Are you planning to promote your brand online? If your answer is in the affirmative then there are a large number of factors that you need to take into consideration. One of the biggest factors to be considered while promoting your brand is the home URL of your website. Like the name of your website, it is important to select the home URL carefully. Your keyword rich URL can pave the way for brand creation of your website. Whether you want to have a business website or a personal one, having a keyword rich home URL is of utmost importance.
You are competing with so many other websites in your niche and so it is important for you to stand out. Once users find your website useful, your brand name starts to become popular. But to get the first few users interested in your brand you need to find ways of attracting them. One of the best ways to do so is by having a home URL that gives the viewers a glimpse of what your website has in store for them.
Search Engine Friendly- True or False?
Out of all the sites in the world how will a user find your site? Search engines are the answer. When anyone is looking for anything online then they enter the keywords or queries into the search engines. The search engines in turn list the relevant sites depending upon the site rankings.
Site rankings depend on a number of factors but the home URL of the site is of some relevance as well. When you search for any keyword then you are sure to come across a number of sites which have the keywords in their home URL. But there are many websites that might have one or more of the same keywords as your website. In such a case there are other factors that come into the equation. Over all the keyword that your URL can contain does play a minor role in determining the search engine ranking of your website.
Branded URLs
Not all branded sites have keyword rich URLs. Most of the sites like Google, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube and so on, have home URLs that have nothing to do with any related keywords. But the sites have created a brand out of their names. There are various factors behind the popularity of the brand names. There are quite a few reasons as to why having a branded home URL can be helpful:
- It offers a short name that is easy to remember
- The short brand name makes it easier for users to remember the link of your website
- Smaller branded URLs are more easily available
- They can be unique
- It helps to maintain brand consistency
- The short brand name looks clean and professional
But there are a few disadvantages of choosing a branded home URL:
- The short name does not cover all that your site has to offer
- It increases advertising cost
- It can take much longer to get a good search engine ranking
Even if your home URL is branded, you can pack keywords into the URLs of the different pages of your sites. For example, if you search for “second hand car” then the search will redirect you to pages from Craigslist and so on because the page URLs contains the keywords.
Keyword Rich URLs
Branded URLs are different from the keyword rich URLs in a number of ways. The biggest difference is the length of the two URLs. For example, if a wedding photographer wants to have a website, he can choose to have a branded URL, say Click.com, or he might choose to have a name like, Best-Wedding-Pics.com. The keyword rich home URL seems to offer a comprehensive idea of what the site is about. It can attract more users as it offers a clear detail. At the same time the keywords can help increase search engine ratings of the page.
Now that the keyword rich URL has managed to attract users, the site can make a name for itself. So, you do not have to find a fancy brand URL to draw more users. It is a better idea to draw users using a keyword rich URL. The increased traffic in turn can help you create a brand name for your site
Whether you select a branded URL or a keyword rich URL for your website, try to stick to the language of your target audience. If you make use of complex words in foreign languages then the users might be misled into believing that your website is in a foreign language. For example, a website which had www.themo.com/topic/abc as its URL may lose users to competitor who has a URL structure like www.sitesample.com/themes/topic/abc. This is because users think that the Italian word used for “theme”, in the example, meant that the site was in Italian.
Before starting your online business you need to ensure that you choose a word and language that is indicative of your site’s content. So what are you waiting for? Gear up to promote your online brand with a keyword rich URL.
