Launching a new business, a new product, or a new service? Your URL is key to your SEO success.
Yes, even in 2025, the URL is key – because a URL built around the thing you do, make or your customers are looking for is the best search result possible. In a world of AI, if you make and sell a product, you still have a better advantage over competitors if you select the best URL possible. In a world of AI if you sell knowledge, it’s gonna be scraped by Google and shown as a zero click result (there’s a different strategy for businesses that deal in knowledge.) Your URL is key to your SEO success, and I can’t emphasize enough how a good start is key to long term success with little effort.
I make stickers. Mostly for the marine environment – for sailing regattas, sailboats and sailing clubs, marinas and individual boats. I own three websites (with different URLs) that sell the exact same products with very similar branding and wording. Why do I have THREE sites? Isn’t it more work? Yes, considerably, (and more expensive) but I get the benefit of having an ideal URL that directly matches the search term my customers go looking for. Google doesn’t have to even fire up the AI to deliver boatregistrationstickers.com when people google boat registration stickers! I attract most top search in this category, ahead of other businesses and even reseller markets like Amazon!
Above left, my first search term query showing me the overall keyword opportunities for this search term. Above right, both the terms searched and the potential search opportunties around keywords/ keyphrases (blog or website pages). The bottom left shows how boatregistrationstickers.com “owns” it’s market (built around that search term), and my site is the top one, above Amazon, a big competitor, decals.com and another competitor, boat-decals.com and even above Walmart which really doesn’t sell them in a custom product like I do, but they do lots of professional SEO around everything you can think of. This is smart SEO – look for what people are searching and build your brand/URL around that. To be honest, I should rebrand THIS site as lansingwebdesign.com (a URL I’ve owned for two decades) and move everything over there! BRB, I now have two websites to get up and running.
We started these e-commerce businesses as a side hustle to keep our vinyl cutter humming when we weren’t doing a charity bike ride each summer (several weeks out of 52). During the pandemic, I expanded this business and it took off. It is now more than 60% of revenue for about 20% of the work (and my teens do a good portion of it.)
I decided to expand it again and go into another line of stickers – DOT numbers. All trucks and vehicles run commercially are required to have these numbers and the same way that you have to purchase them for your boat, you have to purchase them for your vehicle. So rather than offering this as a product for my primary brands, I bought a new URL and am setting up a brand new website for it. I’ll actually copy a site I have for the settings (the settings are key) and change all the content. DOT numbers are more interesting in that, unlike boats, they don’t stay ON the vehicle forever, and transfer with a new owner, they are purchased FOR an owner, for a vehicle, meaning the turnover is greater (and I sell a LOT of boat registration stickers!)
I went to my SEO software , and looked up actual search data for certain key phrases. I then matched that key phrase as close as I could to a .com URL (my first choice was $6,000! Not going to pay that), my second choice was taken – by a competitor who is pretty highly ranked already – so I opted for my third choice. But all of these are far better than offering this product on either boatregistrationstickers.com or Michigan-mc-numbers.com. In fact, I can use the search authority of those sites (and also championshipregattagraphics.com) by linking them back and forth. You can do this by googling things you think your customers might google and see what the results are, look at the predictive text. It’s not as good as seeing the data (for that, you’d need to contact me, with my pro software, to help you with that search strategy way before you buy your URL.) Your URL is key to your SEO success, so start off right.
Being found online is a matter of having the right URL, the right words on your site that matches most closely with what your searchers are looking for
Add in the search engine’s geo-tagging and they will deliver the right result. Now, how do I get Georgia boaters or truckers to my site in Michigan? It’s the URL and content (since I am not in Georgia!) I write a lot of specific pages for each state, linking to their state’s requirements (DOT are federal requirements so the content strategy will be different.) These individual pages, tailored to each state, help me capture search that is not based around my geographic location.
I will boost the site’s initial push by investing in 3 months of search advertising, but then I’ll stop – it juices it just enough to help us build a following and then our good on-page and site SEO together with content strategy and one secret sauce item will keep us going. I don’t divulge the secret sauce item in blogs (you’d have to contract with me and even then I rarely tell clients I’m doing it, but I’m doing it for them.) It works so well, within hours, I see search and purchase activity!
I want to address content – most of the time you’ll see recommendations (even from me) to develop content around search topics – but I’ve largely built big SEO around the URLs and some targeted pages and then I’ve never added another line of content since then. For years. Once you have built your content, and it’s good, well-optimized content, you don’t have to keep shoveling more at it (IF your URL is optimized. Your URL is key to your SEO success.)
Yesterday, I bought the new URL, and it’s kind of a momentus occasion – any new beginning and focus on a specific area of work is exciting! You’ve made a move! A single $56 (two year plus two year privacy listing) expense that is a commitment to moving forward with a product or service or a whole new business.
If you already have an existing URL but are launching a new product line or want to consider a website upgrade, building on a search-result URL is a smart tool in a big toolbox of search engine optimization.
Want more SEO topics? Check out the blogs below and contact me to see your site against your competitors and uncover content opportunities. I’ll even show you how to optimize your own site with free tools!
Want personalized SEO help and foundational SEO training to do your own work? Contact me for a 1:1 session. It’s affordable and gets you off on the right path. If you’re an existing client, contact me via email or phone!
