Domain name woes....or does it really matter?

go with your main keyword phrase if you can.. try for your domains in this order...
.com
.net
.org
If you have found a .org with your main keyword phrase... personally I would go for that..

The URL of a site is critical and the improper selection can lead to many disappointments. I read one expert say that 50% of your success was directly related to your URL name.

I was in the Forex niche, which of course is extremely competitive and I wrote almost 1,000 articles on the subject but could never get past the 3rd or 4th page of Google for the keywords I targeted. I attribute this partly do my initial URL selection. I finally said enough was enough, and I sold the site. The site made good money so I did OK on the sale, but nothing like I could of if I got to the first page of Google.

So, now with my new Clickbank product I purchased an URL for $2,000 that is a .com and exactly matches the name of my product and is highly searched.

Your decision now is SO important to your short term financial prospects it really needs to be researched thoroughly and thought about in detail before you start your site. Don't underestimate the consequences of making a poor decision on this, at least in the short term, which is a year to two.

Looking at the top 10 for several of my keywords, I can see that there are a mix of .com and .org sites. When it's a .org, it appears to be more about targeting a longertailed EXACT phrase for the domain whereas it appears that most of the dot comes just incorporate the main keyword for the niche and some additional keyword like "zone" or "info". Is there a better choice considering my strategy?

Mike

I would say rephrase or organize your domain to include your keywords but allow you to get a .com site.

I will tell you my experience. In Forex I tried to start an authority site like you that promoted three products, software (Forex Trading Systems), training materials and brokerage accounts. I selected a generic URL and not one specific to any product.

If I had to do it again, instead of one website I should have had three and took a great deal of time to understand what I was selling and ensure I got an URL that exactly matched what I was promoting that had a great deal of searches going to it already.

The problem with this; is that those URL's are very hard to find that have not be registered. If they have been registered and they are for sale, then there not cheap. But, then again they do give you a level of guaranteed success and ease a reaching the top stop in the search engines.

Another approach I would have taken if I had not developed my own product was to do REVIEW sites. I noticed these reach the top of the search engines very quickly if you have a product you are promoting that has quite a bit of review searches. So the name of the URL would be productnamereview.com.

Hope this helps Bill.

I go .com then .org. A .net is my last resort.

And I'd get the .org "tight" name verses a .com "loose" name unless it's something you want to brand.

Does including a "-" on the domain name make it as effective also?

It doesn't matter.

You can be successful no matter what domain you go with.

del.icio.us was darned hard to type, meaningless and not a popular TLD.

My first non-affiliate ecommerce site was a .info domain and generated over $100,000 in sales its first year from just a few thousand in search advertising. Customers had no problem with buying from a .info site.

It all depends on what you do with it and how
hard you push it, but I personally still prefer
a .com.