How to Choose a Domain Name for Niche Marketing
In niche marketing, no matter which particular strategy you’ve chosen keywords are well… key. This stands true when it comes to choosing a domain name as well. The domain name you choose is like the first way you show google what your site is about.
Choosing a domain name is not hard, but there are some things you want to try to keep in mind when deciding, and of course it’s a little different depending on which strategy you’ve decided to follow, so let’s go through them and get an idea of how to choose a domain name for each niche marketing strategy. (mind you ~ these are guidelines ~ please do NOT let this trip you up and keep you from getting started ~ something is ALWAYS better than nothing)
First though, let’s talk about what domains you should use, as it’s always a question.
.com
.net
.org
top three in that order. Get them if you can. They work the best in search engines, and give people assurance that this is a real site.
I know .info is cheap ~ (just FYI they renew at full price the next year), and yes, I have used .info in the past, and they rank ~ it takes more work to get them there and keep them there has been my experience.
Keyword sniping:
As you can tell by the title of this strategy keywords are crucial to this strategy. You must have your exact keyword in the domain name. When I was studying with my coach on this method he told me it was fine to have extra words at the end or beginning of the keywords, but that was a couple years ago and I think times have changed. I believe there is a little boost in the rankings for having the exact and only the exact keyword in your domain name.
Ex. keyword is: crock pot replacement parts ~ domain name would be: www.crockpotreplacementparts.com
What do you do if you can’t get that? Try to get the .net or .org. Can’t get those? Then I’d look for another keyword unless it is just too perfect then I’d try the .info ~ but really ~ there are a million keywords out there, I’d stick to one that fits the criteria.
Microniche Sites:
Same criteria as above.
Niche Blogging:
This is where it gets a little different. You are going to be writing a bunch of posts on related topics, so you want to pick a keyword that has good search volume, low competition, but ALSO encompasses the rest of your keywords.
Ex. If you are doing a site all about crock pots ~ cooking, crock pots, parts etc ~ you wouldn’t want to choose crock pot replacement parts as your domain keyword because it’s too specific. You would want to find something that is more general to use ~ but it still needs to be a “good keyword”. Best crock pot fits the bill. With good search volume, and well within the guidelines of competition. (now whether that’s available as a domain name or not is another issue ~ but you get the example)
Something general enough to encompass all the keywords you will be talking about in your site, but still a good keyword.
*** I am using the exact same search volume and competition criteria for these keywords as I use when I do Squidoo lenses. Just FYI.
Niche domination:
Again, because you are targeting specific keywords you want the exact keyword you are targeting in your domain name. Even if this is for Squidoo ~ you still want it to be the same. If you have to start using extra stuff in your url to get the domain name you might want to rethink your niche, because other people on squidoo are doing it too ~ there’s plenty of niches out there ~ why not pick one where you don’t have to compete.
Authority Blogging:
This one gives you the most leeway. You can really choose anything niche related or even your name. This is a long term project, and you’re building your brand more than a keyword. Your content will be what you target your keywords to. So whatever sounds good/works good for you is what will work.
ex. problogger.net, entrepreneurs-journey.com, roadtobikeacrosskansas.com ~ whatever your topic, you can choose your domain name.
Hopefully I’ve made choosing a domain name a little more clear. If you have questions ~ please ask them in the comments section. Let’s get started!
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Jackie, good advice. Question, I go find a key word, it has low competition but when I Google the key word, I get over, in some cases, 20 million hits on that key word. Do you go back and look for another key word?
Jim
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I’m very curious to hear your take on this scenario:
If you have the perfect keyword you want to use, like your crockpotreplacementparts, for example, but the .com,.net,.org are taken– instead of opting for another keyword or the .info extension… how about adding another keyword TO this original phrase? Like bestcrockpotreplacementparts.com. Or “cheap” or “used” or… you get the idea.
Would you do something like that? I’m hesitant sometimes, because it makes an already long keyword phrase even longer. Do you have any thoughts on this?
~cj
@Arlene What are you using to decide it has low competition? If you are using PR ~ or SOC I wouldn’t worry about the number of pages it shows. Yes ~ I know other people teach just using the number of exact match pages that show up ~ I personally don’t.
Also ~ the number of sites that come up when it has no quotes will be much higher ~ but those pages aren’t all optimized for the keyword so they don’t really matter.
@CJ ~ It depends really on what you’re trying to do (which strategy you’re using). There are benefits to using JUST the keyword in your domain name ~ you get a bit of a bump in search placement. Say it was the two examples you gave ~ with all else being the same the one with just the keyword would rank higher. Given that ~ most things are never the same, so if that’s all you can get, then get it ~ or else look for a different keyword to use. If you decide to add words to the keyword ~ check and see if there is a keyword with the added word. You may find cheap or best is a keyword in and of itself, then I’d go with one of those ~ then you have 2 keywords in one.
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I had a question about products have have been mentioned in some lenses but none that use the actual product specific keyword or the lens isn’t really optimized for just 1 product … For example with your ironman inversion table lens I think there are some lenses about inversion therapy or some that mention a ton of different products, but none that are completely specific to that one inversion table… Are we still pretty safe to go after products like that? My first thought is it shouldn’t be that big of a deal because I’m still the only one targeting that exact keyword, but then again I could be wrong!! Thanks for the help!
Dennis
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You are right, if you can get the specific kw for your url you’re fine.
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Jackie, thanks for the response, I was forgetting the quotes. Narrowed the results from over 20 milli0n to 677. What an improvement.
Thanks
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Oh I just had another thought that may be helpful, tell me if I am on target there…. In the amazon associates performance plan you get the higher commission tier if you sell a higher number of products, it doesn’t matter the amount of $$$ correct? So would it be helpful to do some lower ticket items, which will probably have a much higher conversion rate just to refer more products and reach the higher commissions? Just something that I was wondering about that may be helpful for people (like me!) that are just getting started and anticipating their first sale!
Dennis
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Hi Jackie,
Let’s say I want to start my own niche sites. Do you know any low cost or free web writing software to get this going? Should I just wait and continue working on my Christmas cash through Squidoo? What after the Christmas time, should I go for OWM using Squidoo on my own niche ideas?
One last weird question. I wasted a lot of time this weekend trying to get good products, half off pricing, good keywords and all I came up with was nothing. The products I found had good comments, but were out of stock. The keywords were lousy on the google tool, where all the words either came up with too much competition, but nothing came up with any good numbers. I went through about 15 products and came up with zip. I gave up my search and went to cleaning up and adding to an existing lens. Do you ever have that come up or is it just me?
Hi Pat,
If you want to create your own niche sites I suggest you use wordpress as the platform. It’s very easy to install and very customizable.
You have to choose what you want to do ~ you can choose OWM or creating your own niche sites ~ it’s up to you, whatever you feel most comfortable with. They will both work, it’s just a matter of deciding and then taking consistent action.
About products ~ I don’t usually have a problem finding products. Make sure you don’t get stuck thinking you have to use exactly the title for the product that Amazon has ~ unless you are looking at the first page of the electronics category you can usually find a keyword that will work for the product. Take a look at this post it might help: How to find keywords if your product has no search volume
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I have heard of wordpress and have no idea how to use it. When you say the word platform what do you mean? Is it like dreamweaver where even beginners can somehow make a site without knowing how to? Does it require hours and hours of training to get going? Where do I start with this wordpress?
One other dumb question. When I’m in the google tool box area and I was trying other keywords, just like in the tutorial but the search volumes really did stink. I was wondering what a good realistic search volume should be. They list a global or local number. What do you want the local number to be, at the very least, to be worth your while? I thought it had to be about 2800 to 5400 searches. Does it matter for global or local.
I did a lens using other keywords related to a product, they had a fairly good search volume but I have no traffic to my lens as of yet. It has only been about 8 days, but I was testing that the other day to see if it would work with a related keyword, with the keyword phrase and having 2900 search volume. I haven’t had a click in my lens yet. We will see.
I will be working on my backlinking for the next few days. Not much for new lenses for the time being. Thanks. Pat
Wordpress is a blogging platform ~ but you can build sites on it too. It is pretty simple to learn ~ you can google it and get plenty of videos and information on how to do it. It starts with getting your own hosting, your own domain name and then installing wordpress.
You use the global search volume number ~ that’s an average of the last 12 months. I look for search volume over 1000. Is your lens indexed yet? Have you done any linking? You have to do the linking so the lens will be found and rank for your targeted keyword before you can expect to get clicks on your lens. If you’re not ranking in the search results how will people find it to click on it?
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I thought it was for blogging only. So I have to get a hosting site, then play with it. Or can I install wordpress and practice with it before getting a hosting agreement?
wordpress is simply a content management system. You can do just about anything with it ~ especially now with so many themes available. You can turn a wordpress site into just about anything.
You have to have hosting to work with wordpress. You have to install wordpress on your own domain name so you have to have hosting to do that.
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I have a domain name for my Karate site. Could I work off of that or stick go off something else?
well unless you want to add a blog to the karate site I’d say start with a new domain. Looks to me like you already have hosting for this karate site. Yes? If you have hosting already you should be able to add on another domain very easily.
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16GB Mp3 Player – Apple iPod Nano with Camera
Hi Jackie,
my biggest problem is backlinking. It is so confusing for me. Thank to you I had no problem to build a lense. Then I idt a couple of posts at PPG blog (thanks to her to allowed to do that) with links to my lense in anchor text with my keywords. Some of them were published a month ago.
Most of my lens in health show no backlinks to it. I could enter it from the blog. Still…?
Now I’m guessing if it is good idea to build backlincks with blogs. It takes a lot of time to manage bloging for number of lenses with no result. I’m confused – is it only my problem?
Thank you.
Liliya
P.S. Forgive my sentence structure. English is my second language.
You will need to do more than a couple of blog comment links to get your lenses to rank. If you look at the articles page you’ll see a whole list of ways to build backlinks. Each one will link to the posts that explain how.
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Sorry for submitting one more comment for nothing. But I could see what happened wit my 1-st post that look funny. It is all abou experience. link to my squidoo page under my name. And URL (even so I included HTML code) stays by itselve.
Everyone welcome to laugh at me. I’m O.K. with it.
Liliya
Liliya
If you put your keywords in the name field, and your lens url in the url field it will work correctly.
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Thank you Jackie,
I will read it again. I think that I will have more questions related to articles and blogs. And I’m pleasently surprise with your fast reply. It is a teaching with capital “T”.
Thank you
Liliya.
Great post – and good advice regarding the selection of domain names.
Regarding CJ’s comment: I would absolutely consider adding a modifier to the domain name if the root keyword (or key phrase) was already taken in the .com, .net, and .org top level domains.
In fact, choosing the correct modifier will likely attract prospects who are in “action” part of the buying cycle (i.e. more like to purchase, than to browse).
Great job as usual, Jackie. What do you think about adding dashes to domain names similar to what we do with the Squidoo lenses?
This is all so new to me that I am trying to figure out which direction I am going to go. I am finally seeing some sales with the Christmas lenses (5 so far!). Thanks for showing me that something could work and actually make money.
Tina
hey Tina~
WOO HOO on the sales. Nice job.
There’s some contraversy about using dashes. I would try to stick to the exact keyword ~ no dashes. But again like everything ~ even if you get somethings “wrong” you can still make money ~ so if you’ve found a great keyword and can only get a url with dashes it doesn’t hurt to test for yourself.
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Recently i started a website. I used few popular keyphrases in my domain. Yeah thats taken from one of keywords search tools. After naming I was bit confuse but after reading this post I am confident thats gonna work.
Thanks for sharing
I thought I have left a comment here about the importance of your own domain as lenses of mine were locked for reasons I so not know. Apparently it did not actully work and it is not here. (Internet in SA giving a lot of problems) I’ll build lenses for cash flow but I’m moving on to my own sites as fast as I can. My lenses was locked because of a stupid mistake I made. If I did not have my blog on this I would have lost it all.
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this is the one process that i am not that good at!