Benefits of Keyword Domain Names
We love our clients, and we like to help them and provide them support and marketing advice, one advice I tell all our clients is to ensure your keywords are in your domain URL. It’s important to understand the benefits of keyword domain names, and just how important harnessing that power is to you SEO marketing strategy.
Why Are Domains URL Important?
Domain names are important. They impact the amount of traffic you get to your website, by playing a major role in where your websites rank in search engines.
Smart investors were very quick to buy up all the one word, category defining domain names which high corporates have paid large sums of money to acquire the best domain names for their businesses. Perfect examples are, Motorcyles.com which Honda owns, Holidays.co.uk is owned by FirstChoice, and ASAP Ventures Ltd paid $300,000 for Recycle.co.uk.
There is slight misconception that owning a one word domains are valuable, but most do not realise that two word or even three word keyword domain names can be more effective. In fact, these “long tail keywords” can be even more powerful because they are more specific.
What Are The Benefits of Keyword Domain Names
Achieving match keyword domain names have many benefits. They are pre-qualified, targeted leads without any SEO and without any web rankings. People still type their search terms into their browser, and some of those people will type their search with a .com or .com.au into their browser.
One example is rather than going to Google and searching for “restaurants in London” some people would simply type in restaurantsinlondon.co.uk into their browser first, to see what comes up, and the restaurant owner who had enough insight to buy that domain name receives the benefits, while other restaurant owners can only wish to come up in the search rankings.
A second benefit of keyword domain names is it increases your organic search traffic. One of the many aspects in the algorithms of a main search engines like Google is the domain name itself.
Exact-match keyword domain names are treated to be the most significant, and as a result, sites with keyword domains usually will rank higher than websites without keyword domains. The Search Engine Ranking Factors report for 2010 ranked keyword uses in the root domain name as the third highest ranking factors for on-page SEO optimisation.
A third benefit of keyword domain names is increasing your click through rates. Users are more likely to click on your website if they see the keyword domain in the URL when compared to other domains that show up in the search results.
Even if you are paying for Google Adwords, statistics show more people will click on your website if they see a keyword domain in the URL.
A fourth key benefit of keyword domain names is building brand recognition. Results have show generally consumers associate generic keyword domains with market leadership. For example, if a consumer is looking for ‘Adelaide Lawyers’ and the following website www.adelaidelawyers.net.au shows they assume they are the market leader for that service in your location. It shows instant credibility.
Why Buy More Than One Domain?
Many businesses make the big mistake early on of buying ONLY their business name as their domain name. For example, a lawyer firm will only buy their domain name, this is especially true with law firms. First of all, they SHOULD own the domain name that matches their business name. The problem is many businesses stop there. If someone knows about their business name they will type that particular name in Google, but what about all the potential customers who don’t know about their business? They will never find them! You need additional domains to cover all the bases.
You should own the location + service domains for all of your services / or products for each geographical region you service. By doing this, not only will you gain the benefits, but you will also block your competitors from doing the same thing.
How Much Are Keyword Domains Worth?
So, how do we answer that question? Let’s put it this way… how much is a lead in your business worth? Let’s say you are a law firm. One new client might bring you $6000. They may become a repeat client. They may refer your firm to other people. That one lead could be worth a small fortune. So would you pay $2000 or more to own the domain that brought that pre-qualified, targeted customer to your firm? We all know the answer to that.
Companies don’t have problems throwing thousands of dollars into billboards, magazine ads, television commercials and radio advertisement, and there is one problem with all of that. People can’t click on a billboard or newspaper ad, and this is why the internet will always be the king of marketing.
Smart businesses are starting to take out a money of their marketing budget from the methods and invest it into generic keyword domain names.
Generic keyword domains have many benefits and can be a much more cost effective way of achieving pre-qualified leads for your business than the traditional practices. You can prevent your competitors from gaining leverage over you by buying the domains for yourself. Think of generic keyword domains like virtual real estate, and you can own all the best properties and create a virtual monopoly.