42 Killer Domain Secrets Exposed!
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 companies 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 that 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 it's genre.
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 The 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 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 hear 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 hijacked 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.
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/
By Jim Symonds
© Copyright 2003, Jim Symonds, All Rights
Reserved.
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