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From one of my first posts on this blog I received the below comment:
“…Before I buy a choose domain name and host it, how do I determine a good name for the website? Does that play a big role in how much traffic I can bring my way? Is it beneficial to stick with the product name, or would it be better to have it similar to the keywords and content? Or does that not matter either?”
These are really good questions, particularly when getting started. Yet, each question needs to have a detailed answer in order to be any help to you. So, I have broken these questions into three post:
Question 1: How do I determine a good name for the website?
Question 2: Does my website name play a big role in how much traffic I can?
Question 3: Is it beneficial to stick with the product name, or would it be better to have it similar to the keywords and content? Or does that not matter either?
How do I determine a good name for the website?
When determining the name for your website you first need to determine what your objectives are. If you are trying to build a large community and have interaction, then you need to make sure you have a brandable name. If you are interested in quickly making money then what you call your site isn’t as important.
Since these tutorials are called Internet Money, and not Internet Branding, it is safe to assume that you are more interested in making money than building a corporate empire. In order to earn money relatively quickly in the search engines you need to have a few things going for your. First, I would not recommend going and buying a brand new domain. You will see that age of a domain plays an important role with rankings.
Currently, I have two domains that are both competing in the insurance niche. One domain was bought in 1999, the other domain was acquired 2003. I started ranking these domains on the exact same day. Within two weeks my 1999 domain was ranking in the top 20 for all its keywords. The 2003 domain, unfortunately, was only ranking in the top 500. Granted they both were trying to rank on different keywords, but I have done this time and time again with the same results. The older your domain the more strength you get to help push yourself to the top of Google.
There are a lot of places to acquire old domains. My favorite free place to go are the forums on Digital Point. For your home work I will be requiring you to become very familiar with Digital Point. The reason is that Digital Point will be an important buying spot for a lot of things. So, go and setup an account and start getting involved in the forums. It’s best to start now because if you want to create your own thread on Digital Point you will need to have 25 comments and have been a member on the forums for two weeks.
Another key factor on how fast you move is if you are found in Google. Now, don’t be deceived by Domainers who are trying to sell you an old domain. Often times, these domainers have picked up their domains at an auction that sells expired domains. If you do a search and you see that your domain is found in a lot of whois databases than you can guarantee your domain expired and was snatched up.
Click on image to enlarge
Google has become rather smart these past few years and can sniff out dropped domains. Usually, Google doesn’t find the domain right away. No, they have to wait for you to start ranking before they find you. If they do find that you own a dropped domain they will strip out all the links currently pointing to your website. They will do this even if those links were gained after the purchase of the domain. It’s a nasty process, and I have had a few friends fall from the rankings this way.
So, avoid domains that expired and were picked up, but I digressed. The second important factor of buying a domain is whether the search engines have already indexed your domain. The best way to see if you domain is indexed is to go to this SEO tool and enter the domain name in both the valid url and keyword field. If the domain doesn’t appear in Google for its own domain than you can guarantee that it is not indexed.
Every day I receive an email from a domain seller who picks up deleted domains and resells them. This morning he sent me the domain: brawlvideo.com. It’s a deleted domain so Google has stripped this domain from the index.
As you can see by the above image the domain doesn’t rank for even its own name. This is the biggest red flag you can find for a domain that supposedly “aged.” If Google sees the domain as deleted the domain is worthless for what we are doing.
There are still aged domains that never see the light of day on the web but if you buy these domains expect to move slow (at least in the beginning). The search engines still need time to find these domains. Once you are found then the domain becomes valuable. However, by buying an indexed domain you save yourself work and time, which is always important.
The final factor to consider when buying a domain name is page rank. Page rank is Google’s way of deciding how important your domain is. If the domain has 1 through 10 page rank then it is worth looking at. However, I don’t always follow this rule because it is easy to spoof page rank. The best way to see if the page rank is real or not is to check its backlinks. If you go to this backlink tool and enter the url of the domain you are considering to buy you can see exactly how many links it has to it. If it has just a few sites linking to the potential domain I wouldn’t buy it. However, if there are hundreds or thousands of links it may be a good buy.
I say “it may be a good buy” because the seller could easily rent a bunch of links to enhance the sell, and then drop the links once you buy it. So, that is why I say I don’t always consider page rank into the equation. It’s just too easy to game the system. Most of the time I only buy a link with page rank if it is a good buy, which, as you can imagine, is hard to find.
So, that’s my advice on finding a good domain to use for SEO and affiliate marketing purposes. There are still two more posts to come on this subject, but I have given you homework to do until the other posts come out. As always, feel free to ask me any questions on these topics. ~Paul W.
SUMMARY
1. Buy an old domain
2. Make sure the domain is indexed
3. If possible, find a domain with page rank on it.
Some sites have good page rank, but have hardly any links. For example, I just looked at one with PR 5, and only 3 Yahoo listed links and 3 AllTheWeb listed links. How can a site have high PR without the links to give it importance? Is it correct to assume that we would not want such a site?
There are ways to fake page rank. So, if you see a website with PR 5 but with a few links it’s a red flag. Of course, if those few backlinks are PR 10 than that’s a whole other story (but that doesn’t generally happen). ~Paul W.
If the purpose of a domain is affiliate marketing, what are the benefits of buying a generic name as opposed to a name with specific key words in it?
If I buy an old domain for affiliate marketingthat already has links to it, since the anchor text of those links probably don’t relate to the key words I will be optimizing for, how do those links help my site?
If someone states facts about the domain he/she is selling such as its page rank or that it’s listed in DMOZ, it’s still a good idea to verify those facts for myself, right?
How do you tell if a domain has been dropped?
How do you personally decide whether or not to purchase a particular domain?
Brandan thanks for all your questions. I am actually writing the next post about everything you asked, but to not keep you waiting here you go.
Generic Domain vs. Keyword Domain
For affiliate marketing both are very good. If you are able to choose between the two go with getting an exact keyword match domain. Google loves exact keyword domains and you will have an easier time ranking when your keywords match the user’s query (and no, dashes do not count, unless of course you put dashes in when you search for something). A generic domain comes in handy only when you cannot find an old keyword rich domain.
Old BackLinks on a Domain
I sold my old marketing blog to a friend. When the friend bought the domain he wasn’t sure what he was going to use it for exactly. He tried five different niches. All the niches required different anchored text. Since, I had worked on accumulating backlinks to the site starting 2001 it helped my friend move easily through the rankings on all five subjects. Even though you aren’t using the original backlinks if they have been on the domain for a while (a year or more) they give you a lot of power to move in any niche.
Fact Verifying
Always, always, always verify facts that are important to you. I found several domain sellers to be schemers and if they can pull the wool over your eyes they will. I recommend making a list of what facts are important to you and check them on every domain you are looking to buy.
How to Find Dropped Domains
The easiest way to see if a domain is dropped is by checking the whois. However, I think your question is more geared at how to find out whether google is seeing the domain as old or as an expired domain that got picked up. This is a lot harder and frankly there is no sure way. I always do a google query on the domain to see what pulls up. If you see a lot of results showing deleted directories or whois then you can bet that Google can see this as well. You truly can’t be 100% sure, and that is why I have been contacting website holders directly. I will search the results between 900 and 1000 in google of the niche I want to get into. I try to find websites that don’t seem to be doing much and contact them. This is a lot more time consuming but it guarantees that google cannot ding me for buying a website that was picked up in the deletion period.
Deciding on buying a domain
I do several test when buying a domain. First, and for most I check out the domain age. You can do this in any whois tool. Next, As mentioned in the post I always check to see if the domain is found in the index. I then remove the domain extension (.com, .net, etc) and do another query. If the domain doesn’t show up in the results that is a big red flag. As I mentioned earlier in this comment Google loves exact keyword match domains. If the keyword in your domain isn’t found then be worried. However, don’t be too concerned if it doesn’t show up high in the results (it just means the owner hasn’t optimized the site, which means you can probably get the domain for a cheaper price). Finally, I put quotations around the phrase in the title tag and do a final search. Be very concerned if this doesn’t show up at the top. Particularly, if there are other results found before your website that don’t have an exact match in the title tag. This is probably the biggest flag in showing that you have a lemon of a domain, and I wish there were a couple of domains I had used this technique on before buying them.
I noticed that in your Digital Point contests for webpage design, you ask for an uncoded design. Why is that? And who can you pass on the contact information for a programmer who can integrate the design (once it’s created) to the amazing CMS called WordPress?
A clarification please. Do you recommended age over pagerank? For example, is it better to buy a 6 year old site with a PR of 2 than a 1 year old site with a PR of 4? Does the age have more weight in showing up in the search engine results than the PR?
I believe you’ve answered this question before, but is it better to use a keyword rich subdomain off of the main domain, or use go the traditional folder route? For example, would karate-equipment.domain.com be better than http://www.domain.com/karate-equipment?
Brandan- I appreciate your fledging support with this blog, particularly since it has been a while since I’ve posted. Here are the answers to your last two comments. As always, do not hesitate to let me know if you have any questions. ~Paul
11/24/2008 Questions Q. I noticed that in your Digital Point contests for webpage design, you ask for an uncoded design. Why is that?
A. I have learned that designers make poor programmers and visa versa. My first experience of having a digitalpoint designer code my wordpress theme was really bad. She basically hacked the rubric wordpress theme and threw her design on top of it. Not only did this make the design poor it was a nightmare trying to manage the theme. I always have the designers do what they do best—design. I have never been let down when I go this route. Plus, you can get a cheaper wordpress theme if you separate the design and coding.
Q. And who can you pass on the contact information for a programmer who can integrate the design (once it’s created) to the amazing CMS called WordPress?
A. I have a freelance programmer who is absolutely amazing with coding wordpress themes, and because of this I do not openly give out his information (I don’t want him to get to busy that he cannot do my projects—selfish, I know). However, you can find a reasonably priced wordpress programmer on Digital Point. Just post a thread that you are looking for a programmer who specializes in wordpress. A quick way to spot a good wordpress programmer is if he or she has created their own wordpress plugins. If so, they usually have a good grasp of the wordpress program.
01/14/2009 Question Q. Do you recommended age over pagerank?
A. This is really a tricky question. Ultimately, what I value are the links attached to the domain, and the age of those backlinks. An old domain with no links or minimal links will still take time to build out. However, a newer domain with thousands of old backlinks (old=a year or longer) is more valuable because it can move faster in the engines. You need to take into account that the search engines look at link patterns of domains. If your domain has not had links added to it in years, than you should be very careful in growing your links. If you suddenly put hundreds of links on it in a short period of time, be prepared to be sandboxed, or worse, thrown out of the index all together. However, if you have a newer domain that is indexed, ranking, and lots of backlinks than you can get a quicker ROI with it. This is mainly because it has the ability to handle more backlinks and thus be able to rank quicker on your desired keywords.
One quick note on page rank. Page rank really only shows the quantity and quality of your backlinks. It really has no other relevancy to your domain. When you see a domain with any page rank look at the backlinks. It is possible to spoof your page rank, and if that is the case it is a worthless domain. Most spoofed page ranks have very little backlinks. So, avoid domains with high page rank and little backlinks.
@Brandan- I really believe you are my one persistent reader. This I thank you for. Concerning your question, having a keyword rich subdomain used to be a wildly popular tactic in 2001 and 2002. Now what really counts is having a keyword rich primary domain. However, with a subdomain you can put it on a different IP address and feed one way links to the primary domain. In essence, the search engines see this as two completely different websites and thus gives some power to your main domain. I’ve done it several times and it works quite well. ~Paul W.
Some sites have good page rank, but have hardly any links. For example, I just looked at one with PR 5, and only 3 Yahoo listed links and 3 AllTheWeb listed links. How can a site have high PR without the links to give it importance? Is it correct to assume that we would not want such a site?
There are ways to fake page rank. So, if you see a website with PR 5 but with a few links it’s a red flag. Of course, if those few backlinks are PR 10 than that’s a whole other story (but that doesn’t generally happen). ~Paul W.
Okay, here are some more questions:
If the purpose of a domain is affiliate marketing, what are the benefits of buying a generic name as opposed to a name with specific key words in it?
If I buy an old domain for affiliate marketingthat already has links to it, since the anchor text of those links probably don’t relate to the key words I will be optimizing for, how do those links help my site?
If someone states facts about the domain he/she is selling such as its page rank or that it’s listed in DMOZ, it’s still a good idea to verify those facts for myself, right?
How do you tell if a domain has been dropped?
How do you personally decide whether or not to purchase a particular domain?
Brandan thanks for all your questions. I am actually writing the next post about everything you asked, but to not keep you waiting here you go.
Generic Domain vs. Keyword Domain
For affiliate marketing both are very good. If you are able to choose between the two go with getting an exact keyword match domain. Google loves exact keyword domains and you will have an easier time ranking when your keywords match the user’s query (and no, dashes do not count, unless of course you put dashes in when you search for something). A generic domain comes in handy only when you cannot find an old keyword rich domain.
Old BackLinks on a Domain
I sold my old marketing blog to a friend. When the friend bought the domain he wasn’t sure what he was going to use it for exactly. He tried five different niches. All the niches required different anchored text. Since, I had worked on accumulating backlinks to the site starting 2001 it helped my friend move easily through the rankings on all five subjects. Even though you aren’t using the original backlinks if they have been on the domain for a while (a year or more) they give you a lot of power to move in any niche.
Fact Verifying
Always, always, always verify facts that are important to you. I found several domain sellers to be schemers and if they can pull the wool over your eyes they will. I recommend making a list of what facts are important to you and check them on every domain you are looking to buy.
How to Find Dropped Domains
The easiest way to see if a domain is dropped is by checking the whois. However, I think your question is more geared at how to find out whether google is seeing the domain as old or as an expired domain that got picked up. This is a lot harder and frankly there is no sure way. I always do a google query on the domain to see what pulls up. If you see a lot of results showing deleted directories or whois then you can bet that Google can see this as well. You truly can’t be 100% sure, and that is why I have been contacting website holders directly. I will search the results between 900 and 1000 in google of the niche I want to get into. I try to find websites that don’t seem to be doing much and contact them. This is a lot more time consuming but it guarantees that google cannot ding me for buying a website that was picked up in the deletion period.
Deciding on buying a domain
I do several test when buying a domain. First, and for most I check out the domain age. You can do this in any whois tool. Next, As mentioned in the post I always check to see if the domain is found in the index. I then remove the domain extension (.com, .net, etc) and do another query. If the domain doesn’t show up in the results that is a big red flag. As I mentioned earlier in this comment Google loves exact keyword match domains. If the keyword in your domain isn’t found then be worried. However, don’t be too concerned if it doesn’t show up high in the results (it just means the owner hasn’t optimized the site, which means you can probably get the domain for a cheaper price). Finally, I put quotations around the phrase in the title tag and do a final search. Be very concerned if this doesn’t show up at the top. Particularly, if there are other results found before your website that don’t have an exact match in the title tag. This is probably the biggest flag in showing that you have a lemon of a domain, and I wish there were a couple of domains I had used this technique on before buying them.
Oh, Great Marketing Expert,
I noticed that in your Digital Point contests for webpage design, you ask for an uncoded design. Why is that? And who can you pass on the contact information for a programmer who can integrate the design (once it’s created) to the amazing CMS called WordPress?
A clarification please. Do you recommended age over pagerank? For example, is it better to buy a 6 year old site with a PR of 2 than a 1 year old site with a PR of 4? Does the age have more weight in showing up in the search engine results than the PR?
Paul,
I believe you’ve answered this question before, but is it better to use a keyword rich subdomain off of the main domain, or use go the traditional folder route? For example, would karate-equipment.domain.com be better than http://www.domain.com/karate-equipment?
Brandan- I appreciate your fledging support with this blog, particularly since it has been a while since I’ve posted. Here are the answers to your last two comments. As always, do not hesitate to let me know if you have any questions. ~Paul
11/24/2008 Questions
Q. I noticed that in your Digital Point contests for webpage design, you ask for an uncoded design. Why is that?
A. I have learned that designers make poor programmers and visa versa. My first experience of having a digitalpoint designer code my wordpress theme was really bad. She basically hacked the rubric wordpress theme and threw her design on top of it. Not only did this make the design poor it was a nightmare trying to manage the theme. I always have the designers do what they do best—design. I have never been let down when I go this route. Plus, you can get a cheaper wordpress theme if you separate the design and coding.
Q. And who can you pass on the contact information for a programmer who can integrate the design (once it’s created) to the amazing CMS called WordPress?
A. I have a freelance programmer who is absolutely amazing with coding wordpress themes, and because of this I do not openly give out his information (I don’t want him to get to busy that he cannot do my projects—selfish, I know). However, you can find a reasonably priced wordpress programmer on Digital Point. Just post a thread that you are looking for a programmer who specializes in wordpress. A quick way to spot a good wordpress programmer is if he or she has created their own wordpress plugins. If so, they usually have a good grasp of the wordpress program.
01/14/2009 Question
Q. Do you recommended age over pagerank?
A. This is really a tricky question. Ultimately, what I value are the links attached to the domain, and the age of those backlinks. An old domain with no links or minimal links will still take time to build out. However, a newer domain with thousands of old backlinks (old=a year or longer) is more valuable because it can move faster in the engines. You need to take into account that the search engines look at link patterns of domains. If your domain has not had links added to it in years, than you should be very careful in growing your links. If you suddenly put hundreds of links on it in a short period of time, be prepared to be sandboxed, or worse, thrown out of the index all together. However, if you have a newer domain that is indexed, ranking, and lots of backlinks than you can get a quicker ROI with it. This is mainly because it has the ability to handle more backlinks and thus be able to rank quicker on your desired keywords.
One quick note on page rank. Page rank really only shows the quantity and quality of your backlinks. It really has no other relevancy to your domain. When you see a domain with any page rank look at the backlinks. It is possible to spoof your page rank, and if that is the case it is a worthless domain. Most spoofed page ranks have very little backlinks. So, avoid domains with high page rank and little backlinks.
@Brandan- I really believe you are my one persistent reader. This I thank you for. Concerning your question, having a keyword rich subdomain used to be a wildly popular tactic in 2001 and 2002. Now what really counts is having a keyword rich primary domain. However, with a subdomain you can put it on a different IP address and feed one way links to the primary domain. In essence, the search engines see this as two completely different websites and thus gives some power to your main domain. I’ve done it several times and it works quite well. ~Paul W.