Free eBook: Business Domain Names

Free eBook: Business Domain Names

by: Steve Baba

Since every website needs a name, Dr. Steve Baba has written a free ebook that will help you obtain a brandable, memorable domain name at a reasonable cost, which will contribute to your brand equity and profits. The ebook, downloadable from Seemly.com, explains how to select and buy an elite domain name. You will be able to obtain a better name than your competitors have.

There are at least 10,000 words in a dictionary that would make great domain names plus at least 10,000 proper names and 10,000 great short coinedwords. With a supply of 30,000 great names and millions of good names, obtaining a good name is easy.

There is no need to pay more than a few thousand dollars for a great oneword domain name, and many good domain names are available for free. This book provides you with the information needed to beat domain name speculators at their games.

Both naming methodology to identify great domain names and negotiating/purchasing methods to obtain great domain names at low prices are covered. After a couple of introductory sections, the book starts with domain naming goals or the criteria for choosing a great domain name: image, memorability, trademarklegal, and price. Then quality domain naming strategies are discussed. Inferior domain naming styles, which you want to avoid, are then discussed.

The second half of this book explains how to buy a great domain name. Auctions, expired domains, speculators, and other sources are discussed. Finally, many other topics are expanded on.

Steve Baba has a Ph.D. in Economics and ebusiness experience. The ebook on domain names is available at www.seemly.com, for free. No registration is required. The ebook is a PDF file of approximately 250K. The free ebook is advertising supported. The following paragraphs are book excerpts. Generic names, arbitrary dictionary words, coined or madeup words, modified generic names (generic plus) and unrelated twoword names are quality domain naming strategies. But, each quality strategy has strengths and weaknesses. There is no such thing as a perfect name.

Generic names are highly controversial and expensive. Examples of generic names are Hotels.com, Shoes.com and Furniture.com. The generic name strategy was always controversial and peaked during the dotcom bubble.

The generic naming strategy is virtually never used offline, but a very few small stores do business under generic names such as the ขMattress Storeข in Annapolis, Maryland. Offline, anyone can use the same generic name and open a store name ขMattress Store.ข Online, ownership of the domain name MattressStore.com can only prevent competitors from using the same exact domain name.

Since, generic names cannot be trademarked, competitors can use Hotels.NET, Rooms.com, Hotelrooms.com, Motels.com, Hotel.com (singular), Inns.com Hotels.us, and so on. Often, there are a half dozen simple generic names for each industry not to mention generic names with a prefix (e, i) or suffix such as eHotels.com.

Since competitors can use similar generic names, developing a distinct, memorable brand is difficult. Memorability or the need to spend less on advertising is often an argument for high domain name prices – but this argument is only half true. At the same time, with only a few firstrate generic names in each industry, the generic domain names may be unavailable or overpriced, and are rarely bargainpriced. A generic name also hampers brand extension beyond the generic category – Hotels.com selling plane tickets?

Another quality strategy is unrelated, arbitrary dictionary words. Examples of unrelated dictionary word names include Amazon.com Yahoo.com, Google.com, Target and Staples. Both the words yahoo and google are in the Oxford dictionary, but were rarely used prior to becoming famous brands.

Compared to generic names, it was not immediately obvious what business Amazon, Yahoo or Google was in. On the other hand, Yahoo can legally prevent competitors from using similar names such as FreeHoo via trademark laws.

SearchEngine.com would be the generic name for Google. ขFastข and ขAll The Webข are used as trademarks by another search engine. But ขfastข and ขall the webข are not unrelated or arbitrary. Other search engines can also claim to be fast, speedy, quick, the entire web, or something similar.

The key to having the most trademark protection is to choose an unrelated, arbitrary word. Descriptive words, such as fast, are unlikely to earn much trademark protection. Instead of fast, it may be possible to use a suggestive name such as jet, rocket, or race.

With 10,000 good, short, easytospell dictionary words, it is always possible to find one for a few thousand dollars. Shorter four or five character dictionary words are more expensive. Three character dictionary words are extremely expensive.

Coined or fanciful words are words such as Exxon or Kodak that had no prior use. In theory, coined words are the best from a trademarklegal point of view, since no one has used the word before. Ideally, a coined word is totally new and unrelated to any other word.

But, memorability requires a short name, which has led to a number of similar coined names such as Duron, Enron, and Micron, which diminishes the legal advantage, since confusion is possible. LexIs sued LexUs.

While the legal protection is not perfect, the legal protection is considered the strongest of any category. But from a marketing point of view since no one has used the word, coined words may be as difficult to remember as nonsense syllables.

With a supply of thousands if not tens of thousands of short, coined words, it is always possible to find one for a few thousand dollars or less – often free.

Because of the lack of trademark protection for generic names, the lack of distinctiveness, and the cost of many generic domain names, many businesses have used a ขgeneric plusข or ขmodified genericข naming strategy.

A prefix, suffix or second word can be added to the generic name. Examples of this are Carmax, CarMart, eCars, CarDepot, CarOne and CarLand.

This works if the generic word, such as car, is short. Longer generic names, such as CarpetCleaningMax.com, can be too long. But many of the longer generic words have common abbreviations. For example, computer is often abbreviated ขcompข as in CompUSA. Software is often shortened to ขsoftข or ขwareข in names. Tech is a common abbreviation for technology, overused in names.

These names range from virtually generic, eCars.cars, to nearly coined, QuanCars.com, with descriptive, suggestive and arbitrary secondwords inbetween. Since the generic word lacks any trademark protection, the trademark strength depends on the trademark strength of the ขplusข part of the name.

The generic plus strategy is often an attempt to have the benefits from both a generic and a distinctive name, but may have the problems of both if one is not careful. At worst, it could infringe on someoneกs trademark based on the second word such as CarsRus or CarBay. The generic part of the word is usually trademark safe.

Another strategy is to use two unrelated words in a name. Examples of two unrelated words are RedEnvelope.com and BlueTooth.com. The two unrelated words strategy differs from the genericplus strategy in that neither word is related to the generic product. Technically red is related to envelope by being an adjective, but neither word is closely related to the product or service being sold.

The main advantage to this method, two unrelated words, is that it’s cheap and often free. With 30,000 single words, there are 900 million combinations of two single words (30,000 x 30,000).

The main disadvantage is that two unrelated words are twice as difficult to remember as one. Two words that are commonly related to each other such as ขhappy birthdayข or ขhot wireข are easier to remember, but rare and may be as expensive as single words.

From a trademark viewpoint, it could be twice as risky. It could infringe on someoneกs trademark based on either the first or second word. If you are RedDog.com selling computers, either Red Computers or Dog Computers could consider trademark action against you.

The entire book can be read at www.seemly.com.

About The Author

Steve Baba has a Ph.D. in Economics and ebusiness experience. The ebook on domain names is available at www.seemly.com, for free.

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 21, 2004

by Steve Baba

Branding Versus SEO

Branding Versus SEO

by: Kevin Kantola

Branding versus search engine optimization is a marketing dilemma that larger companies will need to come to grips with on the Internet. Often companies will need to decide whether to promote their own brand name as their main keyword phrase or optimize for a more generic keyword phrase.

For instance, one search engine report states that 1.3 million visitors per month search for the term กBest Buy.ก This same report states that the term กelectronicsก is searched for by 1.1 visitors per month. The obvious choice in this scenario is for Best Buy to optimize for their own brand name first and the word กelectronicsก second.

But, take a competitor such as Fryกs Electronics. Approximately 95,000 visitors search for the term กFryกsก every month, far short of those who search for กelectronicsก. Does this mean Fryกs Electronics (a partner with Outpost.com) should optimize for กelectronicsก first and Fryกs (and/or Outpost.com) second?

At this writing (August 2004), a search on Google for กelectronicsก will show that Best Buy does not show up in the first two pages. Fryกs (Outpost.com) is on the third page. But letกs take a further look to see who is in the number 1 position: Sony. And Samsung is a close second.

Sony, with 450,000 searches per month for the word กsonyก, has managed to grab the number one spot for its brand name and the generic word กelectronicsก. A search of the Sony homepage source code will reveal that this page is optimized for both words, กSonyก and กelectronics.ก By optimizing for both words Sony has grabbed a lot of traffic neglected by Best Buy and perhaps even exceeds Best Buys traffic in doing this.

Another issue in branding is trademark infringement. Courts have upheld that websites using another companyกs branded name in its meta tags is engaging in trademark infringement. For instance, a site about cats would be infringing if it put the name Best Buy in its meta tags in hopes of gaining traffic from this trademarked word. Large companies have to protect themselves from others stealing traffic that is rightfully theirs. These companies cannot however protect a generic term such as กelectronicsก as that is fair game for all electronics companies.

So in order to create the largest return on investment, large companies need to optimize their websites both for their own brand names and for the generic, hightraffic keywords and keyword phrases relevant to their sites. Otherwise, they are letting tons of online business just slip away.

About The Author

Copyright © 2004 SEO Resource

http://www.seoresource.net

Kevin Kantola is the CEO of SEO Resource and has published many articles over the past 20 years.

This article was posted on August 10, 2004

by Kevin Kantola

Choosing your MetaKeywords

Choosing your MetaKeywords

by: Alan Cole

Introduction

This article assumes you already know what a ‘metatag keyword’ is and know a little about their importance to search engines. In this article I will attempt to explain the art of choosing the most appropriate and best performing keywords for your web pages.

As you should already know keywords contained within your websites’ meta tags are extremely important in allowing search engines to determine the content of your web pages. In order to make sure that these keywords are bringing your site up within Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) and driving visitors to your site, the most important factors in determining your keywords are:

Relevance.

Choosing keywords that people actually search for.

Choosing keywords without too much competition.

Relevance

All your keywords should ALWAYS be relevant to the content within the page they describe. Adding keywords to your site just because they are commonly searched for words is not recommended. Not only will it frustrate visitors who are looking for other information, but it may well get your site blacklisted from search engine rankings.

Highly relevant keywords will attract visitors who are actually interested in the products and services your website offers. At the end of the day, it is better to attract fewer visitors who actually have an interest in your website than it is to attract more visitors who leave immediately.

Choosing Keywords people search for

Although your keywords should all be relevant, sometimes it is best not to be too specific.

For example, I once discovered a new fossil (honest!), it was new to science so I named it, wrote a paper on it and had it published. I didn’t ever build a web page dedicated to it, but if I had the most used keyword and most relevant word would have been the fossils name (Trypanites fosteryeomani). You might therefore think that it would be sensible to use this as one of my most important keywords… However, that would (at least to start with) have been wrong. No one else has ever heard of this fossil, so it is very unlikely that anyone would ever type its name into a search engine. And sure enough, a quick check shows that during Dec 2004 there wasn’t a single search for this term within a particular, popular search engine.

I would therefore need to be more generic with my choice of keywords. The fossil itself was a trace fossil of a worm from the Jurassic, so keywords/phrases such as ‘fossil’, ‘trace fossil’ or ‘worm trace fossil’ may be more successful.

There are several tools available that allow you to check the number of times a particular word or phrase has been searched for. It is important to choose keywords that are regularly searched for and these tools can help in this decision. It is also worth including common misspellings of your most relevant keywords as your competitors may not have thought of this when choosing their keywords.

Choosing keywords without too much competition

The section above may lead you to believe that choosing very generic keywords is your best bet as they are often searched for. However, if you get too generic in your choice of keywords then you will be competing with many more websites for the top spots in the SERPS. If we go back to our fossil example we can see what I mean. A quick search in Google brings up the following numbers of results:

Trypanites fosteryeomani – 1 result (something I once wrote in a forum!)

Jurassic Worm Trace Fossil – 4,320 results

Trace Fossil – 407,000 results

Fossil – 9,120,000 results

As you would expect, the more generic we get, the more results we get. It can be seen then that choosing the best keywords is a matter of balancing the number of times the keywords are searched for against the number of other sites competing for rankings with those keywords. The best keywords will be those that are searched for often but have few competing sites (assuming the keywords are relevant to your content).

I find that it is best to have a balance between the generic and specific keywords relating to your web page and using keyphrases is a useful way of achieving this. In this way the entire keyphrase can be specific to your particular page, but the individual words within it are fairly generic.

e.g. Affordable Website Design Wales (4 generic keywords to create a specific keyphrase)

To Summarise, choosing keywords is an essential part of producing a successful website. Your keywords need to be highly relevant to the content of your page and specific enough to reduce competition. They also need to contain some generic keywords that are often searched for. As always, the single most important factor is relevancy and good content to go with the keywords.

About The Author

Alan Cole runs Pixelwave Design, a oneperson web design studio. His aim is to provide cost effective website design production and maintenance by offering professional web solutions that stand out from the crowd.

Pixelwave Design specialise in accessible, conformable search engine friendly website.

http://www.pixelwave.co.uk

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 02

by Alan Cole

Keywords – Key For All Doors

Keywords – Key For All Doors

by: Zoran Makrevski

Keyword research is certainly the most important phase in Search Engine Optimization process. Whether you hire a SEO company to do the job or you are doing the SEO process inhouse, take your time during this process. You should not be a spectator, but you should be an active part of the decision making process.

Try to think as a customer

Before to start the keywords analysis & research process, be sure that you know how you should perform this process. Try to think about your keywords as a customer. How would you search for your product or service? Which keyword or key phrase would you use? Think about which words or phrases describe best your product or service.

Generic keywords vs. highly targeted key phrases

Surprisingly many companies still believe that increased traffic will necessary lead to increased sales. Unfortunately this is very far from the truth. If traffic is not well targeted, visitors will not found what they are looking for, and they won’t order anything.

Many companies still make the mistake to attempt to get ranked for generic keywords. This is often costly mistake. You will simply loose your time, money and resources to get ranked for generic keyword. Chances are that if you are in competitive industry you won’t succeed to achieve top ranking. In many cases, even if you succeed to get high ranking for generic keyword you won’t benefit much from that. Let’s elaborate this with an example.

Key phrase ขshoes manufacturersข will return worldwide results, and your competition will be very strong. Even if you manage to rank high, ขconversion to sales rateข will be fairly low. Some of the people would actually search for ขshoes manufacturersข which are located in Asia. They might enter on your site, and they will leave without to order anything. You will get more traffic, and you want increase your sales or establish new business contacts. None of your goals will be achieved.

That is because your product or service is not exactly what the people are searching for. Key phrases like ขUK shoes manufacturersข or ขEU shoes manufacturersข will have better conversion and you will get high ranking faster. Why? It’s easier to get ranked for these key phrases because of smaller number of competitors. From the other side, because of better targeting your conversion rate would be higher, because your traffic is better targeted.

Best approach to do find right keywords and key phrases is to get your generic keyword, and add a specific word to it. Using this approach you will be able to find yours most important key phrases, and target your traffic much better. Key phrases are usually two to five words long.

Think global

In different countries people use different terminology for same product or service. Be sure that you check your terminology for your main keywords. Different terminology for your keyword might be used in Canada, or in Australia. Follow your site statistic, and if some country is missing, something might be wrong with your terminology.

How many keywords do you need

Number of the key phrases for which you will optimize your pages will depend from your budget of course. But be sure to create long list to select from. Initial keyword research should end with at least 70 100 keywords or key phrases.

Your first thought here might be how you will find so many keywords. Creativity and well knowing your industry will do half of the work. The tools will do the other half. Wordtracker has free trial which will tell you how many times the key phrase was searched for last month. Full version (you can pay for one day only if you want to use this tool once) is much more powerful tool of course. Overture has also free tool for keyword research which will give you useful suggestions. These tools will give you suggestions which you might not come to your mind, and tell you how many competitors you have for every keyword.

Next phase should be customizing some of these suggestions and make the recheck after that. After establishing the main list, start the elimination. Have in mind that your chances are bigger if you select bigger number of keywords. It is always best strategy to optimize each page for one primary and one secondary keyword. Optimize your main page for your most important key phrase.

Final selection will depend from your budget. You can always optimize more pages later, so keep the initial keyword list. Best option is to start to optimize your pages for less competitive key phrases first. When you achieve high ranking for these key phrases, then go after more competitive key phrases.

About The Author

Zoran Makrevski

Search Engine Positioning Firm

SEO.Goto.gr

This article was posted on October 21, 2004

by Zoran Makrevski