Are Domain Names Important for Blogs?
Whether you’re a long running business or a start-up, you know that a blog is a useful tool. It helps you communicate your message better to the audience and improve your presence.
The benefits of blogging for business and marketing are undeniable. With a blog, however, you need a proper domain name that people can remember. This leads to an important question: are domain names important for blogs? In other words, do you need a proper domain name to rank your blog?
In this guide, we look into the importance of your domain name to your blog. Can it help make your business blog become more visible, with a better online presence? Here’s what we know.
Are domains important for blogs?
So, are domains important for blogs? The short answer is: yes, your domain name is crucial for your blog. Whether you’re a business or using the blog for personal preferences, having a great domain name helps.
Here’s why.
More than the importance of your blog images, your domain can say almost everything about your brand. By using the proper domain name for your blog, you can communicate many details. You can demonstrate professionalism, legitimacy, who you are, and what your blog is all about.
If you’re a new business or a small one, your blog’s domain name should parallel your company. Your blog can use a few structures that would give you a better identity online. Whether you’re a business here in Newcastle or anywhere in the world, these tips can help.
Setting up your blog domain name
Some people can use a brand website for starters. If you have a unique sounding brand name that has a good ring to it, it’s best to use it as is. It highlights not only your brand name but also shows a level of uniqueness too.
If your business is trading under a common name, there are a few ways to differentiate yourself. Combining your business name with the name of your industry or trade can communicate relevance to SEOs. It’ll give you a way to tell people and search engines that your business relates to a particular trade or industry.
For example, if your name is Jeff and you sell forklifts, you can use jeffsforklifts.com.au. It would tell everyone that you are Jeff and you’re dealing with forklifts.
Another way to use your domain name for better blog relevance is to combine your trade and location. Using the Jeff’s Forklifts as an example, if you sell your forklifts in Newcastle, you can use newcastleforklifts.com.au. It tells people that you’re a forklift business in Newcastle, NSW.
Google search algorithms give more relevance to websites that can give branded websites more visitors. On the contrary, Google makes sure that exact match domains get less relevance. These domains don’t use branding at all in their URLs, instead, they fill their domain name with keywords.
Use branding in your domain names to prevent Google from treating you as an exact match website.
Is WWW still important?
Among the first things we need to look at with your domain names are the nomenclature related details. If you have a blog, you want to make sure that you cover as many naming convention details as possible. It can help rank your blog better and bring more people to your pages.
A good example is using www at the start of your business domain name. The use of www compared non-www domain names is a common question many new blog owners keep asking. Does keeping it have any benefit at all? to
By SEO standards, your blog will not benefit at all from keeping, changing, or removing the www. Content matters more. Search engines care don’t care about the contents of your entire domain name. Instead, they care about routing up your primary domain name and making sure they bring you to listed URL.
Many websites and blogs can let Google and other websites respect their preferred domain name structure. You can use your domain name with or without a www and list it as your canonical hostname. Whether or not you remove it does not incur any benefit or penalty.
Even then, using one or the other captures more potential traffic for you and net you people wanting to give your blog a visit. All you need is to make sure you redirect to your canonical hostname.
Does .com have any worth?
Another thing to consider is the importance of top-level domains and the value of the .com extension. Many people mull over the value of .com domains and whether or not they have any value at all. Some people think that they do not have any value at all.
The .com extension and many other top-level domains have better value than others. While some only have an SEO benefit, the .com value comes from people’s expectations. People who use the internet always expect that there will be two things at the end of a domain name.
It’s either:
- A .com domain extension, or
- A country code TLD extension
A .com domain extension costs more because it communicates reliability to an audience. Because people always expect a website to use a .com, people trust .com domains more. The same goes for country code TLD.
A country code TLD, like .com.au, tells search engines that you are from that specific country. You can get more relevance with searches that come from a country – Australia for this example. You will, however, get less relevance with other countries due to your announced geolocation.
Optimising your domain name length
Domain names are essential to blogs from a length standpoint, too. You want people to have an easy time remembering your blog and your business. Here’s how you optimise your domain names for your blogs.
Your goal with your domain name is to have something sweet, short, and concise. As we said, a single-word brand name should be enough for your needs. Combine it with a .com, country code TLD, or one of the popular extensions, and you should be good.
At most, you should aim for two to three short words or two medium-sized words. They should have proper spellings to prevent sending people to other fake websites. They also need to make sense.
Domain names are important for blogs
Are domain names important for blogs? The answer is yes.
Domain names are crucial parts of your business website and your blog. A proper domain name can help give you good branding and a way to create legitimacy. Be careful in choosing domain names and make sure you are happy in the end.
If you’re looking for more blog tips and tricks, why not talk to us? We can help you set the business website and the blog that can give you the audience you need. Talk to us today.