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Since its launch in 2007 as a novelty social media site, Twitter has since grown to be one of the most influential and popular news-sharing platforms in the world. As of 2022, the app now sits as the #1 download in the ‘News’ category on the app store.
Reports of Twitter’s decline in recent years has been driven primarily by the platform’s inability to capitalise on its large user base: from 2009 to 2018, Twitter was listing a net loss on the New York stock exchange. Despite having introduced several subscription-based features for top users, 85% of Twitter’s profits still come from ad revenue.
However, as a user base, Twitter is its own thriving ecosystem. It’s also now one of the most active social media sites in the world, with almost 230 million active monthly users.
But why is Twitter so popular, and why do traditional news sites find it difficult to compete?
While other social media sites such as Facebook (now Meta) and Instagram are constantly evolving to keep up with their competitors, Twitter remains as popular with users as ever, despite the original concept of the site remaining mostly unchanged. There are a few factors that can help explain Twitter’s popularity:
It comes as a shock to nobody that the internet struck a massive blow to the traditional print news model. Newspaper circulation has been in steady decline for years, and even fell under 1 million in 2020. To combat financial losses – and in an attempt to “digitise” the traditional print model – many British newspapers decided to implement paywalls, where readers have to subscribe or pay one-off fees to access long-form articles.
As of 2022, over two-thirds of leading online newspapers across Europe and the US operate an online paywall, while Twitter remains free to use. Not only does Twitter remain free to use, but newspapers are present and active on the site, allowing users to access headlines and news without having to pay monthly fees to access content.
Another reason Twitter is treated like a news site: it is largely populated by newspaper accounts and journalists. A majority of journalists use the platform to share their content with their readers, turning the platform into a news sharing site by default.
Issues such as Brexit divided Brits into warring camps, and much of these political battles were played out – and continue to be played out – online, especially on Twitter. This leads us onto perhaps Twitter’s key USP as a news site: it allows users to curate their own newsfeeds according to their own political and social sensibilities.
What’s worse is that Twitter’s algorithm actively encourages users to create their own political echo chambers. As research by UK think tank Demos confirmed, Twitter’s algorithm is most likely to recommend users, tweets, and other content based on content you’ve already positively engaged with. While this might create a more user-friendly experience for individuals, it can amplify social and political tensions on a wider scale.
In order to understand the breadth of Twitter’s influence, it’s important to first understand that the way we consume news has drastically evolved in the last fifteen to twenty years. In the pre-internet era, news stories typically broke in one of two ways: during TV or radio news bulletins, or on the front page of the daily newspaper.
Nowadays, internet users are bombarded with endless streams of information: news, current events, politics, scandals, and more. The online content-generation business is thriving, but what is often labelled as “news” isn’t actually newsworthy. In addition to this, Twitter even exists cross-platform: readers read tweeted news outside of Twitter; via Instagram, Facebook and other social media sites.
When trying to understand the Twitter phenomenon, it’s important not to leave out the commentary factor. Twitter isn’t just a platform for reading or sharing news, but a site where active commentary flourishes and thrives. Unlike your typical online newspaper comments section, Twitter users are able to debate and argue using fast technology, and are often rewarded with likes, retweets and followers for sharing their views.
Twitter creates something of a positive feedback loop, whereby users are more likely to engage with news stories in the hopes of kickstarting a debate, finding like-minded individuals or simply expressing their views and opinions. On Twitter, reading news isn’t a passive activity; it actively encourages users to engages and debate about current events and news.
While Twitter is a largely liberal social media website – in the sense that users can generally post what they wish – the platform carries a certain legitimacy and trust factor that its rival Facebook hasn’t yet managed to achieve. This can be perhaps explained by the presence of high-profile figures, newspapers, and institutions that use the site extensively; for politicians and celebrities, it’s stranger to not have a Twitter account than to be a known Tweeter. The second-last US President even preferred to consult his Twitter followers about policy decisions before his press team.
This trust factor is also due to Twitter taking misinformation perhaps more seriously than other social media sites. Twitter was the first social network to introduce fact-checking during the 2020 US Presidential election, and also implemented fact-checkers to monitor misinformation circulating around the COVID-19 pandemic and the COVID-19 vaccines.
Perhaps one of the most significant decisions taken by the company was the suspension of sitting US President Donald Trump in January 2021. Following the January 6th storming of the US capitol building by protestors, Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account after he appeared to condone the protests. By suspending the most influential and powerful of its users, Twitter sent a strong message to its critics: that nobody was exempt from adhering to their code of conduct policies.
Decisions like these – along with their attempts at moderating user content – has helped Twitter foster a reputation for trustworthiness that other social media sites have been unable to achieve.
With the liberalisation of information – thanks in large part to Twitter and the internet – the influence of alternative news sites and highly partisan reporting is increasingly wide-reaching.
This has contributed to a significant decrease in media trust amongst Brits, which in recent years hadn’t been particularly strong to begin with. For example, in 2015, only 51% of Brits claimed to have trust in the mainstream media. As of 2022, this figure has plummeted to just 34%. Divisive matters such as Brexit and Coronavirus have driven users to engage with content that corresponds to their personal beliefs; in turn, “balanced” reporting appears untrustworthy.
While Twitter is now the most popular hub for news sharing, many advertisers are turning away from the site. For the most part, this is due to Twitter’s terrible pay-per-impression advertising model. When you advertise with Twitter, any interaction with a paid tweet – such as clicking the image or simply expanding the tweet – counts as an impression.
This flawed model can lead to high costs and a poor ROI rate, especially for new businesses. Plus, Twitter offers no real or concrete data about your campaign – you’ll be able to access data on impressions, but nothing else.
In 2022, the best way to grow your business online is via organic growth on Google. Not only is an SEO campaign more likely to help you reach your target audience, it’s the most viable long-term strategy for growth. Tweeting is fleeting; around 500 million tweets are posted per day on the app, making it easy for your campaign to get lost amongst the noise. With the help of an Ecommerce SEO agency London, you can achieve real-time growth and a long-term content strategy for your business.
Google Instant worked by offering popular search results to users based on their location and search history. For example, a user in France typing the letter ‘A’ into Google might be suggested the French health insurance service Amelie, while a user in the US might be suggested ‘Amazon.’ Again, these suggestions would depend on the user’s own search history and current trending topics.
If you have your own custom website, using a URL shortener is an effective way of making the links on your page appear more clean and aesthetically pleasing. Some URL shortener services also offer you ways to track your web pages when it comes to link sharing and online traffic.
With so many different URL shortener services available on the web, it can be difficult to choose the right one for your website. In this blog, I’m going to go over some of the best and most popular URL shortener services, what each provides, and how they can benefit your tracking and SEO efforts.
So, which URL shorteners to use in 2023? Let’s take a look.
A URL shortener is a service that allows you to shrink any long, messy URLs for your website into short, more aesthetically appealing URLS or ‘slugs’. Some URL shortening services also come with tracking tools, so you can easily monitor the amount of traffic or shares your links are getting on a daily basis.
A URL shortener is a service that allows you to shrink any long, messy URLs for your website into short, more aesthetically appealing URLS or ‘slugs’. Some URL shortening services also come with tracking tools, so you can easily monitor the amount of traffic or shares your links are getting on a daily basis.
Let’s face it, long, lengthy links full of numbers and symbols make us think of one thing: spam. Using a URL shortener is a great way to clean up your links and make your web pages seem more professional when they appear in the search bar. Shorter URLs are also easier for mobile users to access, and in general, they’re just more visually appealing than a big jumble of letters and numbers.
If you have a custom website, you’re probably tracking and monitoring traffic. Some URL shortening services allow you to monitor traffic for your website, so you can get an idea of how many people are sharing your links, and where. Having access to this information can help you improve your marketing strategies, by seeing where your content is most popular.
If your content is great, visitors are more likely to want to share your content with their social media audiences. However, are visitors going to feel compelled to share a link made up of thousands of characters? Most likely not. As I already said, long links connote spam and poor quality content. This is why a URL shortener is essential if you’re relying on organic traffic to boost your website hits. The more traffic you get to your site, the higher your Google ranking is likely to be.
Don’t forget that many sites also have character limits when it comes to sharing posts, such as Twitter, where the character limit is 280. You want to make your URL as compact as possible, so people can share your content organically without feeling like they’re promoting spam.
The answer to this question is slightly complicated. On the one hand, yes, URL shorteners are going to help your long-term SEO goals by making your content more shareable, and making your site more reader-friendly and easy to navigate. However, when used to disguise links and avoid nofollow tags, it can lead to spamming, which can lead to low user confidence.
A nofollow tag (typically seen in a URL as rel=”nofollow”) is a way for social media sites to indicate to Google not to consider the link authoritative when ranking pages. This is typically implemented to discourage the abuse of link sharing on social media, whereby users attempt to manipulate Google rankings by spamming on social media.
However, URL shorteners can often get past this, making it easier to redirect traffic to your website. While this can be used as a tactic to generate website traffic, it’s important not to forget that user trust is highly important when it comes to SEO. Promoting your content naturally – without spamming – is the best way to use URL shorteners.
If you’re looking for a URL shortener to use for your website, here are some of the most popular URL shortening services, and what they offer:
Bit.ly – One of the most popular URL shorteners, Bit.ly allows you to create short, custom URLs for your website easily using a custom domain name. Bit.ly also allows users to monitor and track your links when it comes to shares and clicks.
Geniuslink – allows you to track important data, while also customising and shortening your URLs to reflect your custom domain name.
Tinyurl – Tinyurl was one of the first-ever URL shorteners on the web, and can still be used to shorten longer links. You can also customise your links to reflect any custom domain name.
When it comes to seeing results from an SEO campaign, it’s important to note that URL shortening isn’t going to be the most determinative factor in increasing your ranking. In some cases, it might even simply be neutral. Successful SEO strategies need a combination of the following to truly be effective:
Backlinking is the backbone of SEO; backlinking shows that your page is an authoritative source when it comes to your keyword and website niche. Put simply, Google considers each backlink to your site to be a “vote of confidence” for your content. The more backlinks you have to your site (preferably from reputable sources), the higher your content is going to rank.
It’s simple: poor quality content isn’t going to rank well, and it certainly isn’t going to convert (if your intent is commercial). Whether it’s poorly written content, or bad SEO practice (keyword stuffing, spamming redirects) ignoring the user experience is bad for SEO. User confidence is an important factor in building trust and credibility, and this begins by creating high-value content that is relevant to your target keyword searches. When you actually provide something of value to your readers, they’re more likely to share your content, revisit your website, or explore your other content. All of this boosts your engagement and helps SEO.
If you’re new to SEO and trying to rank your online content, it’s not a good idea to try to tackle your online strategy without expert help. You can maximise your gains and reduce time wasted by hiring an ecommerce SEO agency to help you navigate the process. An SEO agency will be able to offer expert advice, design a personalised SEO strategy that works for your business, and increase your conversions and sales.
So, is URL shortening worth it? In general, yes. It’s always a good idea to make your content more readable, and URL shorteners can help you monitor and track your shares, impressions, and ranking. Just make sure that you’re also implementing a well-rounded, comprehensive SEO strategy to accompany it.
While longer URLs can still rank on Google, a shorter URL is more aesthetically appealing and is going to make your website appear more professional. When you use a URL shortener, you can also use target keywords as slugs, which can help make your content intentions clearer, making your site more user-friendly (and therefore improving your SEO by enhancing your site’s credibility).
It depends. In general, your URL isn’t going to be the most important factor that plays into your SEO ranking. However, clean URLS can enhance your website readability and make it easier for users to navigate your website. The longer a reader remains on your website, the more Google considers your content to be high quality.
The best way to make your URL SEO-friendly is to use a relevant keyword as the URL slug. This makes it easy to track and monitor the keyword ranking, and also enhances the user experience by making your site navigation easier.
SEO is an increasingly important tool when it comes to digital marketing; many companies are now turning away from expensive PPC advertising models and turning to durable, long-term SEO strategies instead.
But before you can implement an SEO strategy, you’ll need to have an SEO company perform what is known as an SEO audit on your website. An SEO audit is essentially just an inspection of your website when it comes to its ranking on Google; how well it ranks, where it can improve, and what strategies should be implemented to increase your search engine visibility.
So, how much does an SEO audit cost, and what does it entail? Let’s take a look.
On average, you can expect to pay anywhere between £400 and £10,000 for a full SEO audit on your website. Obviously, these costs will vary depending on a number of variable factors, and will depend on how long the audit takes.
As an award-winning SEO consultancy in London, we’ve performed countless audits on websites large and small. Typically, the following factors will play a role in the overall cost of an SEO audit:
Website size
The size of your website is going to play a determinative role in the overall cost of your SEO audit. If you have a large, sprawling website, it’s going to take longer for your hired SEO experts to work their way through the content. The complexity of your website will also play a role; for example, it’s much easier to perform an SEO audit (and implement key SEO strategies) on a website that uses a typical hosting service such as WordPress.
Website age
If you’re running a website that has only recently gone live, it’s much quicker to perform an SEO audit. If you’re just starting your business, it’s also easier to develop a winning SEO strategy both on-page and off-site. However, for older websites, an SEO audit can take slightly longer; all off-site content and on-site content will need to be evaluated, and this can take longer for the SEO team to complete.
Type of audit
Another factor that will influence your SEO audit price will be the type of audit your website needs. There are five different types of SEO audits: a technical audit, a content audit, a social audit, a link audit (or off-site audit) and a competitive audit. The type of audit you need – and the type of website you run – will naturally influence the final audit costs. For example, if you run a blog with hundreds of pages of long-form content, your content audit is going to cost more than a simple technical audit. You can also opt for a combination of all three types of audit; again, this will obviously play a role in the final audit price.
The overall purpose of an SEO audit is to find ways to optimise your website within your given niche. There’s really no “one size fits all” answer when it comes to SEO; every website and niche has different needs.
That being said, most SEO audits will include a basic inspection of key site elements, such as readability, technical performance, on-site and off-site content review, crawlability, indexation analysis, broken links, and images and text.
There are also different types of SEO audits, as mentioned above. In general, a complete SEO audit package will include the following elements:
A technical SEO audit is an inspection of your site from a logistical and user-friendly point of view. Your SEO experts will analyse factors such as page loading times, whether or not your site is mobile-friendly, and other technical factors that influence your site’s readability and usability, such as 404 error pages and duplicate content.
A content audit is an inspection of the written content on your website, in particular your service pages, landing pages, and your website’s blog. When it comes to SEO, content really is key: your SEO team will be able to identify target keywords that can help your website rank within your specific niche. SEO companies will usually first try to find “low-hanging fruit” keywords – these are search terms within your niche that combine high search volume with low competition.
A competitive audit will analyse your website’s performance and compare it to your main competitors. Your SEO team will report back on your site’s weak points, as well as your competitors’ strong points; this allows you to optimise your site for SEO, improve your content, while also making your site more competitive with your key rivals.
A social audit inspects your site’s presence on social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and other social media websites. A social audit will also inspect your site’s shareability factor: aka, how easy it is for users to share and disperse your content online (URL shorteners, readable content etc.)
Also known as an off-site audit, a link audit will inspect all the backlinks to your website. Backlinks (known as link-building to SEO experts) are incredibly important when it comes to SEO; a link audit will inspect the quality of your backlinks and give suggestions on where to improve your off-site visibility.
Depending on the size of your website – and depending on the type of SEO audit your website needs – a typical audit can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks. If your website is very text-heavy, with lots of backlinks and off-site content, it may take even longer. You shouldn’t be discouraged by the length of time your SEO audit might take. SEO itself is a long process; we prefer to think of it as a marathon, not a sprint.
Even if you’re not planning on implementing a new SEO strategy, an SEO audit can be incredibly helpful when it comes to improving the user experience on your website. Here are just a few reasons why businesses should conduct regular SEO audits on their websites:
Durable, long-term results
If you’re looking to move away from pricey PPC campaigns, SEO is the easiest (and most durable) form of digital marketing. And unlike a PPC campaign, you don’t have to keep paying for an SEO audit every month. While you might pay for SEO services (this will typically include blog writing, keyword research and link-building) these services will help your website grow organically for years to come.
Enhanced user experience
Not only does an SEO audit help improve your Google ranking and conversions, it’s also great for enhancing the user experience on your website. There’s nothing more annoying than trying to navigate your way through a website with long page loading times, broken links, and poorly written content. An SEO audit will help clean up any missed website errors, and create a user-first experience that will encourage readers to stay on your site for longer.
Reach your target audience more easily
At its core, the principle of business is solving people’s problems for profit. And where do people typically search for solutions to their problems? Google! With 3.8 million searches per minute globally, you can reach your target customers easily with well-written, SEO-optimised content. Not only are you providing a service (aka your business), but with well-written, SEO-optimised content (such as a free blog post or informative article) you’re actually producing something of value to your customers.
Overall, the cost of your SEO audit will largely depend on the size of your website, the type of audit you’re looking for, and the complexity of your SEO needs. As already mentioned above, there’s no winning blueprint for SEO; every website will require a different type of audit, strategy, and overview.
Crawling is incredibly important when it comes to SEO. If you’ve ever wondered how search engines find content to appear in their search results, there isn’t a human sitting behind a screen and hand-picking the best articles.
In fact, most search engines use their own bots to crawl websites and index all relevant content – but what technology do search engines use to crawl websites, and how do they choose what content to index?
In this blog, we’re going to take a look at some of the technology search engines use to crawl websites, and what criteria is taken into account when search engine algorithms rank web pages.
Crawling refers to the use of bots by search engines to analyse and “crawl” web pages on the internet. Put simply, search engine bots will explore and scour the internet, looking for new web pages to index on their search engines.
Indexing refers to the process in which a web page is added to a search engine; i.e., if you search for a particular term or keyword relating to the web page, the page will show up in the search engine’s results.
Ranking refers to the hierarchy in which content is displayed in search engine results, and this is where the importance of SEO comes in. High quality content (aka content that has been optimised for SEO) will be more likely to be displayed on the first page of the search results, leading to higher visitor rates, higher conversions, and more exposure for the website in question.
As an award-winning SEO consultancy in London, we’ve performed countless audits on websites large and small. Typically, the following factors will play a role in the overall cost of an SEO audit:
Search engines use bots to crawl websites. This method is much more efficient than it would be for search engine employees to crawl online content manually. There’s so much new content published online every day – around 250,000 websites per day to be exact – that it would be unsustainable and inefficient for it to be done manually.
In general, bots are not looking to rank content (that’s the job of the search engine’s algorithm), but simply looking to add more web pages to their search engines and ensure that each web page is indexed correctly. Put simply, search engines want to make sure that they’re directing searchers to the right content when they search for specific terms and keywords.
Crawlers also look for the following when crawling websites:
Images, videos, audio content
A search engine index refers to the library of content that the search engine has accumulated via crawling the web. It is effectively a gigantic database, made up of all the websites crawled and indexed by search engine bots.
Not exactly. While crawlers choose which content shows up in the search engine’s index, search engines typically use an algorithm to rank content. This is because not all content will be relevant for all users at any given time; the search engine’s algorithm will take into account various factors about the person making the query, which typically tend to be the following:
Your location (if available) will influence the results you’re shown when you type in keywords to Google. This is because the accuracy of displayed content might differ from location to location. For example, if you searched the phrase “average rent 2024”, you’d want to find the average rent in your area. Most search engines, if they already have enough information about you, will be able to cater the results of your searches to reflect your circumstances.
The search engine will almost always show you search results in the language that you used to search for your query; however in some cases, your location will take precedence over your language. In this case, you’ll be shown content relevant to the language of the location you’re in.
In order to offer you the most relevant search results, search engines will also often take into account your previous search history; sites you frequently use, terms you’ve already researched, etc.
Some search results will also be skewed on whether or not you’re using a PC, laptop or mobile device. This is because some sites are not particularly mobile-friendly, so won’t be prioritised by an algorithm producing results for a searcher using a mobile.
So, if crawlers don’t rank web pages, why are they important when it comes to SEO? It’s simple: crawling is important for SEO because your website will need to be crawled and indexed in order to rank on Google or other relevant search engines. If your site isn’t indexed, it won’t be visible in any search results, and any SEO efforts to increase your site’s rankings will be futile. In order to have your website indexed by search engine bots, you’ll need to ensure that your website is full of high quality content (content that is relevant to the keyword terms you’re targeting) and ensure that you’re not producing duplicate or low-quality content (which a search engine bot might consider to be spam). Having an SEO expert on-hand to audit your site and audit your content can increase your chances of having your website indexed by search engines.
Once your site has been indexed, you’ll be able to begin the process of SEO optimisation, which is geared towards appealing to the search engine’s algorithm, rather than the crawler bots. As mentioned above, the algorithm will take into account factors such as a user’s location, language, and search history, but there are also basic SEO principles that will determine whether or not a web page ranks high on the first pages of a search engine.
In general, a web page needs the following in order to rank on Google and other search engines:
Duplicate content is severely penalised on search engines, and sometimes won’t even be indexed.
Well-written, factual, well-structured, and informative content is key to SEO dominance. If your web pages, landing pages, service pages or blogs are poorly written, you’re not going to bag the coveted top spot in the search results.
It’s incredibly important to have significant dofollows to your content; this means that people link back to your web page via other sources on the net. Lots of high quality backlinks illustrate that your content can be considered authoritative on the given subject. You can obtain backlinks through guest posts, guest blogs and social media.
Search engines are multi-faceted; you can typically search keywords in page results, image results, video results and more. If your web page incorporates high quality images or visual content, your content is probably more likely to rank highly.
If your site is full of error 404 pages, broken links, broken images or outdated content, the site is unlikely to rank on results pages. Search engines prefer to rank updated, relevant and recent content, so it’s a good idea to re-optimise your content regularly.
Crawling remains an important factor when it comes to helping your site rank on Google and other search engines. While it’s only the first step in the SEO journey, having your site indexed allows you to begin the real work of optimising your website and improving its visibility. The best way to improve the visibility of your website is to familiarise yourself with good SEO practices. If you don’t yet have the budget for a full SEO audit, you can always opt for SEO training in London and learn from the experts how to optimise your website yourself.
Depending on the size of your website – and depending on the type of SEO audit your website needs – a typical audit can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks. If your website is very text-heavy, with lots of backlinks and off-site content, it may take even longer. You shouldn’t be discouraged by the length of time your SEO audit might take. SEO itself is a long process; we prefer to think of it as a marathon, not a sprint.
Even if you’re not planning on implementing a new SEO strategy, an SEO audit can be incredibly helpful when it comes to improving the user experience on your website. Here are just a few reasons why businesses should conduct regular SEO audits on their websites:
We all know that images are important when it comes to SEO. They enhance the user experience, they help bring important context to complex topics, and they help to make your content more shareable. But what role do images play in the spidering process?
Spidering – often referred to as ‘crawling’ – is how search engines find, analyse, and index web pages on the net. Crawlers will take into account important information about your website – such as its loading time, content relevancy, site usability, and more – before indexing it to be ranked later on. But can images be spidered by search engines? Let’s take a look.
As mentioned above, spidering – also known as crawling – is how search engines explore and evaluate online web pages to index within their search engines. Spidering allows the search engine to measure your website according to its content and important metadata, and your website won’t appear on major search engines before being crawled.
While it is eventually an algorithm that will decide how search engines decide to rank your content in their search results, the spidering process allows the search engine to evaluate your site in terms of relevance, keywords, loading time, and other features related to its usability. These factors will all come into play when it comes to determining your overall ranking – but does the spidering process pick up images? Not quite.
While crawlers are incredibly sophisticated at identifying metadata, they remain bots; this means that they’re unable to process any visual or non-text content. This also means that videos and images aren’t taken into account when crawlers evaluate your website – unless you take active measures to make them ‘seen’ – such as adding relevant alt text.
So, how can you take measures to SEO-optimise images on your web pages? Here are several things you can do:
The easiest way to help crawlers pick up your images is by adding alt text. Adding alt text allows the crawlers to identify your images as topically relevant, and will give context to an otherwise empty space or code; this can give your page an SEO boost. Most web-building platforms will have an alt-text box included whenever you upload an image to a page, so you don’t need to worry about writing complicated HTML. Always make sure to add a relevant alt text caption that aligns with your content keywords; this shows that you’re offering supplementary information that a user might find useful. It’s also important to note that adding alt text helps your site become accessibility-friendly; alt text is used to help those who are visually impaired read web pages.
While spiders are unable to read images or visual content, they will still be able to read file names. It’s a good idea to include a relevant keyword when saving and naming your image files; this can make it easier for the spiders to identify topical information.
As crawlers will be able to read all text content on your website, it’s a good idea to add some relevant captions when including images on any page. Captioning is also a great way to determine whether or not your images are necessary or not – in most cases, you should only add an image where it adds additional context or helps enhance the user experience. If you struggle to find a relevant caption for your image, feel free to scrap it.
When it comes to a stellar SEO strategy, many businesses forget about the importance of their domain name. While Google doesn’t take your domain into account as much as it does your content, your domain name is still going to be an important factor when it comes to local ranking, customer trust, as well as your business’ branding abilities.
In this guide, we’re going to go over everything you need to know about choosing an SEO friendly domain name, from branding names to keyword domains.
In short, yes. Your domain name is going to be one of the most important trust factors for any customer or visitor to your website. Having a clean, short domain name – especially if it’s relevant to your business – complete with a .com, .uk, or .org finish, is going to foster consumer confidence much more than a long list of numbers, symbols and an unknown domain extension.
When it comes to good SEO practice, it’s important to think about the user experience. After all, Google isn’t going to highly rank a website with a low visitor rating, or a high click-off rate. So, what helps encourage organic visitors? An easy-to-remember, catchy domain name.
Whether you’re already set on a branded domain name, or stuck between a service domain and a location domain, applying the following tips can help enhance the SEO-friendliness of your website:
The first thing you’ll want to ensure when choosing a domain name is to keep it short. Long-winded, unpronounceable, or difficult to read domain names are not going to be easy for the average consumer to remember. Plus, it can make it difficult for you to create written content that flows and directs users to your services organically. Keeping your domain name short (ideally between four and 16 characters) is ideal, and will make it easiest for visitors to remember. The more users visit your site organically, the higher your site is going to rank.
When it comes to choosing a domain extension (also known as a top-level domain), you’ll want to stick with trusted domains. .com, .uk, and .org are all some of the most popular domain extensions, and using one of these can help make your site appear more professional than something obscure. That being said, Google doesn’t take into account your domain extension when ranking your website: we’re simply talking about the user experience and trust factor, which will matter when it comes to your site ranking. According to recent data from Mailchimp, around 50% of all websites use a .com extension, making it the best option if you’re looking to establish a memorable, global brand domain that appears both trustworthy and authoritative.
Brand domains (aka choosing a domain unrelated to a keyword, with no detail about your business) can be highly effective for SEO campaigns. This is because Google likes brand domains, and will often use ‘brand signaling’ to promote high-quality content from new, branded businesses. A brand name should be snappy, have no distinct meaning, and is easy to pronounce and read. It should also be catchy and memorable: building a brand is all about first building a brand identity, but we’re going to discuss this further on.
Although Google does tend to favor brand domains in general, there are still some benefits to using a keyword domain name. First of all, it allows you to establish your business from the outset, so it’s easier for visitors to understand what your business is about, even if content is scarce at the beginning.
Plus, keyword domain names are helpful because they encourage clickthrough. For example, let’s compare Penguin (the publishing house) with a keyword domain name in the same field, such as publishing123.com. Without prior knowledge of the Penguin brand, somebody who’s looking for advice on publishing a book would most likely click through to publishing123, as it appears to correspond more to their search query. As always, a brand domain is going to rely heavily on building brand identity and brand recognition, which can mean extra marketing work for your business.
It’s no secret that Google prefers branded businesses to keyword businesses. In general, Google likes to amplify new and upcoming brands (think Apple, Twitter, etc) because users themselves enjoy brands. Google is, after all, a user-based service.
Having a branded name also comes with many logistical advantages. For example, it’s much easier to branch out and take your business in new directions with a branded domain name. If you have a keyword domain name – for example, Nails by Anna – but you want to start offering haircare services, it’s going to be much more difficult to rank content in the haircare genre with an unrelated keyword domain.
In addition, branded domains have the advantage of being memorable – provided that you use a short, quippy, memorable domain name. This is hugely important when it comes to your SEO ranking, as Google is going to take into account how many monthly organic visitors your site has when calculating your ranking. It’s simple: the more memorable your domain name the more your site will have organic visitors. And the more organic visitors you have, the higher your Google ranking.
On the downside, having a branded domain name means that you’re going to have to put in the work to establish your brand and business. This will typically mean using platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram to grow your brand awareness, and will also mean having a strong brand identity: logo, font, ethos, company values. This can be a lengthy and expensive add-on, and might not be possible if you’re starting a business alone from scratch.
Location domain names can be incredibly useful for SEO, as Google will always cater their search results to match the users’ own location and language. If you have a brick and mortar business in a particular city or town, a location-based domain name can be a great way to attract more local customers and clients, or increase online orders in your local area.
However, it can cause problems if you ever want to branch out and grow your business elsewhere; it can also be complicated if you move to a new city or new country, as you’ll need to rebuild your site, change your domain, and re-optimise your content for your new location.
If your business is exclusively online but offers its services or products internationally, it’s best to avoid a location-based domain and opt for a brand or keyword domain instead: a location domain will most likely discourage clickthrough from international visitors.
When it comes to choosing an SEO friendly domain name, the most important thing to consider is the user experience. While keywords can help your site rank in certain circumstances, a brand is easier to build from scratch, and can allow you to grow and scale your business as you wish, without limitations. If you need help with optimising the user experience of your website, it’s best to hire the help of SEO services – SEO experts can perform an SEO audit on your site, measuring its usability according to various important metrics.
Domain names that are short, easily pronounceable, memorable and catchy are ideal for boosting organic traffic and attracting Google’s brand signals.
Is .com best for SEO?
If you want your site to appear authoritative and professional, a .com domain extension is probably the best way to go. If .com isn’t available, you can always opt for .uk, if your business is strictly based in the UK.
Will changing domain name affect SEO?
Yes, changing your domain name will affect SEO, as your content has already been indexed by Google. This is why it’s important to settle on a domain name before creating content for your business.
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