How to build an empire of keyword domains
by Brian Turner
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Anyone who uses Google can see that for the past 12-18 months at least, keyword domains have been getting some extra love from Google.
There are some general rules I’ve observed, though:
- Google seems to prefer .co.uk over other .uk domain extensions (forget .me.uk for a start)
- Google doesn’t mind limited prefix/suffix use
- Google doesn’t like hyphenated domains: +hyphens = -trust.
Most people think all the good keyword domains are gone - but just add a simple prefix or suffix, run a search, and there are brandable keyword domains galore available out there - many even have the .com available, too.
I can promise you that even in highly competitive markets, with a little creativity, there is still a lot of low hanging fruit of opportunity in this area.
And that’s just for major competitive keywords - imagine how much opportunity there is in the Longtail market? Forget ranking client sites - build them a network of keyword domains and you’ll rank faster and can prequalify the traffic to make it better quality, too.
The caveat is that you ideally should take a publishing approach to these domains - ie, build content-rich sites on these domains, so there is still quite a lot of potential leg work involved.
The result should be keyworded domain names which can get an extra boost in organic results - but even in a worse case scenario, something brandable for PPC traffic - or even build a new company around.
Some clear warnings, though:
1. Don’t redirect the domain names unless they have link equity to parse
2. Avoid junk content, unless you’re happy to burn the domains anyway
3. Be prepared to face a manual spam review, and aim to pass
One more tip - if you do follow this strategy, try and ensure that if registering many domains, you are organised enough to get these sites built in a time effective manner. Opportunity waits for no one, remember.
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Brian,
You are correct in advising potential domain investors that keyword-rich domains are the way to go. Anyone who has been watching domain sales will tell you that most of the dot coms are gone, but many investors and small businesses are happy enough to have a relevant keyword domain no matter what the suffix is.
Keep building that empire!
Jay Lohmann
InvestInURLs.com
Indeed, and just as a point of note, I’ve observed far more developed keyword domains in Google over the past few months - I think there’s definitely been a stronger corporate interest in acquiring strong keyword domains.
It’s been frustrating before to see good domains languish as SEDO pages - so I’m happy to see the market developing more properly. :)
How much of a factor are hyphenated domains.
I have a domain with three hyphens in it, and it is not ranking well. I wonder how much of a factor this may be.
Another question, have you ever 301′d more than one site into another? Is this dangerous?
Jez