I have been in the domain name industry for quite a long time now (well before this blog came into existence) and have been dismayed every time a self styled SEO guru proclaimed that domain names had negligible or no effect on the success of your online business. Let no one dictate to you differently; domain names have been and will always be a major factor towards your success or failure, online. Getting on the front page of your favorite search engine has become very competitive and the tips in this post might just provide the tiny nudge to drive your websites to better SERP rankings.

Remember this! No internet marketer will ever tell you the full benefits of proper domain name selection and its impact on your online presence. Why? Because they are either too busy promoting their own products or simply do not understand the hidden gems of brainstorming domain name ideas. This post will not bore you with details of the correlation between SEO and domain names (that is left for a later date), but I will give you some creative secrets I have been practicing for killer domain name ideas.

Avoid Domain Name with Hyphens

Search engines love hyphenated domains; so say the internet marketers. There is some level of truth to this since search engines tend to parse hyphens better than any other special character (including underscores). However, I strongly recommend you to go with a non- hyphenated domain as your initial choice. With hyphens, you tend to lose a lot of “type-in” traffic. If you progress to become an authority site (by that, I mean a household name), people would get to your site by typing in the domain name instead of searching it on the search engines. You can probably imagine the confusion the hyphens in the domain name will cause to your potential visitors. If your choice of domain name is not available as a .com version, choose alternative extensions. But please, avoid hyphens at all costs! (Important point to remember- this point may be slightly inapplicable in cases of domain names for purely PPC campaigns).

Go for Aged Domains

Expensive to get them? Not really! In this section, I will tell you a secret for getting aged domains, with high Page Ranks, for incredibly cheap prices. If you have ever heard of Domain Auctions, then you are good to go. I prefer Godaddy Domain Auctions for this purpose. All you need to do is search out for high PR, aged domain that has not attracted too many bids and has a reasonable highest bid in the range of $40-$70. Bookmark the auction page for this domain name, set an alarm or reminder on your calendar, clock, cell phone or an online reminder utility, for approximately 10 minutes before the auction deadline. Once the deadline day comes, login your auction page and see the bids made till to date. I have had many auctions whereby bids were made just to top up the last bid by a dollar, therefore the highest bid will still remain within the $40-$70 range .Wait for the timer to countdown to approximately 2 minutes 5 – 10 seconds before the actual bid closure time. Godaddy gives an additional two minute buffer if a bid is placed within the last 2 minutes of the deadline, so you would want to place your bid just before this last two minutes to avoid giving an additional two minutes for someone else to better your offer. I actually bid $2 more than the least allowed bid amount. Many people have the tendency to just bid the least allowed amount, and a few experienced marketers bid a dollar more. The secret, therefore, is to bid two dollars to kick out both the normal bidders and the experienced ones, and have your bid kill off any competition. If someone makes a new bid within the 2 minutes, just repeat this process, this time placing your bid 2 minutes, 5-10 seconds before the new deadline. However, do not get in a bidding war. If the highest bid reaches an unreasonable amount, simply bow out and live to fight another day.

Domain Name Suggestion Sites

Another killer, but vastly untapped source for domain name ideas is domain suggestion sites. Yes, some of them suggest rather crappy names, but you can get a lot more ideas from these suggested names rather than just sitting and brainstorming. I frequently use domain-name-ideas.com for this purpose; you can Google for “Domain Name Suggestions” and get a wide array of resources to aid in your domain name selection process.

Bottom Line…

Creativity plays a huge part in your domain name selection. In addition to the above tips, the most important concept, lateral thinking, remains. Do not try to be too obvious, coming up with generic two to three word domains. Adding something such as “plus”, “elite” and “pro” can give authority to a generic name. No wonder you can see super affiliates are always in the process of grabbing the domains with the product name they are prompting and these suffixes added. I hope these few, but very crucial tips, will propel forward your online endeavors. Comments are welcome, as always…

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