When many business set up websites, they think about layout, page structure, colors, and images. Unfortunately, before they get to any of those, they have likely overlooked some important considerations about what the site's address will be. In other words, they haven't carefully considered their URL.
A Uniform Resource Locator, or URL, is a Uniform Resource Identifier that indicates the location of an identified resource and the method for its retrieval. In English, it's the address of a web page on the Internet.
Selecting an address for your website should be given some careful thought. Your website's address can have some significant ramifications in terms of branding and search engine performance.
In terms of branding, it might seem intuitive to select an address that reflects your business name. For example, if your company is ACME Widgets, you might think you should select acmewidgets.com. And this wouldn't be the worst idea either.
Obviously, if your web address closely matches your business name, it will help users easily find you online by either searching for your company name or by typing your address directly into their browser window (which believe it or not, many web users still do today). However, your potential user pool may be limited to your brand recognition. While this is not a horrible proposition, you may be missing out on a significant benefit from search engines.
While it has been the subject of some debate, using relevant keywords in your website's address probably gives you some "bump" in search results for those keywords. Further, using an "exact match" address, or an address that matches a keyword exactly, may give an even more substantial "bump" to your website's rankings for that particular keyword.
That is why it is so important to consider your address carefully. In fact, you may finally conclude that you need more than one site so as to reap the branding benefits, as well as, the search engine address benefits.
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