How to Choose SEO friendly Domain Name

Picking a new domain name is exciting.

The slate is clean. The plans are made. The energy is high.

But if you choose the wrong website name, you could be in trouble. Tests show domain names do impact SEO. But how? Is there a wrong way and a right way to choose a domain name for maximum SEO?

Here’s what you need to know.

Don’t Pick an Exact-Match Domain

For SEO newbies, there is the temptation to pick an exact-match domain, or EMD.

What is an exact-match domain?

An exact-match domain is a domain name that includes the keyword phrase itself. Some people call them Keyword Domains.

For example, let’s say your new business wanted to rank for the keyword “awesome cheap widgets”. If you chose an EMD, your website would look like this: www.awesomecheapwidgets.com

It sounds like a great strategy on the face of it. More keywords, more SEO, right?

Not exactly.

Back in the day—2012 to be exact—Google noticed that a lot of websites were trying to improve their SEO by choosing exact-match domains. Back then, if you wanted to rank for “cheap Nokia phones,” no problem! You would just buy the domain, www.cheapnokiaphones.com, for a few bucks, and presto! You would win first-page ranking.

No backlinks. No quality content. Just raw SEO power!

In response, Google dropped a bombshell. It was called the Exact Match Domain Update.

Obviously, choosing an exact-match domain is a pretty bad idea. But that only tells you what you shouldn’t do.

Choose a .com Extension

Your extension or TLD (top-level domain) matters. And the most common TLD today is .com.

There might be some good reasons to choose another TLD, but be careful. Some TLDs like .biz and .us are associated with spam.

Tips for Scoring the Best Domain Name

Finally, let me sum up this article with a quick rundown of some tips to remember:

• Avoid numbers: When a person hears your domain, they might not know whether to spell the number or to use a numeral. For example, Number1Ranking.com could also be NumberOneRanking.com.

• Avoid intentionally misspelling words: It may seem creative to use a misspelled word as your brand or domain name. Usually, this backfires. People have a hard enough time spelling as it is. Confusing things by misspelling a word on purpose just makes it worse.

• Combining two or three words to form a longer word is okay: I seem to have a habit of doing this with my businesses — Quicksprout, Kissmetrics, HelloBar — but it seems to be working out okay. Make sure that your combined words won’t be misinterpreted. MensExchange.com could also be MenSexChange.com, so think twice.

• Hyphens are generally a bad idea: It’s easy to forget when, where, and if to use hyphens in a domain name. Hyphens are fine for multi-word URLs deeper within the site. But they’re not so great for the actual domain name.

• Shorter is better: Anything that starts getting longer than 15 characters is too long.