Keyword Rich Domain Names And PPC Marketing
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The benefits of Keyword Rich Domain Names is obvious from several different standpoints. A domain name that tells you what the underlying site is about will do better with offline marketing efforts for obvious reasons. The benefits from an SEO standpoint are there, but somewhat limited to the keywords contained in the domain itself. The importance of the domain in PPC (PayPerClick) Marketing campaigns is becoming more clear every day.
Marketing products and services via PPC campaigns gets more competitive by the second, so any thing that lowers your cost per click is important. And raising your CTR (Click Through Rate) will lower your cost per click by raising your quality rating on Google.
More and more of the PPC Gurus like Perry Marshall and Frank Kern are talking about the importance of the domain used in a PPC ad. Anything that gives that ad more credibility will raise the CTR, and there are really only three parts to any PPC ad.
- The Headline
- The Ad Text
- The URL to Click
There is quite a bit of information available about addressing the first two, and not that much thought has been given to the last one until recently.
Here are a few things to remember when choosing a domain name to use in PayPerClick Marketing Campaigns:
- .com Extensions Are Preferable - No surprise here. A .com extension at the end of your domain name gives the impression of being a well established site or company. This is pretty much accepted, but I am finding that more and more of my domains with other extensions are doing well as the .com extensions with good keyword combinations get scarcer. I will always go with a .com domain name over others, but will take a domain with good keywords and another extension over any extensions without good keywords.
- Capitalize the Keywords In Your PPC Ads - So keywordphrase.com is not as good as KeywordPhrase.com Split testing will bear out that you will just get more clicks this way. The difference can be more than a 300% increase in your Click Through Rate. Again, this will raise your Google Quality Score and therefore lower you cost per click.
- www-KeywordPhrase.com Rush - As Keyword Rich Domain Names get more and more scarce, little tricks like this become more important. Throwing a www- in front of the keywords you want can give you more choices in the escalating Domain Name grab. Testing shows that there seems to be little effect on the positive affect that comes from having good keywords in your domain.
Using Keyword Rich Domain Names makes more and more sense when you examine the results regardless of what methods of marketing you use. Apply these tips and tricks and your results will show this. When your profitability can hang on a difference of just a few percentage points, it pays to grab any advantage you can find.
Using Keyword Rich Domain Names makes more sense every day…
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Do Search Engines Care If Your Domain Contains Hyphens?
This is a pretty hotly debated topic at the moment, so I thought I would share what I have found in my research, as well as through experience…
According to Matt Cutts, Google mouthpiece, Google’s algorithm doesn’t penalize for use of hyphens even if there are more than 2 or even 3 in the domain name. There is also no reason to expect that you will rank better for keyword rich domains where the keywords are separated by hyphens. So keyword-rich-domains.com will fair no better with Google than keywordrichdomains.com will.
Of course this is not necessarily true of all search engines. For most of us, our main concern is what Google’s algorithm will or won’t do, but there are a lot of other search engines out there too.
The one area that Matt Cutts separated out was situations where there could be confusion as to where the breaks between keywords should be. An example shown was that of books-exchange.com vs. booksexchange.com for obvious reasons. Matt claims that Google can tell which division is appropriate for your site, presumably due to content.
But what if you are using that particular domain primarily as a redirect? I am not completely sure they would pick it up in that case, so keep that in mind when buying domains primarily as redirects…
Interestingly, Matt says that it is preferable to separate your keywords in a path by hyphens as many search engines will pick them up much better this way. He specified that hyphens were far better than underscores. What we are referring to here is the section of a particular url that occurs after the extension (.com, .net, .info…).
So according to this theory yourdomain.com/whatever-you-want.html is better than yourdomain.com/whateveryourwant.html for many search engines.
To take advantage of this in your WordPress blogs you need to change the Permalink structure under Settings to Custom and type in this: /%category%/%postname%.html
This changes the pathways structure for your blog and allows you to hyphenate the keywords you choose to include in the pathway portion of the url for each post. Take a look at the url for this post to see what I mean.
None of this is to say there aren’t downsides to hyphens in the root domain such as best-domains.info Most of these have to do with verbally communicating your website address and the confusion that can result. Some people also think that a non-hyphenated domain name just looks better.
These are not entirely frivolous concerns, but let’s face it folks we are also dealing with a commodity that is not unlimited! There are definite advantages to keyword rich domains just ast there are advantages to a .com over a .net or a .info as this site uses.
So you weigh your desired keywords over extension availability. You take into account whether your keywords should be hyphenated, or even if they non-hyphenated domain is available. Keeping in mind your intended use for the domain (redirects) you then make the best decision available to you…
Competition over keyword rich domain names is at a fever pitch these days, so these issues are not going away anytime soon, or probaby ever!
My advise is to use the extensions necessary to get the keywords you want but be alert to opportunities that present themselves in the marketplace. Use hyphens to get your desired keywords when you need to, or to segment ambiguous domain names when necessary.
Apply balance using hyphens in domain names and you will be fine…
Jimbo!
Jim Patterson
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Why In The World Would Anyone Pay Extra For Premium Domains
There are so many places to buy a domain name these days. And plenty of them offering to sell them for less than the mob. So why in the world would anybody pay the extra money for a Premium Domain name? There are a couple of answers to that question.
There are several advantages to having a keyword rich domain name that can’t be had any other way. Keyword rich domain names tend to be bought up by people looking to sell domains at a premium as they know that they are prized for the head start they give for SEO purposes.
Another reason people may be willing to pay more for a domain has to do with what extras come with it. Whether it is hosting, or search engine submission or any one of a number of additional services that add value to the particular domain it motivates people to pay extra fungolas for a premium domain…
I have gotten into the premium domain market to offer Keyword Rich Domains along with additional services to help launch websites with an amazing headstart over the competition as far as SEO goes.
In spite of the fact that most of the domains in my Best Domains Marketplace are appraised at far more, I am selling them for just $197 each. In addition to a true Premium Keyword Rich Domain, you also get backlinks to the domain for your choice of 4 keywords (or keyword phrases) from 50 sites with PR5-91!
No doubt I’ll be offering other packages in the future, but the price on this one will probably be going up in the future, so take full advantage of it now!
Jim Patterson
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