Founders Series: 5 tips to make your domain work harder
Welcome to our Founders Series, where we aim to give advice, answer questions and provide solutions for people starting their own businesses. If this sounds like you, read on! We've got plenty of content on a wide range of topics, all to help you grow and succeed as a founder.
Remember when you first created your website domain? A proud moment, we’re sure, as your new business received its digital username and settled into its online home. But now that a little time has passed, things are feeling a bit cosy – so it’s time to consider how that domain could work harder to support your growing business.
Could it look and sound more compelling? Can it be refined for better performance? The answer is always yes, so let’s unpack how.
Check your domain authority
Just like most online processes, monitoring and measuring is essential to ensure the consistently high-performance of your domain. This is otherwise known as checking your ‘domain authority’ – a score that predicts how well your website will rank in SERPs. Here’s how you can track and monitor the health of your domain:
- Pull up a domain authority tool, like Moz’s free Link Explorer tool, Majestic’s Site Explorer, or Domain Rating from Ahrefs.
- Type your URL into the search bar.
- Analyse the data that the tool gives you.
All looking good? Great! But if your score leaves something to be desired, it may be wise to make a few changes…
Keep your domain name secure
Domain security might not have been front of mind in the beginning, but as the stakes rise and your business grows, you can’t afford not to prioritise this. Failing to do so can result in typosquatting (AKA domain name copying), data hacking, intercepted emails and more.
Avoid these by registering look-a-like domains yourself to prevent others getting there first, setting up auto-renewal to prevent domain hijacking and investing in domain protection software to identify typosquatting and domain phishing attacks. It also pays to register your domain with a reputable, trusted provider – because if they get hacked, you’re at risk too.
Refine your domain extension
If you’re happy with your domain name, and it represents your business well, then it’s wise not to overthink or change it – this could damage your brand awareness and cause a loss of traffic. Your domain suffix, however, can be refined.
Choosing ‘.co.uk’ may have been the simple, cost-effective option at the time but how about considering a top-level domain (TLD), like ‘.store’, ‘.tech’, ‘.accountant’? Business specific TLDs are proven to enhance branding, improve SEO, and build trust with customers. Browse a variety of available domain extensions here.
Build quality backlinks
A backlink is a link from another website to a page on your site. These are powerful for your domain, making it more prominent on search engines whilst driving more traffic and building better brand awareness.
This may happen naturally if your website content is worth referencing, but you can grease the wheels here with guest blogging and manual outreach. The better quality the backlink, the better it will perform – this will depend on the authority of the page that links to you, the domain health of the website, and the relevance of the backlink.
Create engaging content
A high-performing domain is one that creates high quality, engaging content. We know this is easier said than done. But if you can invest in top class support, then the more likely your content is to reap the rewards – like increased shareability, more trust with Google, and higher search engine results page (SERP) rankings to follow.
Bring in your marketing support, whether in-house or outsourced, and craft a content plan that is refined for engagement. Not sure where to start? Check out Fasthosts Online Marketing Suite.
Choose the right support
Still need a little more guidance after all that? We can help! Whether you want to switch domain providers to increase security or refine that extension to boost performance, you can rely on Fasthosts to support your growth journey – get in touch today.