( 
)This guide is intended to present a factual account of all the important factors when considering the purchase of a domain name. It starts with which top level domain you should look at, works through keywords and keyword dilution, and the use of multiple domains to access a single page-set for search engine optimisation. For our example we will use a fictional site called Jeremys Wine and Cheese Emporium in New York. Any similarity to a real site, Living or dead, is purely coincidental!
Which TLD? .com, .net, .co.uk, .us, .tv
First of all you need to realise that many of the Search Engines give preference to certain domain name extensions. The search engines show a bias towards .com, .net and .org domains names (also .gov but unless you are a part of government you can forget about that!). Secondly the Public are biased towards .com domains when it comes to spending money. Hence if you get a choice ALWAYS go for .com or .net even if your business is localised or national.
Search Engine Based or 'type in'
Think about this one carefully. When was the last time you typed a whole domain name from memory into your browsers navigation bar? You type the first few letters in and then *ping* your browser gives you a list and you click on one! So does it matter how long your domain name is? No, not nowadays because 90% of you traffic will come from search engines or clicked links. So why the cost bias towards short 'type-in' names? Its internet snobbery, pure and simple! If you want a short type-in name then its going to cost you mega-bucks. But a long type in name is just as good so long as the phrase it is built on or thw first word is highly memorable, does not have any dashes or numbers, and is not miss-spelled.
Selecting a Good Search Engine Domain
Obviously you want 'Jeremyswineandcheeseemporium' dot com then? Well you could have this as your main domain, and its unlikely to be taken but dont rest on your laurels just yet!
Do an experiment. Try typing a few relevant search phrases in Google. Notice how many of the returned pages have URL's that themselves contain one or more words from the search term. That is no co-incidence! Keywords inside the URL have a very powerful effect on how the search engines see your site.
So thats good then because 'Jeremyswineandcheeseemporium' has your main keywords 'wine' and 'cheese' in it! Go to the bottom of the class. Search engines look at keyword placing and keyword dilution so your 'wine and cheese' is diluted by 15 other characters, plus it does not appear near the front of the domain, its a whole 8 characters in!
This is why it is common practice in Search Engine Optimisation to have multiple URL's pointing to the same site. We will drop the 'emporium' but it is important to have the main distinguishing name of the business in there so our main URL we will simply shorten to 'Jeremyswineandcheese'. Our main page (which this URL points to will in fact be optimised on that phrase 'Jeremys Wine and Cheese'. Its not likely though that until our business gets bigger people will type that in! So we will build some little 2-3 page 'mini' sites around some better search keywords. Dont worry this is not really extra work, we will link to them from our main site just as subsections of that main site.
Picking Good Keywords
There are many tools that will help select keywords, a good free one is at inventory dot overture dot com - so lets split our main key phrase into 'wine' and 'cheese'. Typing 'wine' into the keyword tool tells us 217,000 people searched for it last month. This seems good until you type it into google and see how many sites try to optimise for that keyword! We also see that double the number of people search for red wine(10,000) than white wine(5000). However 70,000 people searched for wine racks! Hey these people must buy wine to put in them, and we could easily sell wine racks as well ....so we look for wineracks dot com ...but somebody beat us to it. So whats the smallest word we can tack on to minimise dilution..Great! Winerackco dot com. is available. We repeat this process for cheese, and we find more people searched for 'steak and cheese' than searched for 'cheese' so we decide on a recipe pageset for steak and cheese recipes and we register steakandcheesechef dot com for this. Finally we get a lot of local custom so we want something like New York Wine or New York Cheese. We fund newyorkcheeseco dot com but have dificulty with the wine keyword. Going to ebay we see newyorkwinez dot com and manage to get it for $100. We also pick up libfrauemilch dot com for $250 on the spur of the moment.
Legalities
In the old 'wild west' days of the net anybody could register your companies name as a domain and charge you sometimes 1000's of dollars per year 'rent' for its use. Now if you purchase a domain that contains somebody elses trademark ie (BrutCuveeChampagne dot com) you are likely to be required to hand over the domain free of charge and pay a proportion of any monies earned from its use, plus 1000's in legal costs should the trademark owner decide to prosecute so be very,very wary of buying any domain that contans a company name or brand name. It may cost you more than you think!
Domain Appraisal
This is really some of the stuff a good SEO guy will do for you. As somebody who partly makes their living from SEO I know! So before you bid on a domain appraise it. This is how I do it.
* Is it dot com or dot net (I never buy anything else)
* Does it contain a trademark or company name (dont touch it if it does)
* Does it contain good keywords that are not grossly miss spelt. For example mywinez dot com is fine but myw1nes dot com (a 1 for the i) ruins the keword for SEO purposes.
* Are the usable keywords diluted by more than 25% extra letters? Mywinecompany has wine diluted by 66% so dont touch it. winerackco has 'winerack' diluted by only 20% so falls in our guidelines.
* Does it contain any dashes (-) some search engines dont handle these too well and people forget to type them in!
* Does it contain any abbreviations or numbers (makes it more difficult to remember)
Thats right I dont consider length a factor. The shorter the better for type-ins but for search engine domains keyword positioning, keyword dilution and freedom from spelling errors are more important.
Domain Valuation
Now use ebays excellent tool to search through closed auctions. Dont just look at domains that have sold, look at ones where there have been bids but the bids did not meet reserve. Find a few domains in a similar market with similar length and keyword dilution to the one you are bidding on. This gives you an idea of what such a domain might be worth on ebays internal market. For example if you see booksellercom dot com go for $300 a week ago you can bet that winemerchantco would be a similar price if not slightly higher (less dilution). Use this information to set your maximum bid price. If you really want the domain name the add 10% and WATCH the last few minutes of auction even if it is 5AM your time!
Which TLD? .com, .net, .co.uk, .us, .tv
First of all you need to realise that many of the Search Engines give preference to certain domain name extensions. The search engines show a bias towards .com, .net and .org domains names (also .gov but unless you are a part of government you can forget about that!). Secondly the Public are biased towards .com domains when it comes to spending money. Hence if you get a choice ALWAYS go for .com or .net even if your business is localised or national.
Search Engine Based or 'type in'
Think about this one carefully. When was the last time you typed a whole domain name from memory into your browsers navigation bar? You type the first few letters in and then *ping* your browser gives you a list and you click on one! So does it matter how long your domain name is? No, not nowadays because 90% of you traffic will come from search engines or clicked links. So why the cost bias towards short 'type-in' names? Its internet snobbery, pure and simple! If you want a short type-in name then its going to cost you mega-bucks. But a long type in name is just as good so long as the phrase it is built on or thw first word is highly memorable, does not have any dashes or numbers, and is not miss-spelled.
Selecting a Good Search Engine Domain
Obviously you want 'Jeremyswineandcheeseemporium' dot com then? Well you could have this as your main domain, and its unlikely to be taken but dont rest on your laurels just yet!
Do an experiment. Try typing a few relevant search phrases in Google. Notice how many of the returned pages have URL's that themselves contain one or more words from the search term. That is no co-incidence! Keywords inside the URL have a very powerful effect on how the search engines see your site.
So thats good then because 'Jeremyswineandcheeseemporium' has your main keywords 'wine' and 'cheese' in it! Go to the bottom of the class. Search engines look at keyword placing and keyword dilution so your 'wine and cheese' is diluted by 15 other characters, plus it does not appear near the front of the domain, its a whole 8 characters in!
This is why it is common practice in Search Engine Optimisation to have multiple URL's pointing to the same site. We will drop the 'emporium' but it is important to have the main distinguishing name of the business in there so our main URL we will simply shorten to 'Jeremyswineandcheese'. Our main page (which this URL points to will in fact be optimised on that phrase 'Jeremys Wine and Cheese'. Its not likely though that until our business gets bigger people will type that in! So we will build some little 2-3 page 'mini' sites around some better search keywords. Dont worry this is not really extra work, we will link to them from our main site just as subsections of that main site.
Picking Good Keywords
There are many tools that will help select keywords, a good free one is at inventory dot overture dot com - so lets split our main key phrase into 'wine' and 'cheese'. Typing 'wine' into the keyword tool tells us 217,000 people searched for it last month. This seems good until you type it into google and see how many sites try to optimise for that keyword! We also see that double the number of people search for red wine(10,000) than white wine(5000). However 70,000 people searched for wine racks! Hey these people must buy wine to put in them, and we could easily sell wine racks as well ....so we look for wineracks dot com ...but somebody beat us to it. So whats the smallest word we can tack on to minimise dilution..Great! Winerackco dot com. is available. We repeat this process for cheese, and we find more people searched for 'steak and cheese' than searched for 'cheese' so we decide on a recipe pageset for steak and cheese recipes and we register steakandcheesechef dot com for this. Finally we get a lot of local custom so we want something like New York Wine or New York Cheese. We fund newyorkcheeseco dot com but have dificulty with the wine keyword. Going to ebay we see newyorkwinez dot com and manage to get it for $100. We also pick up libfrauemilch dot com for $250 on the spur of the moment.
Legalities
In the old 'wild west' days of the net anybody could register your companies name as a domain and charge you sometimes 1000's of dollars per year 'rent' for its use. Now if you purchase a domain that contains somebody elses trademark ie (BrutCuveeChampagne dot com) you are likely to be required to hand over the domain free of charge and pay a proportion of any monies earned from its use, plus 1000's in legal costs should the trademark owner decide to prosecute so be very,very wary of buying any domain that contans a company name or brand name. It may cost you more than you think!
Domain Appraisal
This is really some of the stuff a good SEO guy will do for you. As somebody who partly makes their living from SEO I know! So before you bid on a domain appraise it. This is how I do it.
* Is it dot com or dot net (I never buy anything else)
* Does it contain a trademark or company name (dont touch it if it does)
* Does it contain good keywords that are not grossly miss spelt. For example mywinez dot com is fine but myw1nes dot com (a 1 for the i) ruins the keword for SEO purposes.
* Are the usable keywords diluted by more than 25% extra letters? Mywinecompany has wine diluted by 66% so dont touch it. winerackco has 'winerack' diluted by only 20% so falls in our guidelines.
* Does it contain any dashes (-) some search engines dont handle these too well and people forget to type them in!
* Does it contain any abbreviations or numbers (makes it more difficult to remember)
Thats right I dont consider length a factor. The shorter the better for type-ins but for search engine domains keyword positioning, keyword dilution and freedom from spelling errors are more important.
Domain Valuation
Now use ebays excellent tool to search through closed auctions. Dont just look at domains that have sold, look at ones where there have been bids but the bids did not meet reserve. Find a few domains in a similar market with similar length and keyword dilution to the one you are bidding on. This gives you an idea of what such a domain might be worth on ebays internal market. For example if you see booksellercom dot com go for $300 a week ago you can bet that winemerchantco would be a similar price if not slightly higher (less dilution). Use this information to set your maximum bid price. If you really want the domain name the add 10% and WATCH the last few minutes of auction even if it is 5AM your time!
Guide created: 02/26/06 (updated 05/22/08)
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