Role of Domain Name in Search Engine Rankings

A domain name is the title given to any website for giving it a unique identity on web space. For example, in www.google.com, google.com is the domain name. To get this, one has to register with a domain name registration company and then purchase it after paying some nominal fee. For a company, the objective of choosing this name is to generate high online traffic and to gain revenue out of the same. This process is also dependent on the present domain name availability.

Things to keep in mind before choosing domain names

There are basically three key factors that are needed to be considered while choosing domain names, namely branding, rankability and linkability. Experts believe that if there are too many hyphens in the domain name then its branding value goes down to the minimum. Such names would not be remembered by most persons. Therefore, the likelihood of incoming traffic automatically goes down. When branded names are used, they are remembered easily by most persons and are also valued highly by online visitors. With the help of linking a term to a keyword commonly searched on search engines, domain names can also be formed, an example of which is Travelocity. This can be termed as enhancing the rankability of any website.

Most persons look at buying a dot com extension for their websites. These do sell at a higher price than .net or .org, based on the selected domain name. However, by buying cheap domain registration of .net or .org and increasing rankings for the same, one can increase the value of these extensions. This is a potential that is not commonly tapped by many domain users. Another important factor to look out before registering for cheap domain registration is to test the name for penalties. For that purpose, one can point a link from a trusted website and then see if Google indexes the same. Google should list the same site while searching for the complete domain name within a month.

Rules and regulations set by Google for domain name availability

Lately, Google had added a lot of value to availability of the domain name among commonly searched keywords. This was necessary since many brands were being filtered out due to the nature of brand search queries. Familiar language used in the names increase the credibility of a particular website. Choosing the right name based on domain name availability also helps Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) professionals in using appropriate anchor texts, so that links from other related websites generate high web traffic. Many companies have followed the policy of buying web pages with links and redirecting them to different sites. However, this practice is being devalued by Google in the current market scenario. Once expiration occurs or when ownership shifts, the link goes down.