3 Reasons Why Your Blog’s Title and Your Domain Name Should Match
Having a successful, popular blog can be very beneficial. A well-visited web blog has the potential to create strong brand recognition, establish the owner as an authority and produce positive results from customer interaction. Blogs can be veritable money-spinners and there are very few successful businesses that do not have established company blogs online.
With this in mind, it should be clear that starting a blog is a great idea. However, sabotaging that blog by choosing a different domain name and title for the blog is a bad idea. Here are 3 reasons why a blog’s URL and title should always be the same.
1. Domain Name / Title Confusion
In an ideal world, people searching for a blog they had previously visited, and liked, would simply enter the blog’s URL into their browser address bar – or at the very least they should search for the blog using the domain name. Unfortunately, people can be easily confused and quite often a returning visitor will use the blog title to find the site, instead of the domain name. If the blog is not ranked in a search engine for its own title then the searcher may not be able to find the blog they are searching for. By keeping the domain name and title identical, this little problem is all but eliminated.
2. Search Engine Optimization - SEO
It is a well-known fact that search engines place great importance on the title and domain name when evaluating a site. If these two important factors both contain the same information this can improve a blog’s search engine rank (especially if both contain the primary keyword). With all other things been equal, the blog that has ‘puppy training’ in both the title and the URL should outrank a blog that has ‘puppy training’ in the title, but ‘dog training’ in the URL – if ‘puppy training’ was the specified search query.
It is not necessary to include the URL extension in the title. If the blog is greatgolftips.com, for example, it is perfectly acceptable to just have ‘Great Golf Tips’ as the title. Some people do include the URL extension, but this is only a matter of personal preference and will not have much impact on overall search engine performance.
3. Consistency and Blandness
People visiting a blog with the domain name ‘cheeselovers.com’ will be expecting to find a blog all about the wonderful properties of cheese. If they click the link and come across a blog titled, ‘Sausages Forever’, they are unlikely to stick around. Never create a new blog using an old domain name that is unrelated, and irrelevant, to the new subject matter. If the new blog is about cheese, purchase a new domain name that matches.
Choosing a generic domain name is also a recipe for disaster. Forward planning is vital for a successful blog. Think about what the specific subject matter will be and what the potential blog will be called – then go looking for a domain name. Hedging bets by opting for a domain name that can potentially be used for a range of topics only removes the chance to have a purposeful, targeted domain and title combination. If a blog title has to be compromised to match a poorly selected domain name, the blog will suffer – in both originality and from the possibility that the actual blog content could end up becoming estranged from the blog title.
These 3 points highlight how important it is to carefully plan a blog before rushing out and purchasing a domain name. A popular blog can be a powerful tool, but in order to become a success, the blog has to be given every available chance to make a flying start.
By selecting a domain name, and matching this to the blog title, a blog allows itself the best opportunity for improved search engine placement, reduces the risk of reader confusion and decreases the chances of losing valuable traffic to erroneous search queries.
For Horton Group SEO By D M Gray
