The web design world is full of myths that imply that this is the easiest industry in the world. However, as a new web designer, you’ll have to follow certain rules and break through the myths to build a name for yourself in the industry. Building websites is tough work, and domain names are just part of it. In this article, we’ll cover the most common myths surrounding them.

Match your social media handle to your domain name

While it seems like a good idea to have a unified front between your social media accounts and your domain name, this can easily backfire in the future. The value of businesses on social media isn’t related to the value of their domain names and solely depends on your social media strategy.

Even if your domain name holds a lot of value to you, it doesn’t have to mean anything to your competitors and they can still use it for their own marketing strategies, without knowing your business even exists.

As well as that, giving a third-party website so much power over your domain name and brand identity can have horrible consequences in the long run. Some social media networks that are so popular today may not be so in a few years, and you don’t need your business associated with a failing network.

You don’ t need to go for .com

It’s often the consensus that you can do just as well with .biz, .net, or .jp domains. While there s nothing inherently wrong with these domains, they do send the message to your audience that you are very late to the party.

This sends the message to your audience that you aren’t very original and have taken a while to catch up to the competition. It can also lead them to see you as lesser than other businesses with the same name but different domains.

As well as that, you should consider what kind of business you’re registering for. For non-profit organizations, .org can work just as well .com. In the same sense, if you’re targeting developers, you can end your name in .io.

For commercial purposes and brand building, .com is still the most useful option. If the name you’ve chosen for your business is already taken for the .com version, it’s better to change the name of the business so that you can register it under a free .com domain.

For this reason, it’s always better to research domain names first before you register your business and its name officially. It helps you avoid a headache and ensures you’re not making a mistake.

A perfect domain exists for every website

You can search far and wide for the perfect domain name for every project you do, but the chances are high that it doesn’t actually exist. People do this mainly because they believe that domain names have inherent value, which is simply untrue.

Instead, they acquire value over time, so any domain name can become perfect over time if you know how to tweak your digital strategy and have some luck. For example, Google is one of the most valued domains out there today, but it had nothing to offer when the internet was just getting started. No one would think to buy it because the word wasn’t related to searches at that time.

Instead, people went for names such as find.com or look.com. Despite not having much value in the beginning, google became one of the best-known domains of all time because of a good marketing strategy, strong branding, and time.

Who’s to say that your business can’t be the same if you play your cards right?

Anyone can own it

People often believe that the domain name belongs absolutely to them when they register it. In truth, no one really owns the domain name. This is why annual fees are necessary you are simply renting the name for the time being.

When you pay to register, you’re paying to an entity that still owns the name, under the agreement that you get to use it for your business.

It’ s absolutely necessary to have a domain name

People who claim that the domain name is the most important part of your business don’t actually know what domain names are. The necessary part is the IP address, the name is just an alias that’s more easily read by humans.

We’re able to understand and read words and connect the dots much better than we’re able to do the same things with numbers. A domain name helps bridge the gap between numbers and makes your business more recognizable.

In this sense, it is definitely useful and most businesses should have it. However, before you jump into action, think about the intended audience and purpose of the new website. In some cases, having just a sub-domain or a registered IP address will do.

In any case, don’t be one of those people who buys the domain name first and never develops it. Some people keep repeating this process, too, meaning that they end up with a bunch of names they have to pay for without reaping any of the benefits.

It should contain keywords

One very prevalent myth is that the domain name for every new business should contain keywords. When registering for a new domain name, it means either the strategy or the business is new. In either case, keyword research has been conducted, but since the site isn’t live yet, you don’t know the exact keywords yet.

Whether it comes to good local SEO or SEO in general, what you need to know is that keywords change. An ongoing comprehensive strategy when it comes to local SEO is just as important as your general strategy for this reason.

For the same reason, you shouldn’t include keywords in your domain name. You might be pretty confident about them now, but you never know how they can change. As well as that, you have to take into account how your customers view your brand. Research has shown that they tend to dislike brands with keywords in the domain name, as it makes it look like a generic and discounted option.

Your domain name is part of your brand, so to build a strong and recognizable one, you have to be more original and aware of how your customers see you. Of course, there are benefits to putting keywords in the name, but they’re minimal and won’t do much for your business in the long run.

It’ s not a good idea to invest in premium domains

While it may seem like premium domains are better than normal ones simply because they have that adjective in front of them, they actually aren’t. The main reason people think the premium is better is that they hope to get a bigger resale fee.

This is called domain squatting, and the process consists of people registering for different domains in bulk, hoping they can sell them to others for a greater value. Basically, you would be spending a lot of money that would benefit you more in your actual marketing strategy for something that doesn’t hold much value.

On top of that, these domains usually have a history with search engines and other legacy issues, meaning that it would make it harder to remove penalties and rank higher. In other words, by not going for the premium you pay a lot less and get a squeaky clean domain that won’t cause issues with Google.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a lot of myths surrounding domain names. All of them can be researched and broken so you don’t have to worry about doing the wrong thing. It’s not easy breaking through the web design industry, but with proper research and dedication, you can definitely do it. The first step is getting the right domain name and we’re confident you’ve got that part covered.

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When you realize that something is wrong with the site …

Website development and search engine promotion are most often carried out by different contractors. Even in full-service agencies, development and SEO teams do not always work in a team.

When the site is already up and running, it often turns out that for a successful optimization, you need to seriously change the structure and functionality. In the meantime, implementing changes costs about the same as re-developing the corresponding parts of the project.

Problems also arise when SEO requirements are not taken into account when redesigning a site or other large-scale changes: changing the structure, CMS, hosting, or domain, or switching to a secure data transfer protocol (HTTPS).

In such cases, after the publication of changes, traffic can significantly drop. And the business, to begin with, is losing customers and orders that brought referrals from search results. And then spends time and money to restore that traffic.

SEO support

SEO support solves several important tasks: structure development, comparison of current URLs with new ones, and technical optimization.

What to do if the project has already started? Try to provide SEO support before publishing a new site (or rolling out other changes).

At this point, you can still offer a solution that will facilitate subsequent optimization and reduce the risk of traffic drops.

1. Make a project

Choosing a CMS.

The possibilities of project development depend on which engine the site will run on: scaling sections, developing new functionality, introducing CNC (human-readable URLs), and integrating with CRM and other external systems.

Demand analysis.

To draw up a competent site structure, you need to analyze the current hierarchy of sections and the structure of search demand. If the project is large-scale, it is advisable to save the URLs of the site’s main sections.

Development of the structure.

The hierarchy of sections should be reflected in the CNC structure, navigation menu, and navigation chains (“bread crumbs”). At this stage, you need to consider the possibility of scaling the structure and prepare a file of correspondences between the current and new URLs.

2. Think about the design

In order not to have to adjust the finished design, SEO specialists should participate in the project even at the prototyping stage. Landing page templates need to be analyzed according to the following criteria:

A place for the SEO text.

This element of the page is often forgotten, and the optimized content has to be placed directly above the footer and without division into functional blocks. Such layout clearly indicates the SEO origin of the text and can negatively affect the promotion.

Accessibility of the main sections.

The distribution of page weight will depend on the location of links in end-to-end blocks (for example, in the header and footer of the site). It is important that the main promoted sections of the site are “at arm’s length”.

Links to them should be placed as high as possible. Users should be able to navigate to these sections from any page in one click.

The presence of elements on the page that are necessary from the point of view of commercial ranking factors.

For example, you might want to consider the design and placement of product characteristics and stock information in advance – even if these elements will not be published in the first iteration.

3. Pay attention to Development

Front-end Testing.

Comprehensive cross-browser and multi-platform template testing is usually done by developers. Analysis helps to identify errors that went unnoticed.

Analysis of semantic layout.

The sequence and correctness of the tags of the logical formatting of the text (H1-H6 and others), the presence of micro-markup fields are checked.

Back-end Analysis of ways to display content.

Developers sometimes use scripting technologies to display content, which prevents search engines from indexing important sections. You need to make sure your landing pages are accessible to search engine crawlers.

Download speed control.

Website response speed directly affects behavioral characteristics and is one of the significant ranking factors. During the development stage, it is essential to ensure that the pages load as quickly as possible.

Setting goals and reports.

After the development of the functionality has been completed, you can add codes to the pages to track statistics. If analytics systems have been configured before, you need to take care of the consistency of reports.

4. Take care of the content

At this stage, the goal of SEO support is to maintain and increase the effectiveness of the content on the site. The work of an SEO specialist is based on materials prepared at the design stage and is carried out in two directions:

The mapping file between current and new URLs.

It is necessary to check if the optimized texts and tags (for example, Title) are preserved on the landing pages. Particular attention should be paid to the sections that rank high in the search and generate the main traffic.

5. Testing is a must-have

After the completion of the development and content work, a full technical analysis of the site should be carried out. The tasks of SEO support include:

Compiling a robots.txt file.

Scanning the site, checking codes, and page statuses, and eliminating errors associated with incorrect links.

The design of the 404 error page.

6. Publication

According to specialists from an experienced SEO agency in Sydney, this is the most crucial moment. When you publish a site, the following tasks should be performed:

Technical analysis.

The site is most often published on a server other than the one used during development. When moving files, new errors may occur, so a repeated technical analysis is required.

First of all, the robots.txt settings are checked: sometimes developers save a file that prohibits indexing the entire site.

Checking redirects.

For all inaccessible old pages, 301 redirects to the new pages or sections relevant to them must be correctly configured.

Conclusion

The possibilities for the development of the site are almost endless, therefore, upon completion of the project, a list of priority tasks is prepared for the next releases. It will save you a lot of time and bring a lot of income. SEO support for development ends at the moment when a plan for further optimization of the project is created.

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