In 1993, when the Web was still in its infancy, Bill Fisher had the opportunity to own an extremely attractive domain: www.beer.com. Later, Bill sold this domain to Labatt, a Canadian brewery, for an undisclosed amount, but it certainly had to include seven figures.
As a professional domain broker, Bill also “snatched” several other lucrative domains such as www.budweiser.com and www.guinness.com, fully aware that he could face copyright issues. To avoid a courtroom dispute, Anheuser-Busch decided to sweeten the deal by enticing Fisher to return the Budweiser domain by… filling Bill’s office with beer. The Guinness domain was even more rewarding as it allowed Fisher and his friends to enjoy a free trip to Ireland to visit the brewery, and of course, they had enough beer to last for months.
If you want to succeed on the Web today, you need a memorable domain name. Unfortunately, registering such a domain is not easy, as large corporations and domain tycoons like Bill have long snatched up all the “hot” domains.
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| Source: BusinessWeek |
Some companies have to resort to searching for similar domains with extensions like “.biz” or “.net” when the “.com” domains have already been taken. However, two issues arise here.
First, the “.com” suffix is the default setting for all current browsers—meaning that if you only type part of a web address, the browser will automatically append “.com” at the end. Second, major search engines like Google and Yahoo prioritize “.com” domains before looking at other extensions.
“Compared to .com, the value of all other domain extensions is lower,” said Mark Goldstein, president of the International Research Center. “No suffix has the power to replace .com simply because users are not accustomed to typing that address into their browsers.”
If you absolutely must have “.com” in your domain name, as a necessity, you will have to be creative. Ensure that the domain contains the most relevant keywords related to the products or services your company offers. Don’t hesitate to try names that consist of three, four, or even five words connected together.
Common words will attract more attention than unusual ones—this is why Google launched a useful service http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExernal to track the most popular search keywords.
For example: If you are a shoe store in Atlanta, try typing “Atlanta shoe stores” into Google and categorize the search results by popularity. You will see that the most searched phrases are “Atlanta shoes“, “Atlanta shoe“, “Atlanta dance shoes“, and “Atlanta shoe stores“. From this evidence, you should choose the most fluent version for your domain; www.atlantashoes.com or www.atlantashoestores.com would both work well.
Once you have selected a suitable domain name, you will need to pay for it. Domain prices typically range from $7 to $15 per year, depending on the provider. If you can afford it, you should also purchase an additional 3 to 20 similar domains or those that are often confused with the main domain to ensure customers can “accidentally” find the right place.
However, with 105 million domains currently in use, there is no guarantee that the domain you choose won’t have a “duplicate” elsewhere. (You can check at www.domaintools.com). If you are truly set on a domain, you may have to pay significantly more—especially to speculators like Bill Fisher mentioned earlier. In this secondary market, buyers negotiate directly with sellers.
But whether creating a completely new domain or purchasing one from someone else, what matters most is how you will manage that domain. The wisest approach is to leverage search engines to elevate your presence rather than struggling to “move mountains and fill rivers” by yourself.
Trong Cam
