Choosing Adsense Domain Names
By: John Elder posted in Adsense
Hello good people!
Yesterday I talked about purchasing domain names and which domain registrars you should use. Today I want to talk about *selecting* or choosing domain names.
Do you need an exact match domain (EMD)? That’s a question that I get asked all the time…I mean ALL the time. What is an EMD? Quite simply, it’s the exact keyword you are trying to target.
For instance, if your keyword is 52 piece cookware set, the EMD would be 52piececookwareset.com (or .net, .org, .info, .co, etc).
Why is that important? Because back in the day, Google used to give a little extra weight to EMD’s in the index. So it was much easier to get your site indexed and ranked really high by using an EMD. In some cases, that’s all you had to do to get a top 10 ranking (even a top 3 ranking for keywords that were less competitive).
Of course, as soon as people figured this out, a mad gold rush began and people began hoarding EMD’s like there was no tomorrow. That resulted in two things:
- EMD’s for most keywords became nearly impossible to buy (because they had all been bought)
- Google changed their algorithm so that EMD’s no longer gave such a huge advantage in ranking
Today, I still find that having an EMD gives you a little bit of an edge in ranking a site, but if you can’t get an EMD, it’s really not the end of the world.
Often simply appending your initials to the end of the domain works wonders. For instance, if 52piececookwareset.com is already taken, simply register 52piececookwareset-jp.com, or even something like 52piececookwaresetPRO.com. It may seem odd, but when I do that, the sites seem to rank just as well and just as easily as an EMD.
.com vs .net vs .org vs .info vs .co
This is a conspiracy myth that just won’t die. People really believe that you need to register either a .com or a .net or .org in order to be successful. People think that .info or .co domains won’t rank as well at Google. That’s complete crap.
Nearly all my sites are .info sites. Why? Because I can buy them from Godaddy for .67 cents whenever they have a sale. Do the math:
1,000 .com sites at $9 per domain = $9,000 in registration fees
vs.
1,000 .info sites at .67 cents per domain = $670 in registration fees.
Knowing that .info domains rank just as well as .com domains…which would you choose? .info!!
There are exceptions. If you are building ONE website, and are going to be branding it, building it into a major resource, and then possibly selling the site for thousands or millions of dollars, then YES register a .com site.
But if you plan on churning out hundreds or even thousands of Adsense sites, then go with the cheapest you can find…and that’s .info. Plus less people use .info sites, making it much easier to find EMD’s for your specific keywords.
Bottom Line…
I recommend using .info domains with either an exact match domain, or an EMD with a couple of extra letters stuck on the end. You can’t go wrong!
And if you don’t believe me, test it for yourself. Spend $67 dollars to register 100 .info sites and see how well they perform. At worst they fail completely and you’re out $67 bucks. At best…well, you’ll see!
Keep on building!
-John
The Marketing Fool!
