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Choosing a domain name for a new project can be a little daunting.

All the good names are gone. Once you find something acceptable, you'll have to be sure you can live with it for a long time. And what about the implications for SEO?

So many considerations.

Do You Want A Disposable Domain Name?

Some domains are throw-away, so the domain name doesn't matter so much. buy-viagra-online-cheapest.com might be just fine for someones 100th pharma site. We all know it's going to be blitzed eventually, anyhow ;)

For such domains, brand is never going to be a major consideration. But for most other projects, I'd recommend devoting time to brand considerations and credibility factors.

Why?

Traffic Comes From Everywhere

Obviously, traffic doesn't just originate at search engines. The way things are going, the webmasters who used to frequently link to sites will just Twitter about you instead!

Word of mouth is becoming more and more important on the web. The most popular websites today facilitate personal publishing.

In order to capitalize on this, it is helpful to have a brand name that is easy for people to remember. It should be distinctive. It should be credible. It should be something people feel comfortable passing on.

When people mention you in the context of a social network, are they going to talk about cheap-mp3-online-buy-cheapest.com? Would they feel comfortable recommending it to their friends and networks of contacts? Does it make them look good? Will they remember your domain name five minutes later? Would it be something they'll pass on?

Even those webmasters who do link out tend to be cagey about where they link. The last place they'll link to is the trashy looking domain name.

The credibility of a domain name in such an environment counts for a lot.

Brand Naming Strategy

Brand is a is a collection of experiences and associations connected with a service, a person or any other entity

What does "Google.com" mean to you? An incorrectly spelled mathematical term meaning 1 followed by 100 zeros?

I'm guessing Google means finding things, making money, technology, the future, and various other experiences. That's the power of brand. Made-up, memorable "meaningless" words become incredibly valuable and significant.

That's ok for big companies who spend a lot of money on building these associations, but what about the site owned by the little guy?

One idea is to use soft branding. Leverage off a concept that is already known, and twist it a little.

For example, an xml feed product that acts like a mail client might use the term "mail" in the brand name, because people are already familiar with the concept of mail. "Hotmail" is an example of soft branding. AfterMail is a service that retains copies of emails sent by employees and holds them in a central database. The brand name is partly unique and memorable, and partly describes the function.

Good Domain Names Appreciate

Once you have a good, brand-able domain name, it will very likely appreciate.

As time goes on, good domain names become more scarce. Add to this the associations you're building, and the domain name can become a valuable asset in it's own right. This is seldom, if ever, the case with disposable domain names.

How much is SEOBook.com worth? Would it have been near as valuable now if Aaron had called it learn-seo-online.com? Possibly, but I suspect the latter is always going to have credibility issues, not to mention the dreaded hyphens.

Exact Match

There is a lot of debate about exact match domain names. There is evidence to suggest Google weights this factor highly, but ask different SEOs and you'll likely get different answers.

SEO considerations aside, exact match has a bonus when it comes to PPC. Check out this article by Frank Schilling:

What do you suppose would happen if I advertised my URL under the key-phrase that matches the name? Well, I tried it and I found that because my URL matched the key-phrase people were searching for, I had to bid less for traffic. People were more apt to click on a link when it matched the URL.. and the power of .com just reaffirmed to Jane Public that she had found the market leader.

What has this got to do with brand? If you build a brand to the point where it becomes a searchable phrase i.e "seo book" you'll enjoy the same benefit as the guys who own the exact match names. You'll find it easier, and cheaper, to dominate both organic and PPC listings.

It's harder to do that with a watered-down generic name.

Linking Factors

If people do link to you, it's desirable to have a keyword in url. However, sometimes this conflicts with brand imperatives i.e. being memorable and distinctive.

So what do you do?

Try using a byline.

For example, if your domain name is Acme.com, you could add a byline that describes what you do i.e "Acme.com - SEO Services". People may well link the full description, or use that phrase when talking about you. The by-line becomes an integral part of your brand. This approach is especially important when trying to convince directory owners to link to you with addition keywords.

For a lot more information on domain naming strategies, check out Aaron's domain naming lesson in the members section.

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It is no secret that Obama is great at public speaking, building a fan base, working the press, and leveraging new distribution channels, but one of his most overlooked marketing achievements is...domain name selection. Anyone who has watched Idiocracy should appreciate the domain names that government programs are now launched under.

Before Obama was sworn in, he launched Change.gov under The Office of The President-elect. Change is an easy concept to grasp after 8 years of crony capitalism and fraudulent wars built on lies from international war criminals. But "change" in and of itself is a tool, not a destination...where is it going?

While launching a plan to increase government spending by nearly a trillion dollars to "create" millions of jobs, upgrade infrastructure, and computerize the national health care system (what hidden costs might come to individuals from that "change"?), Barack announced that his plan to spend this money will be tracked under Recovery.gov.

Part of Obama's spending plan is to "expanding broadband access to millions of Americans so businesses can compete on a level playing field, wherever they are located." But the playing field has never been level (just look at how the bankers rewrote the consumer bankruptcy laws to shaft consumers a few years before the banks were begging the government for trillions of dollars of handouts).

Investments in the web will increase the value of web assets, but the increased competition will make it harder to gain attention and exposure unless you have capital to invest, and invest it wisely. Just this week a corporation worth $10's of billions put one of our core keywords in the page title of their home page! We still outrank them, but for how long?

I thought it would be at least a decade before the United States government started domaining. Many large corporations are sure to catch on soon, increasing domain prices and closing off a great investment opportunity for smaller players. I have been busy over at BuyDomains looking for good names to hoard and build, picking up another 3 yesterday. SEO Book members have access to a coupon code to get 15% off BuyDomains domain names on our member discounts & coupons page.

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Years ago JupiterMedia owned Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies, but sold them off (along with ClickZ) for $43 million to raise funds to binge on buying stock image companies. Why? According to Alan Meckler, JupiterMedia's CEO:

Why the sale? The simple reason is that Jupitermedia has evolved from being a media company with images into an Image company with media. A good part of the evolution came from the acquisition of 7 image companies since June 2003. Over a 25 month period we have spent close to $200 million making the above referenced acquisitions along with dozens of photo library collections. Most of these deals were done with cash. The cash came from our treasury and from bank borrowings. We plan to make more acquisitions and we plan to continue using cash. So how do we get more cash? Simple, we either go to the public market and offer our stock for cash or we sell assets such as the Search Engine trade shows and ClickZ network in order to raise more funds for acquisitions.

Recently I would have been prone to go to the public market and sell equity to raise cash. But even with our stock closing price yesterday of $22.80, I think Jupitermedia was undervalued based on what I believe the company will be worth over the coming years. So I chose asset sales and additional borrowing based on the fact that I think Jupitermedia should be more valuable tomorrow.

After spending a couple hundred million dollars buying image companies, JupiterMedia built up too much debt to service in this credit crisis and was forced to sell off their images division to Getty for $96 million - up to $40 to $45 million less than they were offered in August.

That image sale should allow JupiterMedia to pay off all their debts, but the company is off about 99% from when they were "under-priced." They are trading at 27 cents a share, and have a market value under $10 million. They own a ton of great domains like Internet.com, InternetNews.com, Javascript.com, Developer.com, WebDeveloper.com, Jumbo.com, MediaBistro.com, and dozens of other valuable domain names and websites.

Will they start selling themselves off in chunks? Will a private equity investor try to take them private? Or will they go to $0?

* As a disclaimer, I bought a few thousand shares recently...though it was a bet more than an investment with conviction.

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Rick Schwartz, one of the leading domainers and creator of the TRAFFIC domain conference, highlighted the value of descriptive domains from a brand perspective:

NATURAL BRANDING or BUILD and CREATE BRANDING

This alone is worth the price of admission. Brad told us his story of spending millions and millions to advertise and brand with his original 3 word creative domain name. When he switched and used a fraction of those ad dollars to buy a category killer domain name, he transformed his business. The dollars he was using to brand was now freed up to do other acquisitions and grow his business in a more dramatic way. NATURAL BRANDING may be the simplest way to describe what a great domain brings to the table.

If you have to make people aware of who you are AND what you do then you are going to need to spend a lot more money on marketing than a business which is built around existing market demand.

What is the leading brand of hammocks? If there is not a clear market leader then Hammocks.com would be a nice spot to set up business.

As the web gets more competitive and generics get established as category leaders there will still be a need for specific brands to differentiate between services, but if you are part of the 99% of small business marketers lacking a large branding budget then buying a category leading domain is an obvious sustainable competitive advantage over other businesses that are in the same position you are. Every market has to have a winner...may as well be you. :)

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Domaining.

It has been a hot topic for a while now, yet many domineers aren't overly active in the SEO space. Yet.

Domaining is when you register a domain, or buy a domain on the seondary market, with the intention of deriving traffic, and turning that traffic into revenue. Traffic comes from type in traffic. i.e. people type a keyword into the address bar and add .com on the end. Domains can be valuable internet real estate, because, unlike a search engine, there is no middleman between you and the visitor. A lucrative pursuit, if you choose the right names.

Let's take a look at how domineering strategy can be applied to SEO.

Background

Aaron has a great interview with Frank Schilling. Frank is one of the biggest domaineers on the planet, and an articulate advocate of this strategy.

Add this lot to your feed reader:

http://www.sevenmile.com/
http://rickschwartz.typepad.com/
http://www.whizzbangsblog.com/
http://www.domainnews.com/

If anyone has other suggestions for great domaining blogs, please add them to the comments.

How To Select A Domain Name

Google tends to give weight to keywords in the domain name. This increases the importance of selecting a good name.

When choosing a domain name for SEO purposes, there are three main factors to consider:

• Brand
• Rankability
• Linkability

Brand

Should you use hyphenated, multi-term domain like search-engine-marketing-services.com?

I'd avoid such names like the plague.

Why?

They have no branding value. They have limited SEO value. Even if you do manage to get such a domain top ten, you're probably going to need to sell on the first visit, as few people are going to remember it once they leave. It is too generic, and it lacks credibility.

In a crowded market, brand offers a point of distinction.

It is easier to build links to branded domain names. People take these name more seriously that keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com, which looks spammy and isn't fooling anyone. Would you link to such a name? By doing so, it devalues your own content .

It can even difficult to get such domain names linked to when you pay for the privilege! Directory editors often reject these names on sight, because such names are often associated with low-quality content. Imagine how many free links you might be losing by choosing such a name.

Is there a downside to using branded names?

Yes.

Unless you have a huge marketing budget, no one is going to search for perseefgxcbtrfy.com, which is a new killer, brand I just made up ;)

Thankfully, there is a happy medium between brand and SEO strategy.

Rankability

SEOs release the value of keywords. When naming your site, and deciding on a domain name, try combining the lessons of SEO, branding and domaining.

Genric + term is a good approach to use. Take your chosen keyword, and simply add another word on the end. SeoBook, Travelocity, FlightsCity, CarHub, etc. These words have SEO value built into them, because people are forced to use your keywords in the link. Also, Google (currently) values a keyword within the domain name for ranking purposes. Finally, such a name retains an element of unique branding.

These types of domain names score high on the rank-ability and link-ability meter. They are generic enough to rank well for the keyword term, yet contain just enough branding difference to be memorable.

The SEO Advantage

There is another advantage for SEOs in the domain space.

Dot com's can sell for 5-20 times as much as a .org or .net. Keyword + .com can sell for millions of dollars, depending on the domain name.

Expensive, huh.

But...

By registering or buying the cheaper .net or .org equivilent, building out the site, and ranking well for the keyword + net, or +org, you increase the value of the domain name markedly. Sure, you're one step away from pure domaineering and you still have Google to contend with, but you'll be head and shoulders above those who are undervaluing these names.

A lot of domaineers aren't operating in this space.

Yet.

Other Tips And Ideas

Leave The Keyword Out Entirely

Used the related search function on Google ~ + keyword and see if any of the related keyword terms fit. This can be a good strategy to use if all the good generic keyword names are gone. It might get you close enough to the action, without the enormous price tag. Might be more memorable, too.

How To Test A Domain Name For Penalties Before Buying It

• Verify the site is not blocking GoogleBot in their robots.txt file
• Point a link at the domain from a trusted site and see if Google indexes it
• Within a couple weeks (at most a month) Google should list the site when you search for it in Google using site:domainname.com

Further Reading:

• SEOBook Community members get 15% discount from BuyDomains, one of the top domain name markets
• How To Select Great Domain Names, Including Video - SEOBook Members Area
• Domaining - The Business Of Monetarizing And Selling Domain Names

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On Sitepoint Clinton Lee wrote a 6 page high quality web site valuation guide.

The New York Times recently published a great article about flipping websites, quoting my buddy Peter Davis.

Shane Pike recently blogged about selling one of his sites to Internet Brands. The site he sold was the one that let him quit his job. I gave him some tips on how to build traffic and increase monetization during a 15 minute chat at Elite Retreat in December of 2006. He quickly took my advice to heart and is a richer man for it. Here is his revenue graph from that site

But where he really made a killing was when he found investment bankers to help him sell on a nice multiple of that

If you believe your site could sell for more than $100,000, you’re throwing money away if you don’t use an experienced broker or investment banking firm to help you sell it. Because they’re much more adept than you at running an efficient process, finding potential buyers, and maximizing the bids from those buyers, they make up their fee many times over.

For example, this whole process started when I received an unsolicited bid for the site. Before all was said and done, though, my representatives had secured not just one, but two final bids that were ten times that initial offer. I couldn’t have gotten half that on my own.

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When the .ME landrush began I thought it would be possible to get a couple fun names like SEO.ME and QUIZ.ME for about $200 each. Boy was I wrong! Look at these .ME domain auction prices...

I have seen far better .info (and sometimes .net and .org) names with far more resonance go for prices far below these prices. Many international CCTLD names are dirt cheap. It is hard to find an online market more saturated than the search engine optimization field, and yet SEO.CO.NZ is already well ranked in Google New Zealand for SEO while having a buy it now price of $10,000 NZD, which amounts to $7,251.78 USD.

The .ME prices bode well for strong launches of future extensions like .web and .blog...but most new extensions will be at best marginal successes, especially given that Google is not likely to trust most of them.

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Afilias had submitted a proposal to ICANN for the .INFO gTLD that would allow them to shut down domain names at will if they consider them abusive. The proposal was approved.

The problem they have is not going to be solved by this strategy. The value of high end .info domains was just diminished because now the registry can take them away from you for anything that they consider abusive, and in this day and age it is easy for someone else to spam for you in order to make you look shady. Given that, who wants to invest $20,000 in buying and building out a premium .info name? Probably only the people who are unaware of what Afilias just did.

Meanwhile .info domain names are on sale at GoDaddy for $1.99 - $8 cheaper than any other extension. And it turns out spammers are less discriminating than most other business people. So spammers still buy .info and Google has to protect their search results. If Afilias wanted to fix the .info quality issue, simply increasing the price at the lower end would go a long way.

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I recently won a great domain name at an auction. Spent the money, waited a few days, and got the domain management details.

I logged into my domain management account, and searched around the site...no details on how to transfer a domain name away from their site - no transfer authorization code anywhere. The only article I found was one on ICANN rules, stating that you could email them if you needed help locking or unlocking your domain names - but nothing about auth codes.

Most of their contact policies were via email. I could not find a phone number on their site until after I submitted an email to them explaining my frustrations. Then I got sent back an email telling me to check out their help page which consisted of a Google search box. This page actually had a phone number in the upper right corner. So I called it and it told me I was the first person in line. I waited for a few more songs and got told I was first a few more times before hanging up the phone in frustration.

So then I searched for the parent corporation site and hunted around their site for a support number. That worked and was answered within about a minute. Sweet. But...

The guy who answered the phone at first denied that his registrar had anything to do with the domain name I just bought. "Someone registered that directly with Tucows," he said. I then asked why I was sent a welcome domain name management email to log in at his company's site and why I have a customer number with them. At that point he looked up the name and saw that it was registered with them, but then he told me that they had a 60 day policy on domain transfers and that I couldn't get it yet. I said to send the auth code anyway.

After telling me no a couple times he finally said ok. But then the email did not come right away, so I asked if he could just tell me the auth code. He said "no because then we could seize control of the name." I told him I thought they already did that with their website and customer service.

I finally got the auth code, and the domain name is allegedly "Pending Current Registrar Approval." I hope it goes through!

Are these shady third party registrars actually owned by the same parent companies? Couldn't the domain name auctions allow the end buyers to pay a $10 fee per secured name to avoid sending them to some outfit that wastes their time in an attempt to either steal their domain name or cash? Some of the auctions already have the house keeping some of the best inventory and shill bidding against you for what is left...why must they keep screwing you even after the relationship is over?

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I do not own too many .info domain names, but a couple of them that I do own have quite solid link profiles. In spite of this, on May 23rd all of my .info websites (including search-marketing.info) disappeared from Google's search results. And then the next day it returned. It may have just been a ranking glitch, but many other webmasters had the same issue... their .info domain names simply disappeared from Google.

Why would such a thing happen?

• 2008 prediction from Matt Cutts "A top-level domain (TLD registry) will offer domains for under $4. The result will be another TLD blighted by spammy domain registrations."
• GoDaddy has a 99 cent sale on .info domain names.

Marcel Feenstra highlighted this issue on LockerGnome:

Filtering out all .info domains just because some of these domains are being abused is, of course, far too draconian a measure, and I don’t think it’s what Google intended. It would make much more sense if they filtered out, say, .info domains that had been registered less than a year ago and that didn’t have some minimum number of “trusted” backlinks.

Was the .info purge a glitch? Maybe, but Google never will accidentally filter out all .com domain names. This algorithmic tweak (especially when coupled with Matt Cutts' prediction for 2008) shows an internal Google bias against .info domain names. While many .info domain names rank where they did just a few days ago, this does not bode well for the perceived value of .info domain names, especially for brand new domain names or parked pages.

Just one more example of how domain names play a big roll in SEO strategy.

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A couple days ago while I was at a conference news came about that Network Solutions was hijacking unused customer subdomains to post links to their other websites. It is getting really hard to trust *many* online service providers.

A big tip for new websites is to

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How Domain Names Play a Role in SEO & SEM

• Many marketing and advertising costs are recurring. Re-registering domain names is a minimal cost, but many domains (especially .com names) get type in traffic worth thousands of dollars a year. Some get type in traffic worth thousands per day. And this traffic stream is defensible from search engine algorithmic swings.

• In addition to the defensibility issue, there is a large synergy between great domain names and SEO. Domain names containing your keywords as part of the name make it easier to get your keywords in the anchor text when people reference your company by its official name. This is true even if the domain has hyphens and/or additional words. But domains with hyphens in them are harder to market than domains without hyphens.
• Exact match domains make people more likely to give you targeted anchor text when they mention your website. In some cases a strong domain name also makes a site appear more trustworthy and linkworthy.
• Exact match domains are given an algorithmic relevancy boost in Google, even if a domain name shows little other criteria that prove it trustworthy.
• Exact match domains make it easier to get Google Sitelinks to expand your listing and block out competing sites.
• Exact match domains are easier to profit from search engine arbitrage.

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Google recently increased their number of sitelinks to 8 and now list them in a 2 column format. To visualize the value of this, consider that I have a decent sized monitor and only 1 listing not controlled by me appears above the fold when searching for SEO Book.

And look at a search for credit cards

In time I have to expect that for high value keywords (as per AdWords advertiser stats) Google will manually review generic matching names with sitelinks to determine if they are brand oriented or not. If the sites with sitelinks for high value queries are not strong brand oriented sites, is Google going to keep giving this much exposure to whoever owns the exact match domain?

Using Organic Search Profits to Fund Ad Budgets that Lock Out Competing Sites

If the results stay like they are right now, Google is creating a dominate player that will likely overspend on the associated AdWords ads to further block out competition.

Who cares if you lose a few bucks on the ads if it further increases your volume to get you better payouts AND reinforces your default status as THE market leader? Plus, exact match domains consistently get a higher CTR than non-matching domains, so in that regard the domain name not only ensures the sitemap in the search results but also subsidizes the AdWords ad costs.

Domain Names Win Fatter Margins in the Game of Arbitrage

If, after seeing the above images, you still don't appreciate the value of domain names in search marketing, please give Frank Schilling's post on arbitrage titled The House Always Wins a read, then go on a domain buying binge.

Life isn't fair, but that doesn't mean that you should ignore the obvious deals! If you are a diverse publisher and domain names are not part of your SEO strategy, then hopefully you can correct that deficiency before the year is out.

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Some of my domain names were registered as a joke (haggisdiet.com was a bet against Andy Hagans), and it wouldn't be hard to register domains in the name of another person. Having said that, I doubt few people put my name on their domain names, and now you can look up a list of domains owned by a person by using Registrant Search. If you have thin affiliate sites that rank well in Google and are not using fake whois data then now might be a little late to start.

Via Domain Name News I recently discovered Sold Names, which aggregates publicly available price data for domain sales. You can also view last week's sales at DN Journal. If you find someone underselling a domain name browse through their inventory and see if they have any others worth buying.

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In a world dominated by .coms an ad agency decided to promote a financial services company as being different by highlighting the .org in their name to show their non commercial / non-profit nature. 99 times out of 100 a .com is better than a .org, but if you can get a name that costs a million for the .com and only pay a few grand for the .org version and then add $998,000 of marketing to it I think the .org comes out on top.

Using a .org can also make your business look more trustworthy if you are offering a free service and/or are a quasi non-profit. A large part of the current price differential between .com, .net, and .org names is that those who are the biggest domain buyers do not have much development talent or intent to develop them. As a PPC lander page it is hard to earn much as a .net or .org.

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