Still More Domain Tips And Tricks

Domain Names for One and All
Okay, so you're a domain-saavy buyer, and you know without a doubt that the specific domain or domains you need are taken. The owner isn't inclined to sell, or if they are, they want six figure amounts for them. What's a business owner to do?

Let's say that you really wanted the domain "skateboards.com" for your skateboard business. Of course, skateboards.com is taken, along with all the possible variations. You don't want a country code domain (such as skateboards.tv or skateboards.cc), you want a .com domain. Problems, problems. But wait...

Do a lookup for the domain skateboards2.com. "Your selection is available for registration." Check out watersports2.com. Same thing, available. Check gardening4.com. The list goes on...just put a number before or after the domain you want. You can use the URL in all your advertising, it's easy to remember, and still available at the normal cost for registering a domain.

When the "New" TLDs Become Available, Should I Buy "MyName".tld?
We've all been hearing about the "new" gTLDs that will become available later in the year. The extensions .web, .sex, .shop, .biz, and many more are being discussed, though nobody is certain which will "make the grade." When they become available, should you rush out to grab them to go along with your dot com domains? In this author's opinion, no, you should not. The whole reason they are coming up with new TLDs is because the namespace market is getting bogged down. The new TLDs will open the market up to businesses that may have missed the boat initially. It remains to be seen whether the new TLDs will enforce copyright and trademark rights, so we can only guess at this point.

Domains and Search Engines
These days staying on top of search engine strategies can be tiresome and ceaseless. Although sites such as SearchEngineWatch.com provide invaluable details of what it takes to get to the top of the search engine rankings, even if you use all the recommended techniques you may have a hard time coming in on the first page of listings, let alone the top 10. Take a closer look at those sites that DO come in on the top 10, or at least in the first page of results, and you may find that many of them have the keyword that was searched for in their domain name.

It may behoove online entrepreneurs to come up with the top 10 keywords for their product line or service, and buy a few domains that contain those words. For instance, if the product my site sold was speakers, it may be worth it to buy the domains "speakersforless.com" and "carspeakers.com" or some variation thereof. Continue to market your site just as you had, but point those domains to your site as well, and then submit them to the major search engines. While this won't guarantee that you'll get a higher placing, it certainly won't hurt, and will most likely help.

Should I Buy a New Domain, or Use a Secondary (i.e. china.internet.com)
Many times companies and corporations spend an inordinate amount of money on domain names they don't really need. After all, they spent a fortune on advertising, branding their domain/company name into the minds of consumers only to start using a totally new domain for a different aspect or division of their company. For instance, suppose that Yahoo.com had started using the domain "yahooauctions.com" when they started their auctions. Not real easy to remember, and it's yet another domain name they had to purchase and market. They could have just as easily used "auctions.yahoo.com," which would be the logical URL for folks to type in (once they had been to the auction). This has finally started to become popular--internet.com uses it for their regional sites, ebay.com uses it for their regional auctions, etc. Use your domain practically like this, and you will be able to continue to push your brand *and* retain the use of your original domain.

Take Advantage of Previous Work
When you're trying to come up with a suitable domain name for your company or business, often it can be difficult to both come up with a decent name and ensure that the domain in question will still be available. Of course you can use services like our own UnclaimedDomains.com, which sends out a weekly newsletter with thousands of recently available domain names. Another service, Whois.net, provides advanced searching capabilities for those trying to find recently available (deleted) domain names: http://www.whois.net/searchD.cgi2?as=1 You can use wildcards, such as *mp3 or mp3*, or *mp3* to find the available domain names. The search for mp3* brought up 1673 available domains, including:

- mp3-boulevard.com
- mp3-chat.com
- mp3basket.com
- mp3cats.com
- mp3child.com
- mp3comedyhits.com
- and many more

Between Whois.net and UnclaimedDomains.com, nobody can ever say "all the good domains are taken."

"Still More Domain Tips And Tricks" by Scott Clark of DomainNotes.com