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Killer Domain Secrets Exposed!
by: Jim Symonds
The Basic Stuff
Every website needs a domain name. Example "WebBootCamp.com"
is a domain name. Your domain is your website address,
a.k.a. URL (universal resource locator). Should you
use your company name for your domain? Maybe, maybe
not. Is it memorable? Easy to spell? Does it contain
keywords that relate to your business? For more considerations
on choosing a domain, I've put together the following
checklist.
Pick a memorable name. How catchy is it? Would the
average person be able to remember just your website
name, without looking through their bookmarks (if
they have even bothered to bookmark it, that is)?
Make it easy to spell! Face it, most people can't
spell. Try to target for the masses when you pick
your name. Think of everyone having a 7th grade education.
Make it short, try for a two or three word domain.
When possible, name your company the same as your
domain name. Whether you actually add .com to your
company's name makes little difference.
Use keywords in your domain. Try services like http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/,
https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html, and
wordtracker.com to see what people are searching for,
in BIG NUMBERS, related to your subject.
Don't use numbers or hyphens. These are easily overlooked
or forgotten when people type in your domain. Unless
you're using a stand out combination like 911alert
or 123homerepair, don't go numeric. If you use hyphens,
then every time you tell someone your domain, you
have to say "it's blah-blah-blah.com - with the
hyphens". This is not impressive, and you risk
losing traffic to blahblahblah.com. You're asking
your potential customers to work harder, to remember
tedious details about your name. Simplicity is important,
because you want them to find you. You're building
a brand here.
Don't buy any other extension except a ".com"
This is the best branded domain extension, highly
known and trusted. Any other extension is practically
worthless, in my book. In addition to being first
in the minds of the public, remember also that most
people trying to find a company will put a com after
that company's name in their browser. It's second
nature to most of us. A .org can bring attention for
non profits, but even most of those companies will
try to purchase a .com as well.
Avoid running names together that end in a vowel and
begin in a vowel. EXAMPLE: freeebook.com Also try
to avoid having the second word start with the same
letter as the last letter of the last word. These
combinations can look weird, and are often likely
to be misread or simply forgotten. By avoiding these
two combinations, along with numbers and hyphens,
we make sure our words (and our brand) will stand
out.
EXAMPLE: WebmasterNow.com
Good For Starting Sentences, Not Domains
Avoid starting your name with THE, or A, if being
used as the word A. EXAMPLE asimplehome.com - "a"
is likely to be forgotten. While it is true that directory
listings usually list alphabetically, search engines
do not.
If you can come up with a catchy name starting with
"a", by all means, do so. You may find yourself
first in the yellow page listings. Have a look there
first, and see what the competition looks like. What
are their names, how do they rank?
Now, here's where it gets interesting. You'll see
that names starting with numbers get displayed first
(for non paid listings). So the big question becomes,
is yours the type of product or service that will
do well from yellow page traffic? You must carefully
weigh this against overall branding of your company.
You could of course, have more than one domain, and
more than one brand for your company, but be careful
about promoting the same sites with different names
to the same search engines. You could find yourself
banned from those search engines altogether.
Brand New?
Don't pick your name as your domain name, unless you're
famous. Names aren't keywords (won't help your search
engine rankings), and usually easily forgotten. Unless
you've built a big brand around your name already,
stick to a good key phrase! It is much easier to brand.
Who's who, and is my name taken?
To search available domains, and to find out who owns
registered ones, use the whois function at http://www.internic.net.
If you come across a registered domain, it will show
you where it was registered. The next step to detecting
the identity of the actual owner, is to visit the
registrar (this is where the domain was registered)
site listed, and use their whois search. This should
provide you with name, address, phone number and email
of the rightful owner. Unfortunately, this information
is not always available, but it is most of the time.
A Common Myth Equals Missed Opportunities
All the great domains are taken. Hogwash! The dirty
little secret is, thousands of great domains expire
every day! Here's a handy resource for finding great
expired and expiring domains - http://deleteddomains.com
- I've found some real gems here, like webbootcamp.com,
webmastertoolset.com, customoilpainting.com and customoilpaintings.com
- all formerly owned and let go, just to name a few.
When applicable, do try to get the singular and plural
versions of your domain like we just saw with customoilpainting(s).
When one could be easily be mistaken for the other,
it helps to be covered this way. You're also protecting
your brand.
Another expiring domain service to check out is snapcheck.com.
They have some interesting statistics for expiring
domains, such as google page rank and yahoo and dmoz
listed domains. Bear in mind that any "perceived
value" on a domain put there by a search engine
listing or page rank is inherently fleeting. That's
because the content that was responsible for that
listing is now gone, and it is simply a matter of
time before the search engine's spiders crawl the
site again, and re-evaluate it's content. In other
words, the search engine ranking is very likely going
to disappear soon, unless you quickly repopulate the
site with compelling content, worthy of the rank the
original site had.
Roads To Nowhere, No Stops Ahead
One tasty bonus that accompanies a popular site is
link popularity. This is how many other websites link
to the domain in question. Think of a link as a road
into your website. Quite often, webmasters do not
update their links when the site they're linking to
changes or disappears altogether. So if you find an
expired (or soon to be expired) domain with high link
popularity (many links to the domain), it may well
stay that way for some time to come.
Case in point: special-report-network.net was once
a very successful ad network run by online marketing
guru Allen Says. For reasons unknown, he shut down
the site and let the domain expire. The domain had
over 14,000 links pointing to it! The weird part is,
it still does! Want proof? Go to alltheweb.com and
search for "link:http://www.special-report-network.net",
without the quotation marks. This will show all the
sites linking to it. The domain got snatched up by
Ultimate Search, a hong kong company that registers
thousands of domains, and makes money from paid search
results. The site has nothing to do with the original
ad network site that Allen built and made successful,
yet the links remain, and links equal traffic.
Bear in mind not all links are created equal. Link
farms (A.K.A. FFA or "free for all" links
pages), and seldom visited by real people. Instead,
automated programs add people's URLs when they submit
to a mass submission service, hoping to generate big
traffic. Instead, all they get is a bunch of spam,
which they've agreed to receive, in order for using
the service.
How can I snag that expiring hottie?
When you find a name that is pending deletion (the
owner hasn't renewed it), the next step is to try
to secure it, the moment it becomes available. Strangely,
domains do not fall back into the pool of availability
the day they expire. It can take up to 60 days or
more in some cases for them to "drop", and
the times are not announced. Thankfully, there are
automated services to perform this task for us, such
as Namewinner.com, Snapnames.com, Expirefish.com,
and Pool.com. Prices vary, and none can guarantee
success.
Namewinner lets users bid against each other for expiring
domains and only the winner pays, while Snapnames
and Expirefish are first come, first served, meaning
only one user has a shot at grabbing a particular
domain. Snapnames also has the most registrar partners,
(including Network Solutions), which may give them
an edge for securing expiring domains that are currently
registered with their partners. They also have the
highest price tag, and you pay whether or not they
secure your name. Pool.com is a newcomer that seems
to rival the services of Snapnames, with better prices.
One more method you might try, is going directly to
the current owner. Let's say your desired dropping
domain is already "back ordered" on Snapnames.com,
and Expirefish.com. Now you can still bid for it at
Namewinner.com, and Pool.com, but you feel the odds
are against you. If you're really hot on the name,
and willing to pay a premium, you may be able to bypass
the solutions above, simply by cutting a deal with
the current owner.
This can be a bit risky however, because once the
owner realizes your interest, they may decide to ask
for a unreasonable sum of money, or simply see value
in the domain again (generated from your interest),
and renew it as an investment. Assuming you can make
a deal, you may want to suggest using escrow.com,
which eliminates the possibility of fraud for both
of you. The owner will need to renew the domain before
they can transfer it to you.
The Website Graveyard - Visit Those Spooky Remains!
Once you've found a deleted or soon to be deleted
domain you fancy, you might want to take a trip into
the past, to see what that site used to be! Now bear
in mind most domains that are registered are never
developed, so there may be nothing at all to see.
But for those domains with a tangible history, we
can often peek at their ghost, courtesy of the wayback
machine at http://www.archive.org.
One Owner, Driven Only On Sundays
Another way to check the history of a domain, is simply
to search for it. Try searching google, and groups.google.com,
to see what people may have said about the site. You
may think twice about purchasing a domain with a sketchy
history.
Speculators Beware!
Don't go overboard and buy every known extension for
your brand - (.net, .org, .biz, .info, etc.). Big
corporations like google can afford to buy all the
country domains. When you're starting out, remember,
domain fees are yearly, and you need to consider the
lifelong cost of each domain. For most people, one
domain is just fine.
You may think snatching up good domains and reselling
them would be a lucrative business. The problem is,
finding a buyer is not easy. In fact, that's an understatement.
Don't register domains containing trademarks. You
will likely here from that company's legal department
if you do, and will be forced to relinquish the name
by The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO),
or a lawsuit, or both.
Who's in charge?
Icann (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers) oversees the domain registration business.
Their URL is http://www.icann.org. If you ever have
trouble with your registrar, it may be worth reporting
to Icann.
Case in point: A client of mine tried to switch his
domain to another registrar (at my suggestion), to
get added free features (free URL forwarding), and
save money. His current registrar denied the transfer,
and tried to charge him a fee for leaving! Once we
threatened to take up the matter with Icann, and publicly
expose them at Icann's forum (http://forum.icann.org/regxfer),
they immediately backed down, and released the domain.
If you believe someone has registered a domain that
infringes on your trademark (or has infringed on your
intellectual property), the authority to see is The
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), at
http://wipo.org
Brand Awareness
Capitalize each word of your domain in your sig files
and letterhead, and anywhere else you advertise your
domain. It helps your brand stand out.
EXAMPLE: http://www.WebBootCamp.com looks better than
http://www.webbootcamp.com
Also, only add in http://www. when you're creating
links back to your site (i.e., email, websites, and
online forms). In all your offline advertising, such
as signs, business cards and letterhead, you should
definitely skip http://www. and just use "YourDomain.com".
You only have a second or two of people's attention
when they see your URL, so make it count. Brand that
name! Just make sure your web host has your site set
up to show without WWW. Most sites are correctly set
up to display when a person types in "YourDomain.com",
or "www.YourDomain.com" but a handful, maybe
10% or so will show page not found, if you skip "www".
That could be devastating, so check with your host,
and demand that your site come up either way!
Ready To Buy Your .com?
Don't overpay! I'm still surprised that many people
don't know they can buy domains for under $10 these
days. Shop around. Currently I recommend http://www.TOSDomains.net.
They offer a lot of extras like URL and email forwarding,
free.
Keep Your Registration Current!
Don't let your domain expire! You cannot afford to
be even a day late in payment. If it falls into the
redemption period, you may find yourself high jacked
by your registrar for an outrageous renewal fee. See
this illuminating article for more about the redemption
period - "Domain Redemption Period Farce Exposed!"
here: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1034. If your
expired domain falls back into the available pool,
it may be registered by anyone, and you may have little
recourse trying to recover it.
The easiest way to ensure you are sent renewal notices
for your domain is to keep your email contact current
for your domain. Perhaps the most common reason for
people losing their domains, is simply that they switch
ISPs, and subsequently, their email address changes,
and they forget to update that information with their
domain registrar.
If you own a lot of domains, keeping up with administration
can be tedious. One trick I rely on, is to use one
domain for my primary business email address, and
on that registration "admin" contact, I
use my ISP email. For all my other domain registrations,
I use my primary business email address (based on
my primary domain, which I will never let go). Now,
if I should switch ISPs, all I need to concern myself
with is changing that one domain record, to reflect
my new ISP email. All my other domain records have
that primary domain email as the admin contact, so
as long as I keep the one record current (and keep
the email account active), all will be current, and
all domain renewal notices will be sent to me.
In the end, it's not so much about the name, as it
is what you make of it. Just look at all the big successful
internet companies out there with strange names! Yahoo!
To learn how to set up your domain to point to your
hosting account, I recommend the reading materials
in Web Boot Camp, an all inclusive "how to"
guide for web business. Get web savvy today! http://www.WebBootCamp.com/r.cgi?main
Copyright 2004 Jim Symonds
About The Author
Jim Symonds publishes Web Secrets Exposed! Eye popping,
and jaw dropping, sneaky little web design tricks
& web marketing secrets revealed. How did they
do that? We show you! Subscribe Now FR*E! Just Go
To: http://www.WebSecretsExposed.com
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