Domain names and their impact on SEO

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People often get questions about the impact of domain names on SEO. Is there any connection at all? Does it help if you include keywords like product names in your domain name? Does the impact of domain names vary by location? And what is the benefit of using more than one domain name for a website? In this article, we will answer all these questions and more.

What is a domain name?

Let’s start from the beginning. The domain name is an alias. It’s a handy way to direct people to a specific place on the internet where you’ve built your site.

Domain names are typically used to identify one or more IP addresses. For us, it’s our domain name yoast.com.

Note that we’ve intentionally included “.com” here where others may disagree. We believe that the most common use of the word “domain name” includes this top-level domain.

Also, if you’ve been on the Internet for a while, you may have noticed that back in the day, websites used to have a “www” prefix in front of their domain name. So for Yoast it would be www.yoast.com. In this case, the domain name is still there yoast.commeanwhile www is a subdomain. Nowadays, people don’t add “www” in front of the domain name anymore. It’s unnecessary, makes your URL long, and frankly, no one uses the term “World Wide Web” anymore.

Top Level Domain (TLD)

While “yoast” is obviously our trademark, the “.com” part of our domain name is called the TLD (or Top Level Domain). In the early days of the Internet:

.com was intended for American companies,
.org for non-profit organizations,
.edu for schools and universities and
.gov for government websites.

But that’s from 1985. Things have changed a lot since then. We use .nl for the Netherlands. But many companies use .com when the .nl domain name is already taken.

Nowadays, top-level domains like .guru and .pro are available. Automattic bought .blog in 2015. What about .pizza? But that’s not all. Now you can find all kinds of TLDs. Many tech startups and SaaS companies choose .io as their TLD over more “traditional” ones like .com or .net.

The list of available TLDs is updated and maintained by IANA – Internet Assigned Numbers Authority – which can be found here here. We call this type of TLD generic TLDs.

Generic TLDs

You’ll probably only want to use one TLD for SEO. And in most cases, it’s best to go with a regular option like .com, .net, .biz, etc.

If your business is in a very competitive field, it might be a good idea to buy a few more common TLDs. This is to ensure that someone else doesn’t use them to build a website with your brand name. It would be frustrating if your site was epicbusiness.com and someone started epicbusiness.biz, wouldn’t it? But in most cases it may not be necessary. Whether this is necessary or not is up to you.

Generic TLDs allow you to be a bit more creative with your domain name. Some fun examples of options: order.pizza, visit.amsterdam, ice.land, or maybe buyher.flowers… If it fits your brand, you can try this. However, remember that not everyone may be aware that they are looking at a domain name. It might be a good idea to mention that you’re talking about a website when you put your domain name on a poster or display it somewhere so people know it’s a website they can visit.

Country Code TLD (ccTLD)

We have already mentioned the .nl TLD. These types are called TLDs country codes or Country-specific TLDs.

Many country code TLDs are “closed”, meaning they are restricted to only those who live or have permanent residence in those countries. For example, .au in Australia or .uk in the United Kingdom are considered “closed” ccTLDs. But given the popularity of many generic TLDs, some countries have opened up their TLDs so that anyone can register them.

Years ago, Tokelau – an island in the South Pacific Ocean – started giving away its .tk TLD for free and thousands of enthusiasts claimed their .tk. It’s like .cc, which you may have heard of because it was once promoted as an alternative to .com. This is actually a country-specific top-level domain belonging to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands (although people in Cypres may disagree)

Country Code TLD or Generic TLD?

Choosing a country code or generic TLD for your domain name depends on the goal of your website. If you want to target a specific location or country, such as the Netherlands, choosing .nl makes perfect sense. It lets people know that you are indeed in the Dutch market and eliminates any confusion your visitors might have.

On the other hand, you could choose a generic TLD like .com and easily compete with other Dutch websites using .nl. It’s about the content, products, and user experience your site offers, not the TLD you choose. Additionally, if you want to serve a wide international audience or if you plan to expand your business overseas, then a generic TLD is a much better choice.

Country code TLD or subdirectory for multi-language sites?

If your website is available in multiple languages, you may be wondering which is the best solution. Be it domain.com/uk/ and domain.com/de/ (subdirectories or subfolders) or domain.co.uk and domain.de (which use top domains for individual countries)?

For SEO, using a subdirectory makes more sense. If you use a subdirectory, all links will point to the same domain. Marketing is easier because you have one main domain. And all the backlinks you get are also attributed to that main domain. If there are language differences per subdirectory, please add hreflang tag on your pages to notify Google.

Note that a subdomain like the “www” we mentioned is something completely different than a subdirectory. For example, we have a dedicated website to store technical information related to our developer software developer.yoast.com, which is a subdomain of yoast.com. Google actually considers this a different site than yoast.com. Although we’re sure they know how to connect the dots.

Does domain age affect SEO?

The age domains – depending on how long your domain has been around – is not as important to SEO as it used to be. Some may say it doesn’t matter at all. Nowadays, it’s much more about content, technical setup, user experience and how well your site answers the query people are using in Google. You will need to achieve the best result for your query to rank.

In fact, Google’s John Mueller confirmed back in 2017 that domain age doesn’t matter:

Is it so black and white? No, it’s not.

Domain age as such may not affect rankings. But older domains can have a nice amount of backlinks, page rankings on search results pages, etc. And it’s obvious this may affect ranking.

Does an Exact Match Domain (EMD) give you a ranking advantage?

Let’s say Buycheaphomes.com is an existing domain name (it probably is). This is an example of an exact match domain name.

In 2012, Google introduced what we now call EMD update. Google changed its algorithm so that websites using such domain names would not rank for the simple fact that the keyword was in the domain name. And yes, it used to be like that, before the update.

So, after this update, is it still worth using a domain name that includes the keyword? Mostly the answer is no.

You don’t need a specific keyword in your domain name. You can build a site on a different domain, write content that targets a specific keyword or topic, and still outrank a site with the exact keyword in the domain name.

But if you’ve managed to build a brand around EMD and still have a lot of traffic, keep up the good work. Just make sure your branding is absolutely top notch.

Choose a domain name around your brand

After the EMD update, the brand became even more important. It makes much more sense to focus on your brand in your domain name rather than just adding a keyword to your domain name.

For example, you are probably familiar with LEGO.com, Amazon.com, or Google.com. It all depends on the brand. It’s something that people will easily remember and something that will make you stand out from the crowd and the competition. Your brand is here to stay (always look on the bright side).

In fact, Google’s John Mueller also suggested choosing a domain name that is more like a brand that you can build on:

Make sure your brand is unique and the right domain name is available when starting a new business. This may be the reason to claim more than one generic or country code TLD – to ensure that no one else claims it.

We mentioned that a (known) brand is usually easier to remember. For the same reason, we suggest choosing a short domain name or something catchy to stick with people. Like Booking.com for example.

More than one domain name for the same website?

Is it worth requesting multiple domain names and 301 redirecting all domains to the main domain name? As for the brand: no. As for online ranking: probably not.

The only valid reason we can think of active using multiple domain names for the same website, offline marketing and sometimes online marketing. If you have a specific project or campaign on your website that you would like to promote separately, a different domain name could come in handy to drive traffic straight to the right page of your website.

“Actively” is the key word in the last paragraph. As mentioned above, you can register multiple domain names, but be careful not to confuse Google. Additionally, actively using multiple domain names for the same site will scatter links to your site. And that’s not what you want, as also mentioned in the subdirectories section.

Domain author, domain rating, what is it?

We feel that these concepts should be mentioned and explained. You have probably known or heard about the concept of domain authority, domain score or authority score. These are the metrics developed by popular SEO software providers:

Domain Authority: Developed by Moz. This is a score that predicts how well your website will rank on search results pages.
Domain Rating: Developed by Ahref. This metric shows the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile.
Authority Rating: Developed by Semrush. This metric is used to measure a domain or website’s overall quality and SEO performance.

Essentially, these metrics aim to quantify the quality of a website based on a number of factors. All of them have one thing in common, which is the inclusion of the site’s backlink profile when calculating the score. For Ahref’s Domain Score metric, the metric is based solely on links.

Let’s be clear that none of these ranking factors are used by Google. They are metrics specific to the software that uses them. Although Google doesn’t use these metrics, you can still use them as a reference point in your SEO strategy. However, do not rely on them blindly, as there may be errors in how these metrics are developed or calculated.

Continue reading: SEO Friendly URLs »

Camille Cunningham

Camille is the Content Manager at Yoast. He writes and optimizes blog posts and enjoys creating content that helps people master SEO.