The domain name is part of the business. As important as the strategy or documents. What users see in the address bar determines whether they remember a company and find it trustworthy. But when choosing a domain, some also think about SEO, believing that the keywords in the address have a good effect on the position of the site in search engine results. Michael Hayman of Yoast talked about the rationale behind this approach.

We are often asked about how a domain name affects SEO, and if there is an impact at all. Other questions are related to these questions: how much stronger are the starting positions of a site with a keyword in the title than the positions of sites with a brand in the address, does the influence of a domain name differ depending on the location, why use more than one . In this article, I will answer all of these questions.

What is a domain name?

Let's start from the very beginning. The domain name is an alias. Its assignment is a convenient way to point people to specific area on the internet where you created your website. Domain names are typically used to identify one or more IP addresses. For Yoast, this identifier is yoast.com. When we talk about www.yoast.com what we rarely do Domain name – yoast.com, and the subdomain is www.

Top Level Domain (TLD)

In the address of our website yoast”, you guessed it, the brand of the company, and the other part is “. com' is called the TLD (or top-level domain). In the dawn of the internet:

• .com was intended for American companies.

• .org is for non-profit organizations.

• .edu - for schools and universities.

• .gov - for government websites.

We're talking about 1985. Since then, everything has changed. For example, to register sites in the Netherlands is commonly used. nl. But many companies use .com anyway. The reasons are different, but the most common is the domain name c. nl that the company wanted is already taken. As you can see, everything has become blurry. But this is only a part of the available addresses: now you can choose TLDs such as .guru and .pro. Recently Automattic bought .blog. And what's about .pizza? We call domains of this type generic top-level domain.

ccTLD

I already mentioned the top level domain. nl. These types of TLDs are called country code or national TLDs. A few years ago, Tokelau, an island in the South Pacific, began giving away its TLD for free. Thousands of enthusiasts have used. tk when choosing an address for your company. If I were among them and registered, for example, michiel.tk, there would probably be no one in Tokelau who could correctly pronounce the name of my site. We have already encountered an almost similar situation - you may have heard of .cc, which some time ago was advertised as an alternative .com. It is actually a national TLD belonging to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Although Cypriots may disagree (they use this TLD along with .nc.tr).

This brings me to the beginning of the story of how a domain name affects SEO.

Country code or subdirectory

If your website is available in multiple languages, you might be wondering which would be best for your site: domain.com/uk/ and domain.com/de/ (subdirectories or subfolders) or domain.co.uk and domain.de ( national domain top level).

When it comes to SEO, it makes more sense to use a subdirectory. In this case, all links will be sent to the same domain. It's also easier for marketing because you only use one primary address. If there are language differences in a subdirectory, just use hreflang to tell Google about it. All in One (WordPress) makes your catalog maintenance job easier.

Note that a subdomain like the "www" I mentioned above is something completely different than a subdirectory. Google considers kb.yoast.com and yoast.com to be different sites, although I'm sure it can recognize the connection.

Irina Vinnichenko

Content Marketer SEMANTICA

How to choose the right domain name:

• Decide on a TLD. There are many options available for selection: .info, .com, .rf, .[business name/name]. The variety of TLD options makes it easier to choose a unique domain name. But you need to use this freedom with caution: the TLD affects the authority of the site. Or rather, how authoritative the site seems to users. For example, .info does not inspire much trust among users. So first try to find a suitable address for your TLD.com site.
• Choose a simple title. The author of the original article, Michael Heyman of Yoast, says short domain names work best because they are easy to remember. For the same reason, pay attention to the spelling of the domain and its pronunciation - it should be clear and readable. If you want to make your site popular, a strange combination of letters and numbers will work against you. Bet on an address that is easy to mention in conversations and just write by ear.
• Use brand in domain name. When Dropbox was in its startup phase, the site was called GetDropbox.com. This made sense from the point of view of the direct occurrence of the keyword. But then SEO gave way to user experience - most users in search results preferred dropbox.com, which was owned by another company. We got out of the situation by buying the domain. Don't repeat the Dropbox mistake, think about how users will search for you.

Hello my dear readers. Today we will talk about the degree of influence of the domain (domain name and its zone) on the promotion of the resource. There is already an article on my blog about the influence of a keyword in a domain name on its promotion. Now I will tell you about the general points that should be considered when choosing a domain at the stage of its registration (well, or purchase).

The influence of the domain zone on promotion

We will consider only those domain zones that are most popular in Russia:

.RU- national domain of the Russian Federation;
.RF- national domain of the Russian Federation, Cyrillic record;
.SU- domain for the territory of the post-Soviet space;
.COM.RU- for commercial organizations operating on the territory of the Russian Federation;
.NET.RU- for web projects and organizations whose work is related to network technologies, operating in the territory of the Russian Federation;
.ORG.RU- for non-profit organizations located on the territory of the Russian Federation;
.MSK.RU, .SPB.RU- geodomains for Moscow and St. Petersburg;
.COM, .BIZ- for commercial organizations;
.NET- for projects related to network technologies;
.ORG- for non-profit and charitable organizations;
.INFO- information sites;
.ME, .NAME- personal domains.

The rule here is simple - try to keep the theme of the selected zone. In my experience, this has some effect, albeit a small one. But search ranking- this is a whole complex of factors, and you should not give up what can be done with ease.

Keyword in domain name

I covered this topic in a related post:

Briefly: so far such domains allow you to quickly take high places in search results, but this factor is far from decisive eventually. This applies to both Yandex and Google.

Influence of site age on its promotion

Currently, the age of the site has an important influence on the place in the SERP. But there is one moment. This influence is more indirect. That is, it is logical to assume that the older the site, the more it is discussed and search engines are more likely to give preference to it.

If we are talking about an empty domain with a long registration period, then now such a factor exists, but this is a temporary solution, in my opinion. After all, it cannot be said that websites have become worse. So why don't they put equal conditions on a par with the oldies?

Therefore, I allow myself to conclude: there is currently an influence of the age of the site on its promotion in search engines, but this is temporary.

Which option is better: with WWW or without WWW?

Yes, even such questions are asked. And there is only one answer - search engines don't care. The choice is yours. There are also situations where the domain looks simply more attractive with “www”. So why not use a prefix.

Capital letters in the domain name in Yandex search results

This is done in Yandex Webmaster, section "Site in search results" / "Site name register". Main task: to make a more attractive snippet for Yandex search results, highlight important words in the domain name. This has only an indirect effect on website promotion., associated with higher behavioral factors and clickability of the snippet in the SERP.

The main conclusions on the influence of the domain on its promotion in search engines.

1. The choice of domain is purely personal.
2. Register, buy and promote the domain that contains either the brand name, or is a meaningful name (word, phrase, etc.)
3. If you want to quickly rise to the top - keywords in the domain will help you. So far this is working.
4. The main factors influencing the location of a site in the top of the issue are contained in the site itself, and not in its domain name.

For sim, let me take a bow. Your grandfather is a SEO.

Ask questions.

A domain is a unique name of a site registered on the network that is needed to identify it. That is, a set of characters like www.website.com is the domain. Entering it into address bar browser, we will get to the resource with the given name.

Domain levels

Each domain has three levels: 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

The first level is domain zone. It cannot be created, you can only choose from the available options. The second level is the domain name. We invent it ourselves. The third is a subdomain. We also make up our own.

Each of the levels affects the promotion of the site. Let's talk about this in more detail.

Domain zone

Domain zones are divided into two types:

• regional,
• thematic.

The former include such zones as [.ru] - Russia, [.ua] - Ukraine, [.us] - USA, etc.

The second includes such zones as [.com] - a commercial organization, [.org] - a non-profit organization, [.net] - a network, [.info] - informational portal etc.

If we talk about the influence of the domain zone on promotion, then it certainly exists. Not the most significant, but there is. Let's say your website address ends with [.ru], while your competitors end with [.de] (Germany). Other things being equal, your site will be higher in the search results for a user from Russia.

But if the content of the site of competitors is more relevant and useful for the visitor, search engines will give preference to it (despite the [.de] domain zone).

Domain name

An equally important aspect when creating a domain is the selection of a quality domain name. There are three main types of names that are most effective when promoting a site.

• Simple and memorable - as a rule, they are very short and consonant, like hh.ru, love.ru, vk.com, ya.ru, ok.ru, etc. Such domain names are easily remembered by people, which improves behavioral factors and get more traffic.
• Brand Name - If you want to increase the visibility of your company, then use its name. For example, lenovo.ru, sberbank.ru, microsoft.ru, ibox.su. It also allows you to get the first positions for targeted queries containing the name of your company.
• Key word - in recent years, many have begun to use this technique. The presence of a key in the site's domain makes it more relevant to the query and allows it to take a high position in the search results. The main thing is not to use keywords containing 3 or more words or commercial lemmas like kupit-noutbuk-online.ru. Such domains may be marked as spam by search engines and will not be shown.

These are the three main aspects that clearly show how a domain name affects website promotion. Try to take into account at least some of them. For example, how did the social networks (vk.com, ok.ru), making the name simple and memorable, but at the same time containing the name of the brand/company.

Subdomains

The influence of the subdomain on the issuance is minimal. Therefore, when SEO-promotion, you should not use it. But in contextual advertising a subdomain can be a great tool to further attract the attention of users. You can enter a key phrase in it to highlight it in bold.

History and age of the domain

The fact is that such search engines as Yandex, Google and others prefer the old domains. But old doesn't always mean good. Therefore, it is always worth considering history. If you decide to buy an old domain, always check it. Suddenly he fell under the filters of search engines? And it will be extremely difficult to get him out of there. Sometimes you can find old domains that simply stopped paying for their owners. In most cases they have good story which will greatly simplify their promotion.

Try to find the best option for your project. Think about what is more important in your situation - enter the brand name or keyword, use the old domain or buy a new one, etc.

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Detailed domain analysis for successful SEO promotion from A to Z

Hello! This is a test article for Baden 1! In this article, we will deal with the issue of buying a domain for seo promotion- how to choose a domain, what to look for and other nuances of acquiring a site address for successful promotion. At first glance, everything seems simple, but it’s not, because it often happens that you buy a seemingly new address, but in fact you have already used it before, about 5 years ago and not just used it, but catastrophically spoiled its history by making further promotion is impossible and such cases are not uncommon, only often the site owners cannot understand what is the matter. In the article, we will analyze how to choose a domain name for a site, how to check the history of a domain in detail so as not to ruin all further work, as well as how to link a domain to hosting, and much more.

Let's start from the very beginning for those who are not at all versed in Internet technologies and talk about what a domain is and why it is needed. If you already know this information, you can immediately go to the chapter - analysis and verification.

What is a domain and what is it eaten with?

Site domain - its address on the network, which allows you to access the site not by entering the IP address of the server on which it is located, which would not be very convenient, but by entering a short and memorable sequence of characters, which often speaks for itself, for example - mvideo.ru or bags.rf

The site name is unique within the Internet, that is, each address exists in single copy. By specifying a DNS record, the domain is tied to the hosting where the site is located. DNS records can be changed at the request of the owner at any time, so it often happens that a year ago he led to a refrigerator store, and today he points to a bag store.

Also, names can be glued into a group, when when specifying one address, an automatic redirection to another occurs, and there can be an infinite number of such addresses. Great example:

• google.com
• google.com
• google.com

All these addresses are glued to the main Google address. So we figured out the question of what is a site domain - nothing complicated, right?

Addressing levels

Simplified levels can be divided into three groups:

• first level domain
• second level domain
• third level domain

First-level addresses include names like .ru, .com, .net, etc.

That is, there is only 1 first-level address for each zone, and for the ru zone it is www.ru

It is noteworthy that in this moment it's up for sale:

And it costs a little more than 8,000,000 rubles

Also informative information is contained in the WHOIS record of the root address:

In general, you understand about the root address!

Second-level domains are the majority of domains known to us, for example www.site. It is this domain that we will buy to create and promote the site.

The third level is a domain from the second level and may look like this - dev.www.site Most hosting allows you to create great amount third level domains. Previously, when setting up Direct, we used the creation of hundreds of subdomains to add words from key query so that they are highlighted in the search results, then the technology became irrelevant after the function was added to Direct display link.

After we have decided on what a domain is, it is worth answering the vital question - how much does a domain cost.

About cost

The cost of a domain depends on its zone and registrar and can vary from 66 rubles for domain.ru (the cheapest I've seen) and up to 760,000 rubles for a new address without history, according to NIC.RU:

On average, the cost of RU is about 300 rubles with a subsequent renewal of about 600 rubles per year, but you can find cheaper ones.

The next step is to check the domain for availability.

Employment Check

You can check whether the selected address is currently free on the website of any registrar.

If the address is free, you can immediately buy it, if it is busy - look at WHOIS data and find out the date of a possible release, as well as find out the administrator's contacts for communication. Checking the chosen name:

As you can see, checking a free domain is not at all difficult!

Buying a website address

After checking whether the domain is free, it's time to buy it. Answering the question where to buy a domain, I would advise you to use Rucenter in order to avoid possible problems in the future, if you suddenly have to transfer it or rewrite it to another person, tk. you can buy a domain from many registrars much cheaper, but transferring it will not always be easy.

How to choose a domain name for SEO

Gradually, we came to one of the most interesting points of this article - how to choose the best domain for seo.

One of the important ranking factors for sites is the content of the keyword or its part in the address, but this factor will not matter if the address has a bad history, and it is completely impossible to determine it by eye. The selection of a domain by keywords is of course important, but not a fundamental factor. You can be sure that you are buying a new address with a clean WHOIS history, but this will not be the case. When a name is transferred from one registrar to another, its history is overwritten, as if it were pristine, and often this is done on purpose. As I wrote above, it often happens that you buy a domain, and it already has a bad search history, and no matter what you do with such an address in terms of SEO, the result will be zero. And this the most important factor which you should pay attention to when buying - a detailed study of history.

If the address contains keyword or part of it - this, of course, will give a certain bonus, but this factor is negligible in comparison with the history of the domain.

Another important nuance- should you use the name that your old resource already had? Often clients come to me who already have a valid, old site, but the promotion is not going well. And all the stones are flying into the garden of a bad site, they say we will remake the site, put things in order, optimize it for search engines and leave the old domain and promotion will go uphill, but often this is not at all the case. The address can already be thoroughly corrupted and it is this, and not a bad site, that is a critical obstacle to successful promotion. A detailed study of the history of the name, the history of buying links and indexing allows you to make a more or less adequate conclusion about the suitability of the address for further promotion. If the domain is active - first of all, we will be interested in such factors as the historical dynamics of transitions from search engines, because it happens that in certain moment it was Google that lost a lot of traffic - in this case, it is advisable to use a different domain for the new site, because. Google filters are very time-consuming and getting out of them has a lot of difficulties, and the bonus from the domain age is zero here. Also, special attention should be paid to the anchor list - if it is spam, you should think several times. We will talk more about domain analysis in this article below!

Analysis and history

The first step is to examine the historical data for the domain. You can check the age of a domain on the webarchive service.

This service stores data on most more or less visited projects from all over the network, and here we can see which site was previously hosted on the domain and even look at it. Take, for example, my project www.site and go

Here we will see a chart with dates:

By selecting the year and date, we can see the site that was recorded by the Webarchive crawler when crawling at that time, for example, my blog has undergone 2 redesigns during its existence and we can see all this. Below is my blog from 2014:

And here is my blog in 2011:

When analyzing a domain, it is very important for us to look at the history of project changes in search of possible problems, which can be safely attributed to a change in the subject of the site, for example, if earlier it was a resource for the sale of refrigerators, and you plan to open a legal services site, this is not a good idea, although it's not critical anyway. We will study the webarchive in search of gross violations of the doctrine of search engines such as hidden text, cloaking, horizontal footcloths, in general, everything that could lead to the imposition of strong search engine filters. Also, if it turns out that earlier the site massively sold links, continuing to work with this address is an extremely dubious undertaking. If no gross violations were noticed when studying the Webarchive, go ahead and look at the history of the WHOIS change, fortunately there are services that have such statistics. There are several such services, for example RDS, but it is paid. Of the free ones, I can advise whoishistory - on the service, simply enter the address in the appropriate field and it will show the history of changes in records about owners, while the official WHOIS check of the registrar will show that it is clean. Checking a domain name on the whoishistory service:

Not all resources can be checked by this service, so if it shows that the history of a domain is clean, it’s not a fact that it really is, so I advise you to check each domain from several sources. For example, I personally bought myself 2010 domain with a great history, on which there was previously a project of the same subject, which I posted on it, although it was sold for 600 r and according to Rucenter, it was pristine.

If a current checks did not reveal any serious problems, let's go further - the link history of the domain. You can do this on the 2 most powerful link analysis services:

We look at the dynamics of changes in the link profile - sharp humps, in principle, do not tell us anything terrible and we need to compare them with the historical dynamics of transitions from search engines, in particular Google, which we can get on the semrush service

Here is how Google dynamics looks on this service for a resource that has no problems:

And here's what the schedule looks like for a project that definitely has problems with Google:

I’m not just writing that problems in Google are a serious reason to think about the advisability of promoting this domain, because the number of visitors from this search engine slightly less than the number of visitors from Yandex in absolute terms, and getting out of the filter often takes many years, which will become a serious obstacle to full-fledged promotion. Here's what a Google filter exit graph might look like:

Therefore, in order to avoid serious problems, it is worth approaching the domain analysis very, very seriously. No age will save you if the domain is blacklisted by PS and this must be clearly understood.

Linking to hosting

The last question that will worry beginners is how to link a domain to hosting and why it is needed. Binding a domain to hosting uniquely determines the relationship between the site name and the IP address of the server on which the site is located. As mentioned above, at any time the domain can be connected to any other site on the network, and the current connection is determined by the registered NS hosting addresses. To do this, in the settings on the registrar's website where it was purchased, you must specify the addresses that the hosting sends you at the time of registration. On the example of Rucenter, it looks like this:

If you do not know the dns of your hosting and he did not send them to you during registration, you should contact those support and they will give you them. If you bought a domain and hosting on the same project, everything is often prescribed automatically and you just have to fill in the site. In any case, remember - hosting technical support is your friend and is always ready to help even in matters such as site transfer. Feel free to write about any issue that arises, such as archiving and backup, solving problems with speed and availability, connecting Yandex or Google mail to a domain, and others.

By the way, if you need to turn to or Google, it is quite simple to do this by following my advice. And the knowledge of search algorithms described by me will help promote and promote your site in these search engines.

Summary

Choosing a domain for SEO promotion is by no means the easiest task. Today I analyzed the issue of acquiring and analyzing a domain as widely as possible - I hope the article turned out to be useful and interesting, and if so, subscribe to new blog articles. Many more interesting things will be ahead, for this I vouch. I will be glad to see your comments!

And here is an interesting video for today: