Right Domain Name

The Right Domain Name

I either make my domain names define themselves exactly or I think of a creative way to state its purpose. Your best bet is to think of a name that is an extension of who you are.

A short and easy to remember URL is friendly to word-of-mouth marketing. Would you feel better referring a friend to seobook.com or seo-search-engine-optimization-marketing-e-book-book.com? Which would be easier to remember and say? If you make a message hard to spread, then it will probably spread at a slower rate.

Often times it is worth it to buy multiple domain names, even if you do not use them all. By securing multiple domain names you can decide to use some of your secondary domains to cover similar thematically-related topics AND prevent competitors from purchasing the name.

Within six months of my starting the SEOBook.com website, someone was already spamming me trying to sell me SEOBooks.com. I should have spent the additional $8 to register that domain from the start. You also may want to buy a generic name and the domain name that matches your business, and direct them both to the same location.

I do not recommend buying multiple domain names exclusively for deceptive practices. Many of my sites are about SEO, but you can break ideas down to their core and make useful sites in less competitive markets.

For example, one site I own is Search-Marketing.info. This site is similar to the contents of this e-book, although the site is somewhat dated. That site is not a well-branded name. I had many concepts on that site that later were extracted and made into their own sites:

1. I had a blog at Search-Marketing.info; the blog was not successful. I moved the blog from that site to SeoBook.com, and it has likely become one of the top half dozen most popular blogs in the SEO industry.
2. I had a directory list on Search-Marketing.info. I decided to turn that list into a directory of directories, and created that idea at DirectoryArchives.com.
3. I listed some bad SEO practices on my Search-Marketing.info; I decided to turn that idea into BlackHatSEO.com.

Each of the last three sites occasionally spikes in popularity and helps give me a multi-brand approach. I would not be nearly as successful if I kept all of those ideas inside my first site.

When you spin out micro domains, they allow you to try to be humorous or different without necessarily having as much impact on your root brand as if you said and did the same things on your main business site.

There are also tactical business reasons for using multiple sites. For example, if what you are doing might get you sued, it may make sense to put it on a non-income-generating site to try to make it easier to get free legal help if the lawsuit is bogus.

Some businesses will require brand development to become successful. Being a branded SEO makes it far easier to charge a fair rate for my services than if I was unbranded. My original website (http://www.search-marketing.info) is really a weak brand and was a huge mistake.

I like the idea of creating things that I think add long-term value to the web, so I usually opt for branded names over generic names.

There is more than one way to skin a cat, and the same idea can be said for picking a domain name. If you aim to extract long-term profits and want to make the site you are working on become your career, then you want to pick a name that is not overly generic.

Before you pick a name or start building sites, you should decide what your goals are for the site. If you are unsure what type of site you want to make or why you want to make it, you may want to participate in web communities to find problems that need solutions and create a personal site until you find what you want to do.

Note: This is an advanced SEO technique most webmasters do not need to do.

With how many pages there are on the web, quality will usually win over quantity. With that being said, sometimes it will make sense to have multiple, similar websites covering slightly different topics. Doing this can help you create topically authoritative inbound links to different sites in your network and give you a multi-branded approach to marketing.

However, you want to make sure your sites are all different and unique. If your sites are extremely similar, then your sites may receive a spam penalty or have the nepotistic link popularity discounted. Even worse is that if you interlink them all, then all of your sites could get penalized at the same time.

Those using strong brands and good ideas can usually do well without creating a topical network. If you create a topical network expressly to deceive search engines, then you are taking a risk and your sites may get removed from the search indexes. In addition, some search engine relevancy algorithms, such as Google’s current algorithm, tend to favor one authoritative domain over using many smaller similar domains.

Many of the more aggressive techniques are used by people who create crash-and burn-domain names. They use a site until it gets penalized and then use a new one. They actually start building up multiple other sites and networks before the first even gets penalized. If your brand and domain name are important to you, then make sure you use caution to protect them.

How you wrap/package/sell the content is important. Many blog networks seem to be able to get away with murder right now because they are called a blog network. Other publishers that have tried similar network approaches have got banned for it. Over time, how blogs are treated may change though, and any way you slice it, you still need to get links from outside your network.

Keep the following in mind when developing a website network:

1. Make unique sites. Make sure each site is unique enough that it can stand on its own merit.
2. Only cross link the sites where it is logical. Blogs being part of a blog network might be considered legitimate cross-linking if it does not look like it was primarily done to spam the engines.
3. Use various hosts. This way, if any of your sites go down, not all of your sites are down. Also, some search algorithms can devalue links that come from sites hosted on the same C block IP address. Some hosts also provide random C block IP addresses for each of your sites for a rather reasonable price on a single account.
4. Get inbound links from external sources. Register your sites with directories and other topical sites to make sure you have plenty of inbound links into your link network. This will help prevent your sites from looking like an isolated island or link farm.
5. Use various link sources. Each of your sites should have many unique link sources outside of your network.
6. Do not interlink hundreds of domains together unless you are actively trying to get penalized.
7. If you are creating and interlinking sites exclusively for the reason to manipulate search results, then you stand a good chance to eventually be penalized.
8. You probably do not want to use the same WHOIS data on a large number of sites if the sites are made with deceptive intent. Additionally, you may want to register sites at a variety of registrars so that there is no discernible pattern. If you register a ton of your domains via proxy and cross link them, that too can look somewhat suspicious.