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Teaching About the Value of Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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7

I got together with some of my former colleagues a couple nights ago at a memorial party for a colleague who died suddenly last week. We were discussing the progress of my former group, and we started discussing the Internet strategy they have and where it’s headed.

They are in the process of launching a new stand alone product website (their first stand alone site), although they were only able to acquire domain names that are variations of the product’s name (for example MyProduct.com, ProductOnline.com, MyProductOnline.com…etc). I asked why they didn’t go out and buy the straight up Product name from its current owner, and they didn’t really have an answer other than the fact that it’s owned by someone else.

This got my mind turning.   Here is a group at a huge company that has seen tremendous growth, are about to launch a serious Internet campaign/website, yet they don’t really understand the value of domain names and what it would mean to own the Product.com domain name.   I assume many companies are in a similar position, and educating them is difficult.

I would imagine a numbers argument would be the way to educate them, showing that the Product.com domain gets a % of traffic (intended visitors) which could be lost if they don’t search to find the correct website.   Figuring out the lost business as a result of not owning the domain name should be the amount of money they could/would pay to acquire it.   However, once the site is launched, it’s unlikely that the owner would sell it, especially if he is fearful of a litigious response.

How do you educate people about the value of domain names?

Flying to Korea to Track Down a Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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7

The New York Times has a neat article today about how Mike Iskandar traveled to Korea from his home in Ohio in order to acquire a domain name that was the perfect fit for his website, LifeProfit.com. Iskandar’s journey wasn’t as easy as flying to Korea to buy the name though, and it was a ballsy move.

I think this was a smart tactic, albeit risky for a number of reasons.   It goes to show that if you really want or need a domain name (or really anything else important to you or your business), there’s nothing like a personal conversation.

Will Twitter Buy Tweeter?

Elliot Silver
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4

When I was hanging out in Bido’s live chat room yesterday, someone mentioned the idea about Twitter   buying Tweeter.com, the domain name of the bankrupt electronics chain, Tweeter. I haven’t heard about an auction for the domain name, but I would imagine it will eventually be sold, and most likely via auction. There are a number of Tweeter-type references related to Twitter, including “tweets,” or the posts made by users, and “tweeters,” nickname of Twitter users.   There is also a “tweet deck” and other Tweet-related Twitter references that continue to be created.

That said, I find it unlikely that the still unprofitable company would buy Tweeter.com, although they did just receive an additional capital injection of $35 million. In my opinion, Tweeter.com will likely sell for somewhere in the mid six figure range, based on the valuable electronics shoppers who type it in or find it via back link. I don’t think that there are many people navigating to Tweeter.com in error thinking it’s Twitter.   A company like Flickr has more of a need for Flicker.com than Twitter has for Tweeter 🙂 .

It’s a valuable domain name for someone, but in my opinion, I don’t think Twitter will allocate the funds for it.

Make Sure Your Domains Make Sense

Elliot Silver
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24

Today, I saw a domain name on a drop list that had two strong keywords, and I almost bought it.   I did a bit of research, and I immediately realized why it hadn’t been renewed by the owner – it didn’t make sense as a domain name.   Calcutta is one of the largest cities in India, and there are millions of people in the world who practice law.   However, in India, I don’t believe these people are called lawyers.   Therefore, CalcuttaLawyer.com, which has under 60 results in Google for “calcutta lawyer” would not make sense as a domain name.

On occasion, I will see a well priced domain name that has a couple of strong keywords, and I have to do a bit of research to see why it’s priced so cheaply. Usually it’s because it doesn’t make much sense as a domain name. Would you want to own HawaiiSkiing.com?   I think not!

When you come across a domain name that looks interesting, check out the number of results there are in Google for the quoted term.   You should also check the number of searches that are performed for that keyword.   While there are plenty of gem domain names that can still be found every day, there are plenty of worthless ones as well.   Knowing what’s worth something and what’s not will end up saving you a lot of money!

Nice Legal Drops on SnapNames

Elliot Silver
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1

I noticed some pretty good legal domain names on Snapnames dropping in the next few days. I really like town/city + attorney or lawyer names, and there are several. I pointed a few of them out in my “Top Drops” page, but there are some other pretty good ones at good prices. I think many of the city legal names could sell for several hundred dollars to a local lawyer.

Check out some of the lawyer names and attorney names as well as the names that end with the keyword lawyers and/or attorneys when you get a chance.

Some of the names that I think are great (and CHEAP) are:
TauntonLawyer.com
TauntonAttorney.com
TomsRiverLawyer.com
BossierLawyer.com
CarsonAttorney.com
LynnAttorney.com
NewRochelleAttorney.com

Using Traffic Data to Register Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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6

A few years ago, I bought a couple of domain names for my dad’s business – one of which is the exact name of the store and the other is the shortened version, as it is commonly known. My dad had a website built, and about two years ago, he had Verizon re-design and manage the site, as part of his advertising with Super Pages.

Because it’s a local business, my never really focused on building a highly interactive website.   IMO, the main point was to have a website to inform people of the business who use the search engines or SuperPages.com. I figured that as long as there was information about the business, the brands carried, the store hours, and contact information, all would be good.   I never paid much attention after the site was launched.

Last week, out of curiosity, I installed a tracking code on the website, and I began to see how people were finding his website.   There wasn’t a lot of traffic (under 20 UV/day), but a good enough amount that it might be important to re-design the site. I was able to see that most people were finding the site via Google searching for the name of the store, and most had IP addresses that were local to the store. I also saw that some people are searching Google for industry keywords plus the city or region. Finally, I noticed several Google searches for a couple of long tail keywords that are important to the industry.

Interestingly, my dad’s small business is ranked in the top 10 for these two long tail industry keywords, and I also saw that the keywords in .com were deleted.   I decided to register the names and am now going to see how I can leverage the domain names to help improve this ranking. I am not an expert in this area, but even if owning the keywords don’t help the store, at least someone else can’t register and develop them, which would hurt the store’s ranking for these keywords.

I think website analytics is a neat way to locate solid keyword domain names, and I plan to do some searching through my websites to see if I can find any unregistered keyword terms.

How would you leverage a keyword domain name to help boost the traffic to a developed website?

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