The Basics of SEO #2: The Domain Name

When I started writing this series of articles on the basics of SEO, I looked into which topics to cover first, because the field is vast and my goal is to make it as instructive as possible, but above all as practical as possible!

By the way, if you missed the first article in the series titled "The Basics of SEO #1: Definitions", I recommend reading it before this one!

So I decided that after the first part covering vocabulary and definitions around SEO, we would talk about the impact of the domain name on a site's future SEO.

Because yes, even though the domain name isn't THE component with the biggest impact on SEO, it's often one of the first decisions you make when setting up a new website.

Keywords in the domain name

It's common knowledge that search engines are able to identify keywords within a domain name, whether they're separated by hyphens or not.

Taking only the domain name into account, in the high-tech resale niche for example, "sell-my-computer.com" will perform better than "patrick-info.com" thanks to its keywords "sell" and "computer".

Be careful not to overdo it though, Google now tends to penalize domain names that contain too many keywords.

If you were planning to register "sell-my-computer-cheap-in-los-angeles.com", don't !

Domain history

When you register a domain name, it's because it's available at that particular moment. But what happens if it hosted, for years, content considered SPAM, or even illegal content?

If that's the case, there are two possible negative repercussions to take into account:

• Old backlinks coming from poorly rated sites may pour their negative "SEO juice" into your new acquisition.
• In the worst case, Google could have even blacklisted this domain, and getting it ranked again could prove quite difficult

One solution is to use a site like https://web.archive.org to check the domain's history.

Mythology vs Reality

Many legends have circulated around domain names and their ability to rank easily or not, particularly regarding TLDs.

TLDs (or Top-Level Domains) are the extensions at the end of domain names like .fr, .com, .org for example. There are several hundred of them today, and new ones are added regularly.

The legend notably claims that a domain name with an exotic TLD will rank worse than a website in .com for example, and like any legend it isn't true, but it's still based on a grain of truth.

Let me explain: Search engines don't base their score on a domain's extension, whether it's exotic or not.

But: According to research by an SEO specialist, Larry Kim, one of the components that would affect organic ranking is CTR (Click-Through Rate).

CTR is the percentage of clicks on a page relative to the number of times it appeared in search results.

We know that CTR increases drastically when a page reaches the first position in the results, but Larry explains that a result with an actual CTR higher than the CTR expected by Google for its current position would automatically allow it to gain a few spots.

What does this have to do with TLDs?

TLDs indeed have no impact on how a page's direct score is calculated, but they have an impact on how the site is perceived by users.

A .com domain will very often inspire more trust in visitors than a .xyz, and will therefore generally lead to a slightly higher CTR, thereby influencing the site's ranking as well.

This is also true for the domain name in general, by the way: the more attractive and trustworthy the name is, the more the CTR can exceed search engines' expectations, and thus climb in the results.

Obviously there's no magic method, and all this data is experimental, but that's true for a lot of knowledge in the field of SEO!

It also depends on the target audience, for example an .io will be perceived the same way by a developer as a .com, which won't be true for an older audience less familiar with the web.

I hope you enjoyed this article, it obviously covers the basics of SEO but if you'd like to learn more about SEO and domain names, I recommend this very comprehensive article on Moz's website:

Domain Names — SEO Best Practices [2020]