeups in well over a decade.
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Domain age is an important factor in SEO, you don’t need to be reminded of that. However, from time to time, you might get an impulsive desire to try something different. Perhaps your business is considering rebranding or maybe the name you chose 10 years ago simply isn’t relevant or workable any more. It happens.

But what you need to remember is that a domain name isn’t a life sentence. Whilst in an ideal world you’d pick one and stick with it forever and always, there’s no reason that you should feel unduly pressured to do so.
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Domain names have slowly been growing in influence when it comes to search engine rankings. If you have a keyword rich URL, there’s a fair chance you’ll feature prominently for that term within the SERPs. This isn’t a coincidence either.

Apart from the obvious fact that it’s one more thing that ties your site into a particular term – adding to your content, Meta and H1 tags for instance – it is also representative of your brand.

We know that Google are favouring big brands in their searches, this has been happening for the last year or so. It’s their way of ensuring that people are always able to find what they’re looking for from the most creditable source.
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There’s a perceived logic amongst some that somehow having more domains will improve your chances of gaining traffic. Well, theoretically yes, there is some truth to that. The only issue comes when you have numerous domains hosting the exact same site.

This means the whole structure, all the content, even the design is the same, the only difference is in the URL. In terms of traffic, the only real benefit this carries is if somebody should actually stumble upon the site by entering your address directly. Not only is that highly unlikely, but it could be doing more damage than good.
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We all know that you can’t buy your way to the top of a search engine, or at least that is the perceived wisdom at any rate. You have to be prepared to work for your place and really earn the right to gain a ranking. There really is no such thing as a free lunch, even in SEO.

So you’re setting a website. What domain are you going to get? Google will rank a website higher if the keyword that they’re targeting is in the domain. That said, most of the major ones have now been purchased, plus you need to find something that really fits your brand – most likely the name of your company.

If you’re a UK company, get a .co.uk domain. Whilst you might lose out on some global traffic, you will at least have the opportunity to highlight where you are to the search engines. These domains are cheaper and you don’t need to go out and buy dozens either. Just get one and develop that.
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