Generic Domain Names

According to a post this week on the Demand Media blog, the company just launched a new website called Stronger, which can be found on Stronger.com. The website is “a subscription-based online fitness and nutrition program – that builds on LIVESTRONG.COM’s continued success.”

Off the bat, I found it very interesting that Demand Media chose to make the url part of the Livestrong.com website. When you visit Stronger.com, you are instantly taken to  Livestrong.com/Stronger/ instead of a standalone website. The company could have gotten away with branding the new website without the matching domain name, but clearly they were smart enough to get the domain name first since they know many people will automatically type it into their browser.

I did a bit of research to learn more about the domain name, and I did

It’s no secret that I like exact match keyword domain names (EMD). When shopping for something where I don’t have a particular brand in mind, I will frequently visit the .com EMD to see who owns it and if I might be able to purchase something there. I also use it as an acquisition opportunity in case it’s available for a good price.

I want to share a EMD success story with you.

I was in New Orleans with some friends this past weekend. We decided we would rent a balcony on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, and I did some research to find a place to rent. I opted not to use Google and found two sites using direct navigation: BourbonStreetBalcony.com and BourbonBalcony.com. As luck would have it, both domain names have websites advertising balconies, and we used one of them for the rental.

In my opinion, it’s a great idea for a company to use an exact match keyword domain name to advertise a product or service. It’s even more beneficial when there isn’t a well known brand in that space because Google tends to rank well known brands better even for unbranded keyword searches. Without a major brand, EMDs tend to rank higher from what I’ve noticed. For instance, BourbonStreetBalcony.com ranks #1 in Google for the search.

If it wasn’t for the EMD, I probably wouldn’t have known about this balcony, especially because a friend had found another balcony through a concierge referral.

Most people don’t search like I did, but direct navigation traffic continues to produce qualified leads, and if the owner of the domain name I found tracks his referrals, he’ll notice that this converted lead was organic and not from a search engine.