Domains, Domain Names For Sale & Domain Name Registration

Researching keyword domains, the correct way

Having not written a post about keyword domains for a while, and since I will be doing a presentation in a couple of weeks at Think Visibility in Leeds on the subject, I have been doing some reading and sharpening my knowledge ready for the event. Here are some thoughts of mine about researching keyword domains, the correct way.

Choosing a keyword domain to register or purchase on the aftermarket is about finding an opportunity in the market and the right asset that will help to maximise your return on investment. Do you just want a slice of the pie or the whole cake? You make the choice.

From my experience in the UK domain industry you broadly (well, very broadly) have two types of keyword domainers. Ones who invest their money into a selection of premium domains and dedicate their time to the development of those domain names into established websites. And then the niche, long tail, high volume domainers who hand register domains on a massive scale turn them into mini sites and earn via Adsense and basic affiliate programs. Both established and proven business models and purely down to the individual domainers preference.

Regardless of which model you follow, the basic foundations of researching keyword domains and identifying their potential for your portfolio remain similar. For now we’ll focus on looking for high search volumes on an exact match basis in the UK, across both the Google Adwords network and general search figures, plus a look at mobile search too. We’ll take a look at the competition and how to decide if you can realistically achieve first page rankings and also some other hints and tips to give you an advantage over your competitors. I will demonstrate this using the term “domains” which is what I’m optimising 3ac.co.uk for. Let’s take a look…

Search volumes (Exact match, UK):

Using the Google Search Estimator Tool (see URL below) the term “Domains” is searched for 5,400 times per month

• http://www.google.com/sktool/#keywords?q=domains

However compare that across the Adwords network using Adwords Keyword Estimator and you get 12,100

• https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

Using the advanced options to query mobile search and you get a figure of 110.

Remember to create an account with Google so you can save your search preferences, it saves a lot of time!

It would be fair to say that if you took the search volume figure as your base figure and made the rough assumption that a 1-4 position on Google’s first page gained anywhere from 10%-75% of this traffic (I’m using these figures from past analytics) then you could expect anywhere from 500-3000 visitors per month by being in the upper half of the first page on Google from this search term.

Since 3ac.co.uk has been floating around on the 2nd page of Google it has still been receiving 60-150 uniques per month from the search term “domains” so my guessing is I will start to see a dramatic increase as I climb up the first page.

The competition:

So I’ve Googled “domains” today and below are the first 10 results:

As you can see I’m up for some pretty stiff competition with 123-reg.co.uk and fasthosts.co.uk sitting in the hot seats and various other domain name registrars in their too. But what can give you the edge?

Firstly if you are entering into a market where the competition is high then there is little point trying to hand register a brand new domain name. You will be better off buying an old domain on the after market. Preferably somehing that is older than 5yrs will do the trick but the closer to 10 years you can get and even back into the 90′s (pre-nominet) is even better. Age = Trust as far as Google is concerned so if you can pick up a domain name in your industry/target market you are off to a good start. I bought 3ac.co.uk for £60. It is 8yrs old and had an established DMOZ listing with the internet resources section of the directory. The domain had been a website previously and had a few inbound links but more importantly no bad reputation either. OK so 3ac.co.uk is not a keyword domain, but imagine where I would be now if it was. This simply proves the damage you can do and the time you can save from an SEO point of view if you pick your domain names the right way from the start. Another great tool I use to assess my competition is the Firefox SEO tool which gives a summary of statistics for your competitors on a page of Google:

Here’s the info for 3ac.co.uk:

Bookmark to:

Tags: Domains, Google Adwords, keyword domains, search volume, seo