The Google Magic Bullet - The vast importance of domain name selection

[tony-raymondo]

The Google Magic Bullet - The vast importance of domain name selection

Thanks for reading my post.

I was inspired to write this thread after reading the ClickBump method.

The clickbump method? all your questions answered...

I'll reprint his method for niche selection here:

1. Only work with exact match, top level domains -.com, .net and .org
2. Seek niches that have a minimum of 2400 EXACT match local monthly
3. Look for three PR- or PR-0 sites in the top ten results on Google
4. Launch a tightly focused, insanely optimized, seo savvy, css based site that showcases your niche's KWP with laser focus. One page of content with 350-1000 words and 3 site pages (about, contact and privacy) is all you need.

Why the "ClickBump Method" works? Why is domain selection so important?

In my own SEO work, I have seen examples of .com and .net domain names bouncing to page 1 of Google overnight. So I know there is some truth to it. Lately I have been trying to think of why exactly Google seems to give such a high preference to exact match domain names.

Here are a few reasons I came up with:

Reason 1 - Web Browser interface ambiguity

First off, in my experience, there are a great many internet users who do not understand the difference between the three input edit boxes that Internet Explorer displays. (e.g. the URL address box, the quick search box, and the Google search box on the webpage itself). See below image:



I have tried repeatedly to explain to my own grandpa the difference between these 3 boxes, but he doesn't get it and never will.

Also note that these days, the browser's URL address box also acts as a search box -- if an exact URL format is not entered.

Reason 2 - The Web Browser is now used as an application starter

Possibly because of the above reasons (and because Google has the best spell checker in the world) millions of people think of Google, not as a search engine, but rather, as a "web application starter".

For example, consider the below Exact Match stats for the month of December 2009:

506,000,000 Facebook
16,600,000 Face Book
24,900,000 Michael Jackson
3,350,000 Angelina Jolie

This means that last month, people went to Google, typed the word "facebook", and pressed enter, 506 million times. (That's 6 BILLION times a year).

Wow...

Now obviously, the vast majority of these people were not looking for information on how to use facebook. Additionally, most of these people know that the facebook address is actually facebook.com. But they have stopped typing the dot com part! Instead, they have simply gotten used to clicking the first website link in the Google SERP.

So I think one of the reason why exact match domain names are given so much value by Google, is because Google understands that most people simply don't like to bookmark sites, nor type in the dot com extension.

Most people use Google as a "search engine" AND as a "URL parser" (a "Web application starter").

In other words, half of the time, the biggest search engine in the world is not a search engine at all! It's just adding a .com for people too lazy to type it.

If you think of all of the searches typed in to Google on any given month, I bet the majority of them are simply people asking Google to add a .com to their phrase. Google's job is to give people the website they seek. Usually the website a person seeks is simply this:

the actual word phrase typed in + a period + the .com or .net extension

Using this one VERY simple formula, you could actually probably do HALF of googles search load.

If you stop and think about this a moment, that's a pretty profound statement.

The engineers at google must know this. Hence another reason why exact match domains are so valued.

Reason 3 - Contrary to popular belief, competition is really quite beatable for the VAST majority of keywords

Question: When you tell people you work in "IM", or you are an "SEO guy", or an "Affiliate Marketer", how many people know what you're talking about?

Question: How many people here know that, before July of 2008 Google's Keyword Tool didn't even have search statistics on it! That was 18 months ago!

Point being, internet marketing is new. Very new. And, even most people who are internet savvy and own websites, still do not really even know or understand what these words mean:

• Backlink
• Anchor text
• Page Rank

There are a handful of phrases that are fiercely fought over. For example:

• mesothelioma
• credit cards
• auto Insurance
• DUI Lawyer
• online dating
• make money online

But, for the vast majority of terms, there are usually very few people in the world who are actively trying to rank for them. Usually, after you get passed the first 2 or 3 websites on the Google SERP, chances are, for any given term, the rest of the sites on Google's first page don't even know they are there.

Point being, simply by knowing a minimal amount of SEO, and owning the exact match URL, you are already giving Google most of what they are looking for.

Reason 4 - The big 3 SOC numbers

There is a reason why Google has given us the following functions:

allinurl
allintitle
allinanchor

Because, it is primarily via this method that ranking is determined. In a precise theoretical application of the PageRank algorithm, allinanchor should really be the only element that matters. And, as we can see when we type in the word "Click Here", it does indeed matter a great deal. "Click here" leads you to the Adobe Acrobat page. This page is not in any way optimized for the term "click here". Yet it ranks number one for it.

But look who is at position 2 on the Google page. ClickHere.com is. You can see, they even beat the Apple QuickTime viewer and several other Adobe pages. Now I seriously doubt that ClickHere.com has as many backlinks as Apple and Adobe. And yet, they are at position two.

Why?

Because they have the exact match domain name.

Reason 5 - If the domain is still available - this means something

Here's another reason why the ClickBump method works. You can consider the amount of domain names available for sale as another indicator of 'strength of competition'. For example, all of the domain names for the word "credit card" are gone. Credit cards are highly competitive. But if you find a keyword phrase, and its exact match .com or .net is still available, then this tells you no one has cared enough about the phrase yet to try to monetize it. Hence, just by virtue of the fact that the domain name is available at all, you know that the niche in question probably has very low competition. Else, the .com or .net domain names would have already been purchased.

Reason 6 - Google's Anchor Text inference engine


In a perfect world, whenever anyone links to you, they would do so using anchor text that precisely matches the keywords you are targeting.

Consider three examples of backlinks:

"My friend has the best website to BUY RED BASEBALL HATS in the world."

"In my opinion the coolest hats are at buyredbaseballhats.com."

"I like baseball hats. My friend has a neat website about them at baseballstuff.com."

Now of the top 3 links, which one do you think will get more Google juice for the phrase BUY RED BASEBALL HATS?

The first one obviously. But for the second one, eventhough this person didn't bother to make explicit anchor text, we can assume that Google is likely parsing the words in the URL, and infering the anchor text primarily based on the URL itself. (The contextual keywords are of GREAT importance too - in inferring the anchor text -- probably in some cases, almost more so than the anchor text itself.)

Point being, another reason why exact match domain names are a good idea is because they, in many ways, allow you to 'idiot proof' your backlinks. Meaning, for people who don't know how to make anchortext, and for people who can't be bothered to do so (like me), by having an exact match of your targeted word phrase in your URL, you force Google's hand here. You make sure that your incoming anchor text necessarily matches your targeted keyphrase -- because, well, your URL IS your targeted keyphrase.

And the point being

Ok so the bottom line is simple.

BUY EXACT MATCH DOMAIN NAMES

Ok but on the other hand

On the other hand, I am a big fan of Grizzly's blog (makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com) Grizz is an Adsense expert and a millionaire, and he is always in the top 4 slots for the term 'make money online' --so I listen to him.

And, Grizz rarely buys domain names. He does it all with free blogs! Pretty impressive.

His student Janet (who wrote a pretty good adsense book) is making 8,000 a month on Adsense and she does it all with free blogs too.

Grizz is all about backlinks backlinks backlinks. And he sets up microblogs where the first term in the URL matches the target keyword. Like runningshoes.blogspot.com or whatever.

Now he has access to a large farm of blogs and he is a talented backlink builder. So links aren't an issue for him. Ultimately , it is the backlinks the win the race.


We all know that the domain name isn't everything. Else, the first 3 results for every search would always be the .com .net and .org. However, the point of all this is to point out that, all things considered, the Google engine seems to be simply programmed to give exact match domain names "free points" -- that you wouldnt otherwise get if you just chose some random name or had a free blog.

So the question

I recently finished my own program that does the following.

1. Takes in hundreds of CSV files of Google Adsense data (from the Google keywordtool)
2. Sorts this list by projected monthly revenue
3. Grabs the 10 pagerank numbers of the top 10 URL's in Google
4. Determines if a .com, .net, or .org domain name is available

Because of this tool, I am able find thousands of keywords that pass the ClickBump formula in seconds (I just let it run over night and it sucks down data while I sleep).

e.g. The program looks for word phrases in which a few of the websites on page 1 of Google have a low PageRank. (This is very similar to the method used by TheKeywordAcademy as well.) Then it checks if the domain name is available for the keyword phrase.

I am about to do another bulk order of 50 domain names following the above outlined exact match methods. This is a bit pricey in terms of dollars and time and copywriting costs. Hence, I'd really like to get some input on the above musings.

Here are some questions to ponder:

Am I way off here? Any experienced SEO guys want to chime in here? Have you seen similar phenomena with .com .net and .org domain names in your industry?

Has anyone had similar luck with .biz domain names?

How about .info?

Is this just a 'what came first - chicken or egg' scenario? In other words, are our .com and .net domains ranking because google values these extensions? OR, are our .com and .net domains ranking because, the competition was REALLY low when we bought it. Else, the name wouldn't have been for sale to begin with - it would have been purchased years ago.

The site internetbs.net has some of the cheapest .com deals around. Anyone seen cheaper deals? Bulk pricing?

[GeorgR.]

This is really well written, but i myself doubt the value of "keyword in domain name", reason:
It would just be way too simple.

In fact, i dont know whether KW in domain name has ANY SEO value at all. Possible, likely...but really not sure.

I search for angelina i only see one TLD with her name in it by the way.

All other factors lead me rather to believe its all about authorty and G actually doesnt give a d*** about whether a KW is in the domain name or not. IF IT WERE the case i would strongly suggest that Google changes this since every idiot can grab a KEYWORDINDOMAIN. COM .ORG .INFO .BIZ...and this having a significant SEO advantage would be just utterly ridiculous.

facbook.com comes up for "facebook" NOT [simply] because it has the term in the domain and NOT because it is SEOed for the term "facebook". It comes up because Google assigned it authority and relevancy ...what ELSE should come up if i look for "facebook" in Google?

[InternetMarketingIQ]

The primary value comes from people scraping your site and link backs including the keywords.

[paulgl]

Are you kidding? The domain name matters squat.
If you propose that it is the #1 thing to do, then what's
left of what you're saying? The domain matters very, very
little. What matters is what you do with the site.

Obviously not real-world. Any BIG new site looks for the best,
catchy name they can. They could care less about the
archaic trick of keywords in domains. But, if you choose
to not do what the big sites do, you will fail like the little
sites. Maybe that's what this is for. Give people the opposite
of what is true and be successful when they fail.

What you think is a magic bullet is really suicide. This is why
there are a plethora of domain names for sale with keywords.
They are selling wishful thinking.

Since I always toss a real-world example in this, I just did
a search for New York Jets on google. The usual sites popped
up, the official jets site, news, espn, nfl, wikipedia. But you know
what is the top private domain for new york jets in the results?
ganggreen.com. Now, notice there is no jets, no new york?

Can we ever close this case?

Paul

[LIndaB]

I have to agree with Tony on this one. I picked up a bunch of exact match domains a few months ago to use for review sites. I installed WP on all of them at the time, but for a couple of them, I didn't get around to making any posts. Just last month, I decided to work on one of those and checked the exact match keyword in Google. I was surprised to see that my site was at #8 on page 1, even though all it had was a "Hello, World" post on it. Plus, I hadn't built any links to it, so I have no idea how Google even found it. That keyword does get 6,000 exact match searches a month, so it wasn't a super longtail no one else was targeting. So there has to be something to this theory, or my site wouldn't have ended up on page 1.

[JamesM]

I completely agree that exact match domains give "free points" with Goggle, and for exactly the same reasons you outline in your post. The fact is that a huge number of people search for specific websites by name and Google can't (currently) tell the difference between a brand name and a keyphrase in a domain name.

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Any BIG new site looks for the best,
catchy name they can.

sites investing in branding look for 'catchy' names.
but adsense sites are not interested in branding

Originally Posted by paulgl

if you choose
to not do what the big sites do, you will fail like the little
sites.

There are thousands of revenue-producing little sites.

Originally Posted by paulgl

Maybe that's what this is for. Give people the opposite
of what is true and be successful when they fail.

Correct. I am providing mis-information because i take pleasure in the failure of others.

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by InternetMarketingIQ

The primary value comes from people scraping your site and link backs including the keywords.

hi

can you expand on this thought please

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

facbook.com comes up for "facebook" NOT [simply] because it has the term in the domain and NOT because it is SEOed for the term "facebook". It comes up because Google assigned it authority

well definitely for high competition mega sites, this theory wont work

And, after a certain number of competitor backlinks, your domain name alone of course won't be powerful enough to beat the competition.

However, this info primarily applies to people doing the minisite method in low competition niches. Because the competition for many of these sites is so low to begin with, owning the exact match domain name seems to really work.

last month, i moved a brand new .net real estate website to position 5 with no backlinking and an exact match .net domain name

[tatbusiness]

I'll agree with you. I haven't done a lot of Xfactor or Clickbump sites but the ones I have done get to the first page surprisingly easy. Even some of my current sites show this to be true. I have sites where the exact phrase isn't in the domain and I have built 300-500 anchor text links but still get beat out by the phrase .com, .net or .org with only 10-15 links.

I do wonder a little if this post was started to get a little promo out for your software your developing, however, I don't care. In fact, I'm interested, if you're willing to sell it, then I'm more then willing to buy it. I can't pm you otherwise I would, so if you are let me know.

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by tatbusiness

I do wonder a little if this post was started to get a little promo out for your software your developing,.

nah - i'm a very bad programmer

However, before i started my program, i looked and looked and looked, and I couldnt find any tool that will pull down the page rank data for the top 10 sites for a keyword phrase.

this surprised me in a big way

so i had to write my own software to do it

keyword academy is the only agency i know with a similar tool - last i heard, it was scheduled for release after new years.

[terryd]

Originally Posted by tony-raymondo

nah - i'm a very bad programmer

However, before i started my program, i looked and looked and looked, and I couldnt find any tool that will pull down the page rank data for the top 10 sites for a keyword phrase.

this surprised me in a big way

so i had to write my own software to do it

keyword academy is the only agency i know with a similar tool - last i heard, it was scheduled for release after new years.

Market Samurai already does this...

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by terryd

Market Samurai already does this...

True market samurai will get PageRank data one word at a time.

But mine automatically goes through a list of thousands of words.

I wrote them an email about this a while back. They said they may consider it on future versions.

[JamesM]

does it show the PR of the actual pages in the results, or only the PR of the root domains of sites listed in SERPs?

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by JamesM

does it show the PR of the actual pages in the results, or only the PR of the root domains of sites listed in SERPs?

ya my program grabs the 10 URLs from the first page of google

basically, it does everything Market Samurai is doing in their competition module.

The only difference is, it does it for a list of keyword phrases. And in market samurai, you have to manually type them in one at a time.

This is unfortuante. If they just added a "batching" feature, their product would be so much better. And they could probaby make a batch utility in a week or so if they wanted to.

you could do it with macros and an excel file i suppose.

The only other way i've seen is to join keywordacademy and use theirs. I think its for members only though so you gotta pay the monthly fee. But they are a really good service.

[fiero]

Originally Posted by tony-raymondo

True market samurai will get PageRank data one word at a time.

But mine automatically goes through a list of thousands of words.

I wrote them an email about this a while back. They said they may consider it on future versions.

Jon Leger WebComp Analyst can do more than one kw at a time. I haven't tried 'thousands'. Besides PR. it will also list the page and the site backlinks for the top 5, 10, 20 or 100 results.

Anyway, interesting observations for the kws in domain. I believe for low competition long tail it does have SEO value.

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by fiero

Jon Leger WebComp Analyst can do more than one kw at a time. I haven't tried 'thousands'. Besides PR. it will also list the page and the site backlinks for the top 5, 10, 20 or 100 results.

Anyway, interesting observations for the kws in domain. I believe for low competition long tail it does have SEO value.

i assume you're talking about this one:
WebComp Analyst

thats pretty cool. It does seem to allow multiple keyword imput

And for 67 dollars, if i would have seen this video 2 months ago, i might not have wrote my own tool.

[The Copy Nazi]

What happens when you throw a "Stop" word into the equation? Using "Stop Words" to Get Desired Domain Dot Com ForSEO - SEO Tips - Your Internets

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by Metronicity

What happens when you throw a "Stop" word into the equation? Using "Stop Words" to Get Desired Domain Dot Com ForSEO - SEO Tips - Your Internets

interesting theory

personally i havent tested it.

though i have noticed that using dashes does seem to diminish the juice

[medway]

I used to belong to seobook membership and there was a pretty long thread there on exact match domains. the essentials are it only applies to .com, .net and .org and dashes or other words kill the bonus. One word has the most bonus and as the phrase gets longer the bonus starts to diminish.

ive still seen people with dashes or extra words rank but Id be suprised if they get automatic first page rankings like the true exact ones do.

[tony-raymondo]

interesting

did aaron wall comment on this?

[GeorgR.]

I harvest 1000s of domains according to keyword in very short time with scrapebox, and then i can check 1000s of domains OR ACTUAL PAGE URLs for PR. I think scrapebox has the fastest PR checking algorithm, i have 20 threads on proxies running....its insane. Checks 1000s of URLs in a few seconds.

[chini]

Originally Posted by medway

I used to belong to seobook membership and there was a pretty long thread there on exact match domains. the essentials are it only applies to .com, .net and .org and dashes or other words kill the bonus. One word has the most bonus and as the phrase gets longer the bonus starts to diminish.

ive still seen people with dashes or extra words rank but Id be suprised if they get automatic first page rankings like the true exact ones do.

That makes sense, i have noticed this a fair bit.

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

I harvest 1000s of domains according to keyword in very short time with scrapebox, and then i can check 1000s of domains OR ACTUAL PAGE URLs for PR. I think scrapebox has the fastest PR checking algorithm, i have 20 threads on proxies running....its insane. Checks 1000s of URLs in a few seconds.

wow

i have watched the videos

it appears to be mostly for commenting

can you tell us more about it

[rlcanfield]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Are you kidding? The domain name matters squat.
If you propose that it is the #1 thing to do, then what's
left of what you're saying? The domain matters very, very
little. What matters is what you do with the site.

Obviously not real-world. Any BIG new site looks for the best,
catchy name they can. They could care less about the
archaic trick of keywords in domains. But, if you choose
to not do what the big sites do, you will fail like the little
sites. Maybe that's what this is for. Give people the opposite
of what is true and be successful when they fail.

What you think is a magic bullet is really suicide. This is why
there are a plethora of domain names for sale with keywords.
They are selling wishful thinking.

Since I always toss a real-world example in this, I just did
a search for New York Jets on google. The usual sites popped
up, the official jets site, news, espn, nfl, wikipedia. But you know
what is the top private domain for new york jets in the results?
ganggreen.com. Now, notice there is no jets, no new york?

Can we ever close this case?

Paul

You may want to do some more research on statement. I just did a search on Google for the keywords New York Jets and found that the top 4 sites all included the keywords "New York Jets" in their domain names.

[Jay Rhome]

I don't see a controversy. I too believe it gives "free points" in Google. But "free points" doesn't make it an automatic "win". Nobody is saying simply buy the exact kw domain name and you're done. Just that it helps, especially for low hanging fruits you want to rank fast.

[Sandy Cormack]

For what it's worth, during my last few weeks worth of Googling on SEO stuff I stumbled upon an article which theorized that bloggingtips.com ranked no. 1 for searches on 'blogging tips' for two reasons - 1) the domain name = the search and 2)the domain name lends itself to highly matching anchor text links. In other words, if someone is going to link to the site, all things considered, they will most likely do so with anchor text that reads 'blogging tips.' The two factors together seemed to give them an overwhelming advantage.

[paulgl]

Bloggingtips.com ranks #1, but not because of the domain.
If you believe that, you believe in the tooth fairy.

Bloggingtips.com has done the right things, over time,
that's why.

But now do a search for best blogging tips. bloggingtips.com
does not even show on the first page. problogger.net is #1.
And that's the point. And here's 4 more that show up on the first
page: extremejohn.com. wired.com, wpsnap.com, potpolitics.com
Do you see a pattern? Do a search for top blogging tips. Again,
bloggingtips.com does not come up. Well, let's do a search for
good blogging tips. Again, bloggingtips.com is down. Type in
best blogging, and google suggests a search of best blogging sites,
again, a search for best blogging sites shows no bloggingtips.com.

Problogger.net out SERPS bloggingtips.com overall for any blog
ideas and tips in real world searches.

problogger.net has a PR6, bloggingtips.com has PR5
You don't get a PR5 by having the "right" domain name.

Don't drink the koolaid people.

Paul

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by Sandy Cormack

For what it's worth, during my last few weeks worth of Googling on SEO stuff I stumbled upon an article which theorized that bloggingtips.com ranked no. 1 for searches on 'blogging tips' for two reasons - 1) the domain name = the search and 2)the domain name lends itself to highly matching anchor text links. In other words, if someone is going to link to the site, all things considered, they will most likely do so with anchor text that reads 'blogging tips.' The two factors together seemed to give them an overwhelming advantage.

thanks - i added this as another reason - this is a good point

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Bloggingtips.com ranks #1, but not because of the domain.
If you believe that, you believe in the tooth fairy.

Bloggingtips.com has done the right things, over time,
that's why.

But now do a search for best blogging tips. bloggingtips.com
does not even show on the first page. problogger.net is #1.
And that's the point. And here's 4 more that show up on the first
page: extremejohn.com. wired.com, wpsnap.com, potpolitics.com
Do you see a pattern? Do a search for top blogging tips. Again,
bloggingtips.com does not come up. Well, let's do a search for
good blogging tips. Again, bloggingtips.com is down. Type in
best blogging, and google suggests a search of best blogging sites,
again, a search for best blogging sites shows no bloggingtips.com.

Problogger.net out SERPS bloggingtips.com overall for any blog
ideas and tips in real world searches.

problogger.net has a PR6, bloggingtips.com has PR5
You don't get a PR5 by having the "right" domain name.

Don't drink the koolaid people.

Paul

keep in mind, obviously this method doesn't work in high competition niches. Otherwise, like i said, the first 3 websites for every search would be com, net and org.

The ClickBump method is only applied when there are THREE URL's on the first page that all have a PR0.

So this method is just a way to get an extra kick. But it deffinitely won't solve all your problems.

[poonamt93]

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