Marketers splash out on keyword domain names reports John Manning
Domain names rich in industry specific keywords are the most sought after according to secondary domain marketplace Sedo. The top ten most valuable web addresses ending in “.co.uk” sold in the second quarter of 2009 were domains made up of keyword terms, such as “widget.co.uk” and “search.com”. “Software.co.uk” was revealed to be the most expensive domain, having been purchased for £150,000, while “horseracing.co.uk” and “onlinecasino.co.uk” were both snapped up for £100,000. The trend is also apparent internationally; “fly.com” was Sedo’s top selling global domain of 2009, going for a fee in excess of £1m.
Nora Nanayakara, business development director at Sedo, says the rewards offered by keyword rich domains are enough to convince marketers to part with sizeable sums of money. “Search engines like Google put significant weight on keywords within domain names, so having a generic domain name that incorporates a keyword relative to a particular industry can take a website right to the top of search engine rankings.”
While acknowledging that domain names do contribute to a website’s ranking, digital marketing expert and director of Marketing Insights Limited, Dr Dave Chaffey is wary of assigning them too great a significance. “Keyword rich domains have always been recognised by Google but are only one of many factors that determine whether a site achieves good search rankings.”
He points to the fact that search results are often dominated by brands, not keywords. “If you enter CRM into a search engine the results will be topped by the likes of Salesforce and Oracle, not ‘crm.com’.”
Citing the purchase of the domain "cruises.co.uk" by cruise.co.uk under the premise that it consists of a stronger keyword, Chaffey insists spending a significant budget on the perfect web address is a flawed approach to increasing traffic. “It is more important to focus on building a brand that is recognised by Google as having history and authority."
2009 Top 10 .co.uk Sales in GBP
software.co.uk 150,000.00
horseracing.co.uk 100,000.00
onlinecasino.co.uk 100,000.00
rent.co.uk 65,000.00
bedroomfurniture.co.uk 35,193.33
familytree.co.uk 25,000.00
payment.co.uk 20,000.00
wecompare.co.uk 20,000.00
ggg.co.uk 17,700.00
Kos.co.uk 15,000.00
2009 Top 10 Sales in GBP
fly.com 1,152,173.24
russia.com 904,319.74
call.com 678,749.65
server.com 478,143.83
america.com 474,977.28
files.com 449,845.74
christian.com 366,917.29
top.com 327,916.88
talk.com 303,994.08
brazil.com 302,489.98
Source: Sedo
John Manning is editorial/ web assistant at The Marketer
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