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Posts Tagged ‘domain names’
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
Two days ago I wrote that large corporations will soon have an opportunity to purchase a top level domain extension for $185,000.
I’ve recently had a chance to delve into this a little deeper. It seems that ICANNs blog and application for TLDs is a bit clearer on this topic than the original source of my information.
Specifically, I’d like to quote the ICANN blog:
In addition to familiar TLDs such as .com, .org, and .net, Internet users could potentially see new domain name extensions made of almost any word, in any language.
The emphasis in bold text is mine.
I understand the argument that $185,000 is a hefty price and that not everyone will be able to afford it. But … I think an important distinction must be made between gTLDs that are based on domain names and gTLDs that can be based on any word of any language.
The way ICANN has made this ruling implies to me that applications for TLDs will be accepted for any word. That means if several top dog Internet marketers wanted to invest their money together and acquire .seo, then they could present an application. Whether that application was approved by ICANN or not is another story. This understanding of the ICANN ruling opens up many more doors of possibility where gTLDs are concerned. Do you agree?
Tags: domain names, ICANN, TLDs
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
Monday, June 20th, 2011
I know Frank Reed says a recent ICANN ruling that will allow large corporations to purchase their own domain name extensions for their brands will only be available for the big guys – small businesses won’t be able to afford it. However, I can see opportunity here for small businesses.
Where there are domain name extensions, there will be domain names. So, for instance, imagine Samsonite applying for one of these branded TLDs and paying the fee. Who will be allowed to have a .samsonite domain name? I’d imagine anyone that Samsonite allows to.
A large corporate brand could conceivably purchase its own domain name and sell domains to anyone willing to pay their fee. So if you sell luggage in your small town department store, what’s to stop you and Samsonite from entering into an agreement for you to have your own domain at yourstore.samsonite? (Under this scenario, by the way, you could also have domains at yourstore.royce and yourstore.travelpro.)
Or imagine this, the city of Dallas, Texas gets its own top level domain extension – .dallas. What if they allowed businesses headquartered there to have their own domain name? A city could conceivably give away those domain names on a first-come, first-serve basis. Or they could sell them and put the revenue into developing city infrastructure. The sky’s the limit, right?
I can imagine this scenario, however, there is one big challenge – a major hurdle, if you will. How can these domains be search engine optimized, or can they? How will search engines adapt their own search algorithms to make those domains more searchable, or will they bother?
Of course, .dallas could have its own search feature so Google’s search recognition may not be necessary. However, I’m curious what the nature of search would look like with thousands, possibly millions, of legitimate, ICANN-recognized TLDs. What do you think?
Tags: brand names, Branding, domain names, search, TLDs
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Saturday, November 20th, 2010
One of the biggest debates in SEO, and it’s still going on after more than 10 years, is whether or not you should buy an exact domain name for your business. There are three popular schools of thought concerning this:
- Yes, definitely
- No, not necessary
- It wouldn’t hurt
The “Yes, definitely” camp makes its argument based on the idea that exact match domain names, because they contain your primary keyword in them, will improve your SEO. Well, that’s partially true. If you only want to rank for that primary keyword then it could hold an advantage. But if you’ve searched for a topic at Google then you’ve probably seen instances where non-keyworded domains ranked higher than everyone else. Just think Wikipedia; there’s a website that ranks for a whole slew of keywords not related to its domain name.
The “No, not necessary” people argue on the basis of branding. The wisdom in this circle is that an exact match domain name could hurt you if you are trying to build a brand. Frankly, I think they’re right. We could all think of several websites that have built a successful brand online without exact match keyword-heavy domains. Here are a few that come to mind readily:
- Google
- Yahoo!
- Bing
- Twitter
- Blekko (the name of a search engine)
Four of those five are search engines and none of them are particularly struggling. Want another example? How about Facebook?
If the top brands online aren’t using exact match domains then it makes sense that it isn’t really necessary.
The “it wouldn’t hurt” folks, of course, fall somewhere in the middle. Their philosophy is it may not be necessary, but it wouldn’t hurt. Usually, these prognosticators will argue that exact match domains may not be necessary right now, but some day having your keyword in the domain could help push you up a notch or two. The fact is, right now, exact match domain names are doing well – but that may not be true next year, or three years from now.
Another argument says that all things being equal, having an exact match domain name could put you one step ahead of the competition.
I won’t argue with either of those points because, frankly, I’m not sure how right those people are. And I’m pretty sure they don’t know either.
SEO is a tricky business. Just when you think you know something, the game changes. I think the best policy is to go with a domain name that has the best potential for branding you and that will make your SEO life simpler. If you can create a brand using a keyword-specific exact match domain then all the power to you. The important thing is that you resonate with your target market. In that regard, I still believe in traditional marketing principles.
Tags: domain names, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
The domain name that you choose for your business is a part of your brand, which is why selecting something unintelligible, with a combination of initials or parts of words can be a huge mistake. Most small business owners go with a longer version, sometimes stretching their domain name out to four or five words because it`s simply impossible to find a decent domain name.
That will all change, starting next year. New domain suffixes will be coming out that allow people to choose locations or objects as their suffixes, such as .book or .nyc, for example.
While these domains could end up being extremely expensive, they will provide amazing benefits to companies that will finally be able to change their name to something that works with their branding. This could be invaluable.
The change in domain names is something that will drastically change the internet and it could really change how we brand our businesses.
Tags: Branding, domain names, domains
Posted in Branding | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
Andy Beal is one of the most well known and respected Internet marketers in the world today. The owner of Marketing Pilgrim, he is also a recognized expert on reputation management. He recently wrote that he purchased a dot ME domain name. Specifically, reputation.me.
This is important for a number of reasons, but primarily it says that domain name extensions don’t really matter for rankings. Now, Beal hasn’t proven that with a high Google ranking yet, and he may never, but the fact that he is willing to endorse the .ME domain says a lot. He says as much in his own words:
In the meantime, Reputation Dot Me serves two purposes:
1. Provide anyone with a constant stream of online reputation management data.
2. Shows how easy it is to put a $20 domain name to work–even a .ME one! 
If it’s so easy to make a lower-level domain name extension work for you then why aren’t more people doing it? Everyone seems to be so interested in dot com and dot org. Not much else.
I think it stems from a misunderstanding. Most high ranking websites are either dot com or dot org. That leads some people to believe that you have to be a dot com or dot org to rank well, but that’s a myth. The reasons so many dot coms and dot orgs do well in the search engines are:
- They’ve been around longer than most TLDs
- Optimization practices were set on .coms and .orgs
- Widespread community support for the major TLDs
- A misunderstanding of SEO tactics related to TLDs
I think it is more important to have your primary keyword in your domain name, no matter what the TLD is, than it is to have a specific TLD extension. I also believe that it is just a matter of time before a minor TLD achieves high rankings in Google for important keywords often enough that the myth will be busted by best practices alone. You can high rankings for minor TLDs in Yahoo! and MSN a lot quicker than you can in Google, but I think Google is realizing that they can’t put a fence around minor TLDs forever. Eventually, they’ll have to let in some minor TLDs and established and influential folks like Andy Beal taking a chance on them will be the reason why.
Learn more about SEO best practices.
Tags: andy beal, domain names, SEO, TLDs
Posted in SEO for Small Business | No Comments »
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
Yesterday, I posted about Google’s .0 prejudice and wouldn’t you know it – they changed it. It’s true. Google is now crawling and indexing URLs that end with .0.
But don’t think that all file name extensions are equal. They’re not. Matt Cutts makes it perfectly clear that some file name extensions are worthless and won’t be crawled. Specifically, .exe and .dll.
But that doesn’t mean that the file name extensions Google does index are ranked in any particular order of preference or hierarchy. Your .com extension, for instance, isn’t anymore valuable than a .biz, .net, or .org extension. Good SEO is good SEO and no matter what file name extension you use, all other factors being the same, using a .com file name extension isn’t going to put you over the edge. No added advantage. Factors that are much more important than file name extension include:
- Age of domain
- On-page SEO factors
- Link building
- File name
- IP Address (bad neighborhood, anyone?)
- Reputation
No sooner had I made my post and Google is tinkering with its policies again. Sometimes that’s good. This is one of those times. You can now have file name extensions that end with .0, but I learned something new by reading up on this subject this week. If you end all of your URLs with a / then you’ll never have to worry about the file name extension. Even before its change in policy, Google would have indexed a .0/ any day. Go figure.
Tags: .0, domain names, file name extensions, ranking factors, urls
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 1 Comment »
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