Search Engine Optimization

What is a domain name?

Millions of domain names have already been registered and finding the 'perfect' domain name will be tricky. Unless you have a deep pocket and bother to buy a very very brandable domain name, you'll have a hard time getting the best domain.

Here a a few things you need to consider when picking a domain name.

Branding and SEO

In business, branding is the representation of what a company or organization stands for. It is also the same for a websites.

Choose a domain that is well brandable - It should be conveniently easy to associate it with any product or service you are offering. For a blog, it should be very easy to connect your domain name and your content.

Your domain should be short and memorable - A very long domain may cause your readers to forget and the chances of word-of-mouth marketing gets lower. The easier people remember your site, the better.

Go with a .com domain name - People always assume that a website always has a .com extension. You probably know why I have the .org extension. (hint: the .net and .com versions have already been registered)

Choose a very 'typable' domain name - Imagine yourself typing, "forxchngtips4u.com". Ok, that's a bit sarcastic but you know what I mean.

Your domain should be unique - I cannot tell you how difficult it will be if you have a similar domain name with a popular website.

Although there are successful bloggers who have parodied famous domain names, I still believe that you should choose a unique domain name.

Have keywords in your domain name - Having your exact keywords in your domain name will help with search engine optimization.

Country specific domain extensions - If you are targeting a country specific audience it would be safe to register country specific domain name along with the domain name with the .com extension.

Hyphen-filled domain names - Domain names that have more than two hyphens may be regarded by users as spam sites and quickly forget about your website.

This short article discusses two ways in which smart operators are making money from the domain names of others. Neither method is, in my opinion, unethical and can lead to a sound income stream.

Introduction

Do you know what the one thing is that online businesses need, a topic that seems to occupy more space in ebooks, conferences,blogs and fora than any other topic?

If you said, "getting traffic", you are spot on. Traffic is obtained through a variety of ways including search engine optimization, linking, advertising, running competitions, blogging etc. But, as noted Internet marketer Ken Evoy reminds us, it's not simply traffic we need, it's targeted traffic. That is, traffic looking for our products or services.

This article discusses two ways in which you can leverage targeted traffic from other peoples' domain names.

Method One

Say for example you have an online mortgage brokerage operation. You are looking for a constant stream of people comparing mortgage fees and charges who might sign up with you and earn you your commission. However, your firm is small and most of your traffic comes from advertising, which is expensive, and referrals from existing customers. You know that there are numbers of large financial institutes in your region who provide mortgages and you'd like to tap in on some of their prospects.

Here's what you do for method one. Use a domain name identical with the domain they have, but change the suffix. For example, if the firm's URL is amazingbank DOT com, buy a domain called amazingbank DOT ws or with some other suffix that is legally acceptable to your country of registration. You will need to make sure the name is not a Trademark Registered Name which it is illegal for you to use and your domain name registration authority should advise you how to do that in your country.

Next, set up a redirect page on your site. This is a page in a sub-directory called index.html which, when loaded into a browser, redirects users to the home page (also called index.html) of your main business site. And guess what? Because your domain name is almost identical with the financial institution that gets all the traffic, you will get a good place in the search engines.

Numbers of people who do a search will click on your link that will highlight the word mortgages. Others will type the incorrect domain name leading to your domain, the redirection page and eventually your home page.

What will they see? A whole lot of information about your mortgages ... just what they were looking for.

Before you do this, it will be a good idea to check out the Google Page Rank of some of the sites in which you are interested. Do that by installing Google Toolbar (free from Google) and then visiting the site. Google Toolbar shows the Google Page Rank in the toolbar. The page rank refers to popularity. Obviously the more popular the site is, the better it will be for you to mimic.

Method Two

A variation on method one is this method that relies on people making typing mistakes. Instead of typing CNN DOT Com to visit the well known media site, a small percentage of people will type CNM DOT com. You provide a domain called CNM DOT Com and pick up some of the mistake makers. However, you do need to provide a product the same as the site you choose to imitate or else people won't stay long.

So, find a major player who sells the same or similar products or services to you and register a domain name similar to theirs.

Before you do that, visit Overture or use some other method eg, the free software program Good Keywords, to find out how many searches each month are made for the original site and the misspelled derivations. Choose a domain name that reflects the one people are mistakenly entering and every time they enter it they will get your site or any site to which you redirect them. It could even be an affiliate site or someone else's sales page.

Summary

Using either of these methods will increase your targeted traffic and because the traffic is targeted, many of your visitors will buy your goods or services. If you were starting from scratch and wanted to know what type of business to go into, you could research some existing, successful businesses and check out the common spelling mistakes people make. If there were numbers of common mistakes, you could create as many domain names (these are generally very cheap) and redirect all of them to your home page with just the right products or services people were looking for.

Every day there are hundreds of website owners who have purchased a domain name only to forget about it and then let it expire. For those investors who are well informed about such names they can snap these up and therefore capture a huge amount of existing traffic even though the site is considered to be brand new. This has resulted in a large number of owners of websites losing out and those who investing in such domain names to become richer.

All websites only survive if they have regular amounts of traffic being directed towards their site each day. So often when a site which has a memorable domain name and constant traffic going to it becomes available they will quickly be snapped up by some of the more savvy domain name investors around. Then often within a matter of days they have sold the domain name on for a profit.

Let us say for example a sit has become available which sells bridal gowns and other wedding paraphernalia but because the site is not user friendly or it has been poorly designed. Or because the products it is selling are over priced and has now done as well as the owner had expected so they have allowed the domain to expire.

When the domain does expire a smart person will be informed of this through the use of a domain watchdog service. These services will automatically advise their members of any domains which have become available that they are interested in immediately. Then once notification has been received they have the chance then to buy up this domain for no more than $6.95.

Within a matter of minutes you could find yourself being the owner of a site that has plenty of traffic being directed towards it. But what you will then need to do in order to generate cash flow for it is to build a new website page with a number of related ad links placed upon it. Doing this will help to better monetize any existing traffic that is being directed towards the site.

As time passes then you as the investor have the choice of either building up the site even further which will in turn help to generate more cash for you. Or you can simply choose to resell (flip) the side to another domain name investor, domain name broker or a person who is actually interested in owning the website for themselves.

Therefore if you have an old domain name which you are considering either retiring or flipping then the first place you should consider putting it up for sale is on eBay or a popular domain name auction service. Many people are actually pleasantly surprised at how much they have made by selling off a domain name using these particular services. On eBay alone there have been some very unusual domain names go up for sale and which have been sold for more than $500.