Monday, June 13, 2011

The Value of a Good Domain Name

Since our last two classes have revolved around SEO, I will share some thoughts on the value of a domain name as it applies to search. Based on my experience, the three most effective ways of earning rank in Google's search results are by earning back links from relevant websites, titling your pages properly, and using a domain name that includes your targeted keyword.

I spent a few months pursuing traffic from the keyword "Bored." It turns out that "Bored" and "I'm Bored" are two very common search queries, driving hundreds of thousands of clicks from Google every day. After a painful negotiation, I secured the domain name ibored.com as a way to tap into the popularity of those searches, and made it to the first page of the results for the above queries.

However, over the past few years, the rise of social media and apps have made search a little less relevant for media sites. Media consumption has become more passive than active -- users consume by seeing what their friends are sharing on Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr rather than seeking it out. As a result, the value of those top results on Google have become slightly less important, and the real value of the domain name has slightly decreased. This trend is only growing, and is a strong threat to both search and entrepreneurs who invested in buying top tier domain names.

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