For the last several years exact match domains have been the gold of SEO. You could buy one and with relative ease rank the domain on that exact keyword. So, if you had StoneGardenTurtles.com and were selling stone garden turtles than it was somewhat easy to rank on the keyword stone garden turtles. However, if you bought HippyTippyTurtles.com than it meant more work in gaining organic traffic on the exact keyword.

Recently, I have seen a shift with Google that suggests that exact domains have lost much of their SEO value. At the same time, I have also noticed that the usual links I have been acquiring are not as powerful. To confirm my suspicions I reached out to SEOMoz and asked their opinion on the matter.

domain_for_sale Yesterday, a friend came to me with an interesting question. His company was approached by a small competitor wanting to sell their website. They competitor said they would sell the website for just over a million. My friend was charged with finding out if the website was worth that much.

Due to sensitivity, I can’t share the site but I can share the questions I asked to help my friend gauge whether it was worth buying the website. Do understand that these questions come completely from a web marketing perspective. I know there are other questions you should ask, to find the full value. However, the below questions are a good guide to get you started.

1. What is the domain? When it comes to SEO the actual domain name is important. If the domain is a high traffic keyword than it is worth more. Many people in the SEO world think that exact keyword matching is dead when it comes to domains (and with hyphens it is). For the past year I have tested this notion and found it is not true. If you have an exact match keyword as a domain, you will find that it is 10 to 40 times easier to rank on that particular keyword depending on your niche. The best thing you can do is to use a free keyword tool and check out the traffic the domain has as a keyword. This will determine a lot the value of the domain, particularly, if the domain has nothing hosted on the site.

e-shopping-cart1 WHAT IS THIS?

All domains listed below have recently been deleted from the domain registry and are for sell. You will want to treat these domains as if they have no history at all (at least, this is how Google will see it).

If you are interested in any of the below domains simply contact me with the name you want to buy. I offer these domains to the first responders, so the early bird gets the domain.